Air it out
Thoughts on whether government should steer a tropical cyclone if it could
Kelly Klima & Granger Morgan
Journal of Risk Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous work suggests if it were possible to lower sea-surface temperature using wind-wave pumps, it would sometime make sense to try to reduce the wind speed of a tropical cyclone (TC) that is likely to make landfall. While currently there is no plausible strategy to steer a TC, suppose that TC landfall location could be altered and subsequent damages perhaps reduced. Here, we ask whether and when such a modification might be desirable. As a thought experiment, we consider a hypothetical TC that will make landfall on the east coast of Florida. Using results from previous detailed damage modeling, we examine three simplified scenarios of TC modification resulting in altered landfall location. Even in these simplified scenarios, and assuming a zero cost for modification, we find that unless it becomes possible to steer a hurricane to the open ocean with something approaching certainty, it is likely that the complexities of the decision will always make it undesirable to undertake a modification intended to steer TCs.
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News Photographs and Environmental Agenda Setting
Eric Jenner
Policy Studies Journal, May 2012, Pages 274-301
Abstract:
Who and what influences the issues that policymakers attend to is central to the question of how power is exercised in politics. This study builds upon research by Soroka that proposes an expanded model of agenda setting as a means to examine how the media influences issue salience for the public and policymakers. It expands on Soroka's model by investigating the hypothesis that photographic attention to environmental issues in the news media influences issue salience for the mass public and governmental decision makers. There is little research that substantiates the idea, but it is widely believed that photographs have influence on the policy agenda. I use a dynamic, multidirectional model to estimate whether the volume of news photographs, in addition to news stories, influences issue salience among the mass public and policymakers. Data are longitudinal and measures of attention are operationalized as the number of congressional committee meetings, concern for the environment as a "most important problem" in public opinion polls, environmental news stories in The New York Times, and environmental news photographs in Time magazine. Results suggest that photographic attention does influence environmental policy agenda dynamics in some counterintuitive ways that are distinct from the effects of the news stories. While news stories appear to increase public attention toward the environment, they have little influence on policymaker attention. News photographs, on the other hand, appear to drive congressional committee attention but elicit an ambivalent public response.
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International trade drives biodiversity threats in developing nations
M. Lenzen et al.
Nature, 7 June 2012, Pages 109-112
Abstract:
Human activities are causing Earth's sixth major extinction event - an accelerating decline of the world's stocks of biological diversity at rates 100 to 1,000 times pre-human levels. Historically, low-impact intrusion into species habitats arose from local demands for food, fuel and living space. However, in today's increasingly globalized economy, international trade chains accelerate habitat degradation far removed from the place of consumption. Although adverse effects of economic prosperity and economic inequality have been confirmed, the importance of international trade as a driver of threats to species is poorly understood. Here we show that a significant number of species are threatened as a result of international trade along complex routes, and that, in particular, consumers in developed countries cause threats to species through their demand of commodities that are ultimately produced in developing countries. We linked 25,000 Animalia species threat records from the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List to more than 15,000 commodities produced in 187 countries and evaluated more than 5 billion supply chains in terms of their biodiversity impacts. Excluding invasive species, we found that 30% of global species threats are due to international trade. In many developed countries, the consumption of imported coffee, tea, sugar, textiles, fish and other manufactured items causes a biodiversity footprint that is larger abroad than at home. Our results emphasize the importance of examining biodiversity loss as a global systemic phenomenon, instead of looking at the degrading or polluting producers in isolation. We anticipate that our findings will facilitate better regulation, sustainable supply-chain certification and consumer product labelling.
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Does a stricter enforcement policy protect the environment? A political economy perspective
Chu-Chuan Cheng & Yu-Bong Lai
Resource and Energy Economics, November 2012, Pages 431-441
Abstract:
The conventional wisdom suggests that a stricter enforcement policy can reduce pollution emissions. Nevertheless, this present paper argues that this assertion does not necessarily hold if the stringency of environmental regulation is subject to the influence of lobbying. A stricter enforcement policy increases the polluters' expected financial burden, and induces them to exert greater political pressure on reducing the stringency of environmental regulation, thereby resulting in a larger amount of pollution emissions. We also show that tightening the enforcement policy can reduce efficiency. We highlight the possibility of policymaking being misguided due to overlooking the political effect of enforcement policy.
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Are compact cities environmentally friendly?
