In case you missed it, here is a recording of my February talk from St. Luke's Health's (in Boise) climate change and health series. I tried to weave together some broad thoughts on economic growth, climate change and health, and how these interact with each other.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaSX...
New working paper, led by Margaret Hegwood:
"Aquaculture is subject to more regulations than any other food sector in the United States"
osf.io/preprints/so...
Feedback welcome!
Great to work with @dochfroehlich.bsky.social, Pete Newton & Mike Clark on this (in addition to Margaret, of course)!
Seems like solar and batteries are still doing well in the power grid.
Sources:
www.eia.gov/todayinenerg...
www.eia.gov/todayinenerg...
@thehonestbroker.bsky.social @mattkahn1966.bsky.social @patricktbrown31.bsky.social
Some interesting and constructive comments on our paper from @marshallburke.bsky.social.
I agree that optimism should be a verb in addition to being an outlook! Paying more attention to adaptation will help us make a plan.
New paper, led by Hilary Brumberg, from her excellent CU Boulder ENVS MS thesis (she's now at @stanforddoerr.bsky.social):
"Riparian vegetation reduces coastal turbidity".
A careful empirical study of how land use affects nearby ocean environments (in Costa Rica).
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Thank you!
If you're at @boisestate.bsky.social this week, come say hi!
It's true that GDP (per capita) is not a perfect measure of human well being, and equality matters. It's also true that many, many measures of well-being are strongly correlated, including incomes of the poor within country.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Lol sorry, misunderstood your post.
Overregulation is the main issue in Europe (like California, and in a way Canada). Some has environmental objectives but not all. And where there are, there are usually better ways to pursue the same objectives (industrial policy, modest carbon pricing). Caring about growth will help us find those!
Europe def does 'pre-distribution' better than here. (You'd be surprised how large, and arguably inefficient transfers are here.) I don't think the social safety net is the main reason for EU's slower growth (e.g. US productivity divergence from Germany is recent).
www.economist.com/special-repo...
What happened in Sri Lanka was that the leaders banned synthetic fertilizer for environmental reasons (pollution more than climate, if memory serves), and it caused a big yield failure and economic crisis, and then they reversed it. I link to an article about it in my post.
What is your timeline again for WGIII? If it's helpful, I can try to put together something more systematic and send it to you.
Industrial policy (e.g. IRA) seems to have shown promise (e.g., increasing US manufacturing and industrial investment). My guess is that IP has the implicit advantage of capturing +externalities of cheap energy in addition to favoring low -externality renewables. But not much literature yet bc new.
Here's a recent paper on tradeoffs in the EU and UK: www.nber.org/system/files...
My general sense of the literature is that carbon pricing is more efficient than regulations (esp. if revenue is recycled well).
Here is the LSE report on the EU CBAM I mentioned: www.lse.ac.uk/africa/asset...
There's been a fair amount written about UK and EU energy prices and de-industrialization, some (not all) of which is tied to climate policy. E.g., Dieter Helm talked about this on BBC this week: x.com/BBCPolitics/...
Ya, I mainly joined because there have been some interesting discussions of things I've written on here from colleagues recently. This paper, and earlier this: www.ft.com/content/b4d2... (which might surprise anyone on here who thinks I have a "religious" belief in unstoppable long-run growth😂)
Anyway, thanks for the comments. Like Roger said, we do welcome feedback on the paper! 12/12
2) More importantly, choosing public messaging based on what we think supports a particular party's agenda is bad science & worse politics. Conservatives' impression that we do this is a big reason we've lost trust & some want to smash our institutions. 11/
heterodoxacademy.org/blog/partisa...
Lastly, regarding the implied concern that this post/paper/etc. feeds some hard-right narrative, my short answers are: 1) anyone who reads the whole post will not find support for stop renewables/stop climate science U.S. policies. 11/
Your critique of my blog seems to be that the "screw up your economy" (I didn't say "tank") wording & Sri Lanka example in the one paragraph seemed too extreme over coffee out of context. Ok. Obv that's not the typical example, but stark examples can be helpful in illustrating broader pts. 10/
If these points are so obvious/settled to the climate community that they don't need to be made, why, e.g., did Bill Gates feel the need to make some of them last fall, and why did he take tons of flak for it? 9/
Roger's example below illustrates the point about growth more broadly and hypothetically.
bsky.app/profile/theh...
IMO, we still don't talk enough about development in low-income countries as priority-one either (as the EU border adjustment proposal illustrates, e.g.). 8/
I'm not blaming this on the ETS per se (though the proposed border adjustment would be harmful to Africa, per LSE, as our paper mentions), but closing nuclear plants was dumb, and I do think it's fair to say growth was generally not prioritized over the past decade or so (Canada too). 7/
More subtly, you have people making policies in places like the E.U. that have been agnostic to growth, arguably at the cost of some climate-sensitive outcomes. E.g., would a faster-growing E.U. install more air conditioning and have less deadly heat waves? My hypothesis would be yes. 6/
On the first pt, you have the de-growthers, yes, but also many agnostic to growth & development, and many who say we must hit targets like 1.5 degrees that could only be hit at this point with drastic economic costs (if even possible). 5/
E.g., on the second point, you have people like Bill Nye (linked in my blog) saying on CNN that the solution to Texas' floods is to "stop burning fossil fuels". (And many others who say similar things every time there's a fire or flood.) 4/
Our other main point is that, though reducing emissions helps you globally in the long run, development and adaptation are your levers for improving climate-sensitive outcomes locally in the short-to-medium-run. These pts may be obvious to you, but we think they are underappreciated by many. 3/
Our point is that the win-wins are great & under-tapped, and R&D is important to finding more. But, in the areas where there are tradeoffs, we need to consider the importance of economic development to climate-sensitive outcomes, in addition to its importance to other areas of well-being. 2/
