Climate change headline of the day: “Great tits cope well with warming”

From the BBC. Oh British humor.

Cognitive biases about transportation

As usual, it is presumed that traffic and transportation problems will have seen a lot of progress when in fact they have not.

That is Tyler Cowen, observing that our predictions about the transportation future — in this case, 2008 seen from the vantage point of 1968 — are much more optimistic than the ultimately drab realities.

I am inclined to agree, with the qualification that our expectations about the future in general — across the board, not just for transportation — frequently seem too optimistic about revolutionary changes and insufficiently in tune with how much better things can get through evolutionary changes at the margin. Think of the difference between the forty years from 1880 to 1920 and 1920 to 1960 — the first period was a transportation revolution and the second an evolution. It was probably easier to “predict” 1960 from the vantage point of 1920 than 1920 from 1880. But probably more people were positively impacted by the transportation changes in the second period than in the first.

Do policy changes count? I suspect that most households get better transportation services for a smaller share of their budget than 40 years ago.

What would a revolutionary change look like for transportation in the next 40 years? What is your outrageously over-optimistic model?

My (expected) model is basically evolutionary: Personal automobiles remain the central mode of transportation. More (most?) of them are electrified. More roads will be priced, including development of real-time-variant congestion pricing in some urban hubs. More and better mass transit in urban hubs, but not that much more. (Infrastructure is slow, slow, slow.) More people walk and bike but that will have more to do with urbanization and where new housing is built (infill in cities instead of suburbanization) than transportation per se. Carbon will be priced and that will help along these changes but decarbonizing transit will be a slow process (unless electrification and CCS both work and soon). I would like to have centrally-directed ‘auto-pilot’ cars — what is the dividing line between cars that drive themselves and pod-based mass transit? — but I doubt most people want or will accept this in the near term and so it will be limited to various forms of driver ‘assistance’ (with perhaps auto-pilot options for the highway — Kansas, anyone?).

Update: Matt Yglesias comments.

The whole article is very entertaining and gets some things quite right. (”The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer.”) I couldn’t resist the opportunity to make a few completely off-topic comments and I’ve placed these below the fold.

Biofuels quote of the day

From The Onion, in regard to the recent article in Science claiming that biofuels do not have a positive impact on GHG emissions:

“Just once, why can’t one of our poorly considered quick fixes work?”

Survey research quote of the… month? year?

This probably only makes much sense to our academic audience (does it exist?), but Chris Blattman has a trenchantly funny aside about research he’s conducting on a program working for inter-ethnic harmony in Serbia/Kosovo:

I’ll give you a preview of how the program is going so far: not so hot. On the other hand, from a pure research point of view, if you’re running a panel survey of youth ethnic and political attitudes, it does not hurt to have a declaration of independence midway between the two survey rounds.

I hope my bosses don’t read env-econ.net

Evan and Rich, I’m warning you, John Whitehead is onto us.

Get me some trans-fat and nicotine, stat!

Turns out those 300-pound smokers aren’t the menace to public coffers that you might have feared:

Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn’t save money, researchers reported Monday. It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

“It was a small surprise,” said Pieter van Baal, an economist at the Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, who led the study. “But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more.”

In a paper published online Monday in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal, Dutch researchers found that the health costs of thin and healthy people in adulthood are more expensive than those of either fat people or smokers. …

The researchers found that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because both the smokers and the obese people died sooner than the healthy group, it cost less to treat them in the long run. …

Ultimately, the thin and healthy group cost the most, about $417,000, from age 20 on. The cost of care for obese people was $371,000, and for smokers, about $326,000.

With some economists worried about the impact rising entitlement spending will have on the next generation, sounds like it’s time to follow Tim Harford’s advice and take up smoking. Do it for the kids!

H/T: Kids Prefer Cheese, who notes: “I swear this is not from the Onion.”

Energy Demand Inelasticity Cartoon of the Day

Psych!

Who thought this was a good idea?

An environmental group called Rising Tide North America put out a fake press release on Monday stating that members of U.S. Climate Action Partnership had agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to stop building coal-fired power plants. …

USCAP, a group of industrial companies including NRG Energy, said later that it never made such commitments. …

The fake press release was e-mailed to the news media…. The release included a link to the Web site www.climateactionpartnership.org, a fraudulent Web site that was nearly identical to the real USCAP Web site, at www.us-cap.org.

What is this, third grade?

Rising Tide opposes the use of fossil fuels and promotes “community based solutions” to climate change.

Ok, so maybe their agenda isn’t all bad. “Community based solutions”, right? Who could oppose those?

Jessica Starr, an organizer for the group, said the fraudulent press release was meant to draw attention to climate change and the idea of cutting emissions substantially.

“It’s a free speech tactic,” she said.

Well… that’s one perspective.

Rich people, meet smart people

According to The Independent, the Second Annual Fortune Forum will showcase a breakthrough energy technology:

[Kane] Kramer, who was 23 in 1979 when he conceptualised the technology that led to the creation of the first MP3 player, refused to give specific details of the new discovery, or to name the inventor, so as to maintain the element of surprise for Friday. But he indicated that it is a breakthrough in micro-technology, and that British scientists who have tested it are convinced that it will work.