Carl Gaigné, Stéphane Riou & Jacques-François Thisse
Journal of Urban Economics, September-November 2012, Pages 123-136
Abstract:
There is a wide consensus among international institutions and national governments in favor of compact (i.e. densely populated) cities as a way to improve the ecological performance of the transport system. Indeed, when both the intercity and intra-urban distributions of activities are given, a higher population density makes cities more environmentally friendly because the average commuting length is reduced. However, when we account for the possible relocation of activities within and between cities in response to a higher population density, the latter may cease to hold. Indeed, an increasing-density policy affects prices, wages and land rents, which in turn incentivizes firms and households to change place. This reshapes the urban system in a way that may generate a higher level of pollution. Thus, although an increase in compactness is environmentally desirable when locations are given, compactness may not environmentally-friendly when one accounts for the general equilibrium effects generated by such a policy.
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A trend analysis of normalized insured damage from natural disasters
Fabian Barthel & Eric Neumayer
Climatic Change, July 2012, Pages 215-237
Abstract:
As the world becomes wealthier over time, inflation-adjusted insured damages from natural disasters go up as well. This article analyzes whether there is still a significant upward trend once insured natural disaster loss has been normalized. By scaling up loss from past disasters, normalization adjusts for the fact that a hazard event of equal strength will typically cause more damage nowadays than in past years because of wealth accumulation over time. A trend analysis of normalized insured damage from natural disasters is not only of interest to the insurance industry, but can potentially be useful for attempts at detecting whether there has been an increase in the frequency and/or intensity of natural hazards, whether caused by natural climate variability or anthropogenic climate change. We analyze trends at the global level over the period 1990 to 2008, over the period 1980 to 2008 for West Germany and 1973 to 2008 for the United States. We find no significant trends at the global level, but we detect statistically significant upward trends in normalized insured losses from all non-geophysical disasters as well as from certain specific disaster types in the United States and West Germany.
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Matthew Ranson
Harvard Working Paper, November 2011
Abstract:
This paper uses housing market data to estimate the welfare costs of shoreline loss along coastal beaches in Florida. I develop a forward-looking structural model of a housing market in which a time-variant housing characteristic (beach width) follows a Markov process. I use this model to provide an exact welfare interpretation for the coefficients from three empirical research designs: (1) a repeat-sales panel regression of housing prices on beach width; (2) a differences-in-differences approach based on sharp changes in beach width caused by beach nourishment projects; and (3) a new "discontinuity matching" research design that exploits capitalized housing price differentials created by predictable changes in future beach width. Using a unique panel dataset on housing sales, beach width survey measurements, and the timing of 204 beach nourishment projects along 300 miles of Florida's coastline, I then use each of these research designs to estimate homeowners' willingness to pay for an extra foot of sand. In contrast to previous work, I find that changes in beach width have little impact on housing prices, except at very eroded beaches. The results imply that the welfare costs of sea level rise may be low up to a threshold, and then increase sharply.
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Physically based assessment of hurricane surge threat under climate change
Ning Lin et al.
Nature Climate Change, June 2012, Pages 462-467
Abstract:
Storm surges are responsible for much of the damage and loss of life associated with landfalling hurricanes. Understanding how global warming will affect hurricane surges thus holds great interest. As general circulation models (GCMs) cannot simulate hurricane surges directly, we couple a GCM-driven hurricane model with hydrodynamic models to simulate large numbers of synthetic surge events under projected climates and assess surge threat, as an example, for New York City (NYC). Struck by many intense hurricanes in recorded history and prehistory, NYC is highly vulnerable to storm surges. We show that the change of storm climatology will probably increase the surge risk for NYC; results based on two GCMs show the distribution of surge levels shifting to higher values by a magnitude comparable to the projected sea-level rise (SLR). The combined effects of storm climatology change and a 1 m SLR may cause the present NYC 100-yr surge flooding to occur every 3-20 yr and the present 500-yr flooding to occur every 25-240 yr by the end of the century.
