John Whitehead’s green jobs freight train has apparently completely burned its brakes on the run out of the mountains, and is hurtling headlong toward we know not what. In this morning’s epistle, Whitehead quotes a Forbes listing of the new green jobs (Could Forbes really misunderstand macroeconomics? This being a blog and not real journalism, …
A couple of months ago in this space, a commenter responded to a post about economists favoring a carbon tax as a response to climate change by asking whether said economists were “liberal and socialistic”. The question is perhaps best answered by reference to former advisors to George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan who favor …
Via Dessler and Revkin, an interesting interview with economist Gary Yohe that gets to the heart of the puzzle about gasoline consumption this year. Gas prices soared over the summer, but consumption dropped only a bit (on the order of 3-5 percent year-over-year). The question posed by critics of a carbon tax as a greenhouse …
Continue reading ‘Elasticities in the Short and Long Term’ »
John Whitehead’s jihad against the green jobs argument continues: The implication of this type of study is that environmental policy creates net positive green jobs. The jobs lost as a result of environmental policy are never mentioned. You’ve really got to follow the comment threads on these. And to be clear – John is not …
Has the global food price hit bottom? The Economist food price index is up from last week, and 0.6 percent above the price a month ago.
Bruce Barcott on the loss of newspapers: It matters because papers exist in the physical world, the meatspace with the rest of us, and the fact of their existence, in print on paper, sitting on every corner of downtown Seattle, reminds us that there’s a larger conversation going on around us. She’s worried that the …
Continue reading ‘Elephant Diaries: Information in Meatspace’ »
C.J. Brooks, a Tucson water geek and author of the “Watering the Desert Blog”, talks about the linkage between land use planning and water in Nevada. Washoe County has done the sort of thing advocates around here have been talking about ever since I started thinking seriously about water issues (and likely for a lot …
Would the total volume of trash being produced be an economic indicator? In what ways?
What’s the full carbon footprint of buying X on line, versus driving to a store to get it? (Pick your own values for the variables. I’m just curious about the sensitivity analysis.)
Tom Yulsman, from the Center for Environmental Journalism in Boulder, bemoans a life without Rocky Mountain News and, potentialy, the Denver Post? If Scripps cannot find a buyer for the Rocky Mountain News — and no one thinks it will — then the paper will go belly up, leaving the Denver Post as the only …