“This is something … that’s the accumulation of almost a decade of work,” he said. “It’s a new science, a Super Material. It would be 80 per cent cheaper than any alternative means of production, and it will contribute in a major way to reducing climate change.

Before we climate change folks all quit our jobs, note that the last time I heard this kind of announcement, we got the freaking Segway. The greatest benefit of this previous “revolutionary technology” has been watching Gob Bluth ride a monogrammed unit on Arrested Development.

On a broader scale, I do think the idea of matching wealthy investors (the total net worth of this year’s diners is estimated at over £100 billion) with inventors is an important one:

There is an old saying that if you invent a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door, but he says the adage is true only for inventions that improve gadgets that are already known to work. Big corporations can be very coy about putting money into something genuinely new. “Business wants to jump on a bandwagon, not build the bandwagon,” [Kramer] said.

Imperfect information, as we have so often noted, causes serious problems when people with no access to capital have great visions.

Correlation vs. causation (or, I stole this entire post from Greg Mankiw)

I really did.

Supply side economics trickles down to env econ

Mark Thoma points us to The Onion:

Reagonomics Finally Trickles Down to Area Man: Twenty-six years after Ronald Reagan first set his controversial fiscal policies into motion, the deceased president’s massive tax cuts for the ultrarich at last trickled all the way down to deliver their bounty, in the form of a $10 bonus, to Hazelwood, MO car-wash attendant Frank Kellener.

“Back when Reagan was in charge, I didn’t think much of him,” Kellener, 57, said, holding up two five-dollar bills nearly three decades in the making. “But who would have thought that in 2007 I’d have this extra $10 in my pocket? He may not have lived to see it, but I’m sure President Reagan is up in heaven smiling down on me right now.” …

It’s well worth reading the article in its entirety.

I know, however, faithful reader, that you are wondering exactly what this has to do with the insightful commentary on environmental economics you’ve come to expect around here.

Never fear, N. Gregory Mankiw gives us the smallest of hooks to hang the last shreds of our dignity on:

Utility bills, circa 1942

I got my combined utility bill for my apartment today.  It said I used negative 429 kilowatt-hours of electricity last month.  I “owe” the utility -$66 for this service.

How did this happen?  My guess is that the utility only reads the meter every couple of months.  I haven’t been in my apartment very long, but so far this year my typical electricity bill has been very small, around $20 or so.  This is despite rates that are around 15.5 cents per kWh, which is really high.  Presumably this is because my roommate and I weren’t using the AC and we pretty much have CFLs all over the place, and even when we are around we don’t leave extra lights on.  However, last month we got a bill for $100 in electricity.  At the time I just assumed that this was because summer in DC arrived and we had cranked on the AC to stay alive.

This most recent bill puts things in a new light, because it covers late July to late August.  I know we were using the AC during this period.  My guess is that the utility company has been coming out every other month, and perhaps charging historical use rates on the months in between.  If this is the case — and there’s not much evidence it actually is,* but stay with me for a sec — then this means my roommate and I either use the AC far less than the previous occupants, or our housefull of CFL bulbs are actually buying us quite a bit of reduced electricity.  I am leaning towards the former since I hadn’t noticed wild fluctuations in my electricity bill back in the spring when presumably the historical electricity used would have been based mostly on lights, refrigeration, etc., and not the AC.  But frankly it’s really hard to tell because I only have 2 data points prior to the wild swing from $100 to -$66.  This will warrant further watching.

The really crazy thing about the story, however, is how outdated my utility company is: they still send someone out to read the meter?   Shouldn’t they have some smart meters, some real-time data or something?  Plus this would let them charge me real-time prices, which would be great since I’m never at home with the lights or AC on in the peak afternoon period.

But that’s another post.

*The water company in Austin used to do this when I lived there… which led to a rather less pleasant story I’ll have to tell sometime that involved a $1200 water bill.

Econoblog fantasy draft

Dani Rodrik posts on new blogs by Krugman and the World Bank’s chief economist for South Asia. I’m excited about both of these for sure, but the comments that follow center on which economists ought to be online. I’m encouraged to see suggestions of some environmental and resource folks, such as Schelling, Nordhaus, Dasgupta, and Weitzman. Hopefully one or more will heed the call and pick up the habit. My favorite part of economics blogs is seeing top scholars debate issues on a semi-regular basis. The discussion is certainly exciting to follow for those of us who have a somewhat unconventional perspective of what makes a superstar.

More negative externalities from corn-based ethanol…

…headline writers run amok.

The NY Times is now free, and ethanol (for cars) is still a bad idea

The New York Times editorial page celebrates its newly decreed non-excludable status by noting what a bad idea corn-based ethanol is:

American corn-based ethanol is expensive. And while it can help cut oil imports and provide modest reductions in greenhouse gases compared to conventional gasoline, corn ethanol also carries considerable risks. …
The distortions in agricultural production are startling. Corn prices are up about 50 percent from last year, while soybean prices are projected to rise up to 30 percent in the coming year, as farmers have replaced soy with corn in their fields. The increasing cost of animal feed is raising the prices of dairy and poultry products. …
Meanwhile, the environmental benefits are modest. A study published last year by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, estimated that after accounting for the energy used to grow the corn and turn it into ethanol, corn ethanol lowers emissions of greenhouse gases by only 13 percent.

What’s actually better news than the opening up of the editorial page is the opening up of the archive.