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Pain at the Pump: Gasoline Prices and Subjective Well-Being
Casey Boyd-Swan & Chris Herbst
Journal of Urban Economics, September-November 2012, Pages 160-175
Abstract:
In recent years, there has been growing interest in the health implications of rising gasoline prices. This paper considers the impact of gasoline prices on subjective well-being, as captured by survey questions on happiness and life satisfaction. Using rich data from the DDB Worldwide Communications Life StyleTM survey, we document a negative relationship between gasoline prices and self-reported life satisfaction over the period 1985 to 2005. The estimated reduction in well-being, moreover, is found to be nearly twice as large among groups of likely car owners. Interestingly, although rising gasoline prices lead to an immediate deterioration in subjective well-being, analyses of lagged prices suggest that well-being almost fully rebounds one year later and changes very little each year thereafter. Our contemporaneous estimates imply that rising gasoline prices generate well-being losses comparable to faltering labor market conditions, and likely offset some of the physical health benefits found in previous research.
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The Incidence of an Oil Glut: Who Benefits from Cheap Crude Oil in the Midwest?
Severin Borenstein & Ryan Kellogg
NBER Working Paper, June 2012
Abstract:
Beginning in early 2011, crude oil production in the U.S. Midwest and Canada surpassed the pipeline capacity to transport it to the Gulf Coast where it could access the world oil market. As a result, the U.S. "benchmark" crude oil price in Cushing, Oklahoma, declined substantially relative to internationally traded oil. In this paper, we study how this development affected prices for refined products, focusing on the markets for motor gasoline and diesel. We find that the relative decrease in Midwest crude oil prices did not pass through to wholesale gasoline and diesel prices. This result is consistent with evidence that the marginal gallon of fuel in the Midwest is still imported from coastal locations. Our findings imply that investments in new pipeline infrastructure between the Midwest and the Gulf Coast, such as the southern segment of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, will not raise gasoline prices in the Midwest.
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Global risk of radioactive fallout after major nuclear reactor accidents
J. Lelieveld, D. Kunkel & M.G. Lawrence
Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, May 2012, Pages 4245-4258
Abstract:
Major reactor accidents of nuclear power plants are rare, yet the consequences are catastrophic. But what is meant by "rare"? And what can be learned from the Chernobyl and Fukushima incidents? Here we assess the cumulative, global risk of exposure to radioactivity due to atmospheric dispersion of gases and particles following severe nuclear accidents (the most severe ones on the International Nuclear Event Scale, INES 7), using particulate 137Cs and gaseous 131I as proxies for the fallout. Our results indicate that previously the occurrence of INES 7 major accidents and the risks of radioactive contamination have been underestimated. Using a global model of the atmosphere we compute that on average, in the event of a major reactor accident of any nuclear power plant worldwide, more than 90% of emitted 137Cs would be transported beyond 50 km and about 50% beyond 1000 km distance before being deposited. This corroborates that such accidents have large-scale and trans-boundary impacts. Although the emission strengths and atmospheric removal processes of 137Cs and 131I are quite different, the radioactive contamination patterns over land and the human exposure due to deposition are computed to be similar. High human exposure risks occur around reactors in densely populated regions, notably in West Europe and South Asia, where a major reactor accident can subject around 30 million people to radioactive contamination. The recent decision by Germany to phase out its nuclear reactors will reduce the national risk, though a large risk will still remain from the reactors in neighbouring countries.
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Human-induced global ocean warming on multidecadal timescales
P.J. Gleckler et al.
Nature Climate Change, forthcoming
Abstract:
Large-scale increases in upper-ocean temperatures are evident in observational records. Several studies have used well-established detection and attribution methods to demonstrate that the observed basin-scale temperature changes are consistent with model responses to anthropogenic forcing and inconsistent with model-based estimates of natural variability. These studies relied on a single observational data set and employed results from only one or two models. Recent identification of systematic instrumental biases in expendable bathythermograph data has led to improved estimates of ocean temperature variability and trends and provide motivation to revisit earlier detection and attribution studies. We examine the causes of ocean warming using these improved observational estimates, together with results from a large multimodel archive of externally forced and unforced simulations. The time evolution of upper ocean temperature changes in the newer observational estimates is similar to that of the multimodel average of simulations that include the effects of volcanic eruptions. Our detection and attribution analysis systematically examines the sensitivity of results to a variety of model and data-processing choices. When global mean changes are included, we consistently obtain a positive identification (at the 1% significance level) of an anthropogenic fingerprint in observed upper-ocean temperature changes, thereby substantially strengthening existing detection and attribution evidence.
