environment

New York Times Article Advances Public View of Environmental Issues Surrounding Hydrofracking

Michael Giberson At first it seemed like just another newspaper article on the potential environmental dangers of fracking to produce natural gas from shale, but on second look there is something new in the New York Times article, “Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers.” Most such stories, and much of the public’s …

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Our Next Fear: Peak Rocks?

Lynne Kiesling Economist and teacher extraordinaire Steve Horwitz has done a great video for Learn Liberty on the question “are we running out of resources?” [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcWkN4ngR2Y&feature=player_embedded] We’ve done our share of “peak oil” debunking here over the years, so it won’t surprise you that I find The Onion’s take on the question of running out …

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Bedbugs, Public Policy, and Relative Risk Assessment

Lynne Kiesling Over the past few weeks I’ve been paying some attention to the increasing, and spreading, bedbug infestations in the U.S. I’m not particularly squeamish, but bedbugs are rapacious colony-dwelling critters that can survive for a year without food, feast on the blood of sleeping animals (humans YUM YUM), and colonize easily in mattresses …

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Overfishing and the Impending Collapse of Fisheries

Lynne Kiesling Why is it so difficult, in terms of politics and transaction costs, to define and enforce property rights in fish? If we fail to do so, some important fish species are likely to go extinct due to overfishing, such as the bluefin tuna. Migratory fish like the bluefin pose the biggest policy challenges, …

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Electricity Generation, New Source Review, and Waste

Lynne Kiesling On Friday at Environmental Economics, Tim Haab wrote about the implications of New Source Review for innovation in a regulated industry, and how to represent it in the standard Pigouvian model (do go read the whole post, it’s very useful). The basic question is this: does the stifling of innovation that results from …

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Pigou As Public Choice Economist, Not a Pigouvian

Lynne Kiesling I was intrigued last week to read Bruce Yandle’s short piece in Regulation discussing Pigou and his ideas about taxation in the context of modern “Pigouvian” policy proposals. I recommend his essay highly; it communicates eloquently how Pigou’s ideas are currently being used as a justification for a variety of forms of taxation. …

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Jaguar Proposes a Luxury Turbine Hybrid Vehicle

Lynne Kiesling Yes, you saw that correctly, a turbine. According to Wired: Jaguar Land Rover is working on the car with British gas turbine manufacturer Bladon Jets and electric motor manufacturer SR Drives. The Technology Strategy Board, which funds business development in the U.K., is underwriting the first serious attempt at a turbine car since …

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Sarewitz/thernstrom La Times Op-ed on Leaked Climate Research Documents

Lynne Kiesling I am blissfully on vacation this week in Maui (biking, diving, snorkeling, swimming, and not spending time on the Internet), but did check in briefly this afternoon. For those of you interested in keeping up with the “politicization of science” and bastardization of the scientific method aspect of it that angers me the …

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Somin and Lambert on the Responsible Use of the Precautionary Principle

Lynne Kiesling The East Anglia CRU leaked climate research emails and the Copenhagen climate meeting are reviving old discussions about the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle has much in common with Pascal’s Wager. Two new analyses this week have caught my eye, the first from George Mason law professor Ilya Somin. Somin argues for consistency …

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