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Urban-induced thunderstorm modification in the Southeast United States
Walker Ashley, Mace Bentley & Anthony Stallins
Climatic Change, July 2012, Pages 481-498
Abstract:
This study provides the first climatological synthesis of how urbanization augments warm-season convection among a range of cities in the southeastern U.S. By comparing the location of convection in these cities and adjacent control regions via high-resolution, radar reflectivity and lightning data, we illustrate that demographic and land-use changes feed back to local atmospheric processes that promote thunderstorm formation and persistence. Composite radar data for a 10-year, June-August period are stratified according to specific "medium" and "high" reflectivity thresholds. As surrogates for potentially strong (medium reflectivity) and severe (high reflectivity) thunderstorms, these radar climatologies can be used to determine if cities are inducing more intense events. Results demonstrate positive urban amplification of thunderstorm frequency and intensity for major cities. Mid-sized cities investigated had more subtle urban effects, suggesting that the urban influences on thunderstorm development and strength are muted by land cover and climatological controls. By examining cities of various sizes, as well as rural counterparts, the investigation determined that the degree of urban thunderstorm augmentation corresponds to the geometry of the urban footprint. The research provides a methodological template for continued monitoring of anthropogenically forced and/or modified thunderstorms.
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The Costs of Environmental Regulation in a Concentrated Industry
Stephen Ryan
Econometrica, May 2012, Pages 1019-1061
Abstract:
The typical cost analysis of an environmental regulation consists of an engineering estimate of the compliance costs. In industries where fixed costs are an important determinant of market structure, this static analysis ignores the dynamic effects of the regulation on entry, investment, and market power. I evaluate the welfare costs of the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act on the U.S. Portland cement industry, accounting for these effects through a dynamic model of oligopoly in the tradition of Ericson and Pakes (1995). Using the two-step estimator of Bajari, Benkard, and Levin (2007), I recover the entire cost structure of the industry, including the distributions of sunk entry costs and capacity adjustment costs. My primary finding is that the Amendments have significantly increased the sunk cost of entry, leading to a loss of between $810M and $3.2B in product market surplus. A static analysis misses the welfare penalty on consumers, and obtains the wrong sign of the welfare effects on incumbent firms.
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Kerry Krutilla & John Graham
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
A central question for environmental policy is whether the long-term benefits of energy-saving technologies are sufficient to justify their short-term costs, and if so, whether financial incentives are needed to stimulate adoption. The fiscal effects of incentivizing new technologies, and the revenue effects of using the technology, are also policy relevant, given current fiscal constraints. This study evaluates the economic and fiscal effects of promoting diesel-electric hybrid technology in urban delivery vehicles, an application supported by U.S. policymakers. An economic model is used to simulate the conditional probability density functions of the net present values (NPVs) of diesel electric hybrids annually from 2012 to 2030. The NPV time paths, which reflect fuel price, environmental, and technology trends, show the expected dates that hybrids become economically viable, and allow an evaluation of the net benefits of hybrid technology as an investment over the entire simulation horizon. The NPV distributions are computed for five stakeholder classes, including transportation firms, parties benefiting from reduced externality damages, state and local governments, and the larger society. The analysis shows that hybrid technology investment does not appear to be justified from a societal perspective at a 7 percent discount rate, but the probability for positive net returns increases substantially at a 3 percent rate.
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Lucas Davis, Alan Fuchs & Paul Gertler
NBER Working Paper, May 2012
Abstract:
This paper examines a large-scale appliance replacement program in Mexico that since 2009 has helped 1.5 million households replace their old refrigerators and air-conditioners with energy-efficient models. Using household-level electric billing records from the population of Mexican residential customers we find that refrigerator replacement reduces electricity consumption by an average of 11 kilowatt hours per month, about a 7% decrease. We find that air conditioning replacement, in contrast, increases electricity consumption by an average of 6 kilowatt hours per month, with larger increases during the summer. To put these results in context we present a simple conceptual framework in which energy-efficient durable goods cost less to operate, so households use them more. This behavioral response, sometimes called the "rebound" effect, is important for air-conditioners, but not important for refrigerators.
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Climate change: Impacts on electricity markets in Western Europe
Rolf Golombek, Sverre Kittelsen & Ingjerd Haddeland
Climatic Change, July 2012, Pages 357-370
Abstract:
This paper studies some impacts of climate change on electricity markets, focusing on three climate effects. First, demand for electricity is affected because of changes in the temperature. Second, changes in precipitation and temperature have impact on supply of hydro electric production through a shift in the inflow of water. Third, plant efficiency for thermal generation will decrease because the temperature of water used to cool equipment increases. To find the magnitude of these partial effects, as well as the overall effects, on Western European energy markets, we use the multi-market equilibrium model LIBEMOD. We find that each of the three partial effects changes the average electricity producer price by less than 2%, while the net effect is an increase of only 1%. The partial effects on total electricity supply are small, and the net effect is a decrease of 4%. The greatest effects are found for Nordic countries with a large market share for reservoir hydro. In these countries, annual production of electricity increases by 8%, reflecting more inflow of water, while net exports doubles. In addition, because of lower inflow in summer and higher in winter, the reservoir filling needed to transfer water from summer to winter is drastically reduced in the Nordic countries.
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Instrument Choice and Motivation: Evidence from a Climate Change Experiment
Timo Goeschl & Grischa Perino
Environmental and Resource Economics, June 2012, Pages 195-212
Abstract:
Are prices or quantities the best regulatory instrument to align private actions with public interests in the presence of externalities? We add another dimension to this ongoing debate by experimentally analyzing the interaction between instrument choice and intrinsic motivation of regulated agents. The response of subjects facing a trade-off between real CO2 emissions and private monetary payoffs to both a price and a quantity instrument are tested. We find evidence that taxes crowd out intrinsic motivation while emission standards are neutral. Crowding is short term persistent and not well explained by established cognitive theories of motivational crowding.
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Lily Hsueh & Aseem Prakash
Regulation & Governance, forthcoming
Abstract:
How does program sponsorship influence the design of voluntary programs? Why and how do voluntary programs on climate change sponsored by the state and federal governments in the United States vary in their institutional design? Scholars emphasize the signaling role of voluntary programs to outside stakeholders, and the excludable benefits that induce firms to take on non-trivial costs of joining voluntary programs. Scholars have noted several types of benefits, particularly reputational benefits programs provide, but have not systematically studied why different programs emphasize different types of benefits. We suggest that excludable benefits are likely to take different forms depending on the institutional context in which program sponsors function. We hypothesize that federal programs are likely to emphasize less tangible reputational benefits while state programs are likely to emphasize more tangible benefits, such as access to technical knowledge and capital. Statistical analyses show the odds of a voluntary program emphasizing tangible benefits increases by several folds when the program is sponsored by the state as opposed to federal government.
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D.J. Isaak et al.
Climatic Change, July 2012, Pages 499-524
Abstract:
Thermal regimes in rivers and streams are fundamentally important to aquatic ecosystems and are expected to change in response to climate forcing as the Earth's temperature warms. Description and attribution of stream temperature changes are key to understanding how these ecosystems may be affected by climate change, but difficult given the rarity of long-term monitoring data. We assembled 18 temperature time-series from sites on regulated and unregulated streams in the northwest U.S. to describe historical trends from 1980-2009 and assess thermal consistency between these stream categories. Statistically significant temperature trends were detected across seven sites on unregulated streams during all seasons of the year, with a cooling trend apparent during the spring and warming trends during the summer, fall, and winter. The amount of warming more than compensated for spring cooling to cause a net temperature increase, and rates of warming were highest during the summer (raw trend = 0.17°C/decade; reconstructed trend = 0.22°C/decade). Air temperature was the dominant factor explaining long-term stream temperature trends (82-94% of trends) and inter-annual variability (48-86% of variability), except during the summer when discharge accounted for approximately half (52%) of the inter-annual variation in stream temperatures. Seasonal temperature trends at eleven sites on regulated streams were qualitatively similar to those at unregulated sites if two sites managed to reduce summer and fall temperatures were excluded from the analysis. However, these trends were never statistically significant due to greater variation among sites that resulted from local water management policies and effects of upstream reservoirs. Despite serious deficiencies in the stream temperature monitoring record, our results suggest many streams in the northwest U.S. are exhibiting a regionally coherent response to climate forcing. More extensive monitoring efforts are needed as are techniques for short-term sensitivity analysis and reconstructing historical temperature trends so that spatial and temporal patterns of warming can be better understood. Continuation of warming trends this century will increasingly stress important regional salmon and trout resources and hamper efforts to recover these species, so comprehensive vulnerability assessments are needed to provide strategic frameworks for prioritizing conservation efforts.