Jobs, and Clean Air Too

The Triple Crisis Blog is pleased to welcome Elizabeth A Stanton as a regular contributor. She is a Senior Economist with the Stockholm Environment Institute-US Center, where her work focuses on environmental policy, economic inequality, and the interplay between climate protection and development.

What’s good for job growth, good for the environment, and good for public health? No, it’s not a trick question, but it is a reassessment of what passes for conventional wisdom in Washington these days. The answer is the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and other enormously popular environmental regulations enacted in the 1960s, 70s and 80s with strong bipartisan support.

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Rio +20: Beyond the Legacy of Despair

Fander Falconí

The Triple Crisis Blog is pleased to welcome Fander Falconí Benítez as a regular contributor.  After stepping down as Ecuador’s Foreign Minister in 2010, Falconi is now Coordinator of the doctoral programme in economic development at the Factultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLASCO) in Ecuador. Triple Crisis is able publish and translate his posts thanks to the support of the Heinrich Boell Foundation.

In June 2012, there will be a follow-up to the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro twenty years earlier. The upcoming summit (Rio + 20) will focus on two main issues: the green economy and the debate about the establishment of an institutional framework for sustainable development.

Although the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a product of the 1992 Earth Summit, underscored the historic responsibility of industrialized countries, it has not been applied in a legally-binding manner.

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What Switcheroo? A Response to Bruce Everett

Frank Ackerman

In a recent blog post, Tufts University professor and former ExxonMobil executive Bruce Everett claims to have had hundreds of conversations with advocates of active climate protection over the last ten years. From these conversations he claims that they – an almost entirely unnamed group of “Climatistas”  –  make ever-changing, unsubstantiated arguments, and cannot answer his objections.

I’m not sure who his “Climatistas” are, or why they were struck dumb by his garden-variety climate-skeptic arguments. But here’s a quick response. I’ll try to resist the temptation to respond to his rhetoric in kind.

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The Great Green Technological Revolution

Rob Vos and Manuel F. Montes, guest bloggers

The global community is confronted with the problem that achieving the agreed goal of eradicating poverty will require much more economic progress.  But the economic progress of the past is the cause for most of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions responsible for climate change.  To conquer poverty without endangering the planet will require the adoption of radically different technologies for the global economy.

At present, about 2.7 billion people (about 40 per cent of humanity) do not have access to modern energy. Without it, they have little chance of achieving a decent living standard. Without a major shift to clean energy and greater energy efficiency in the conveniences of modern life, satisfying the additional energy demand will push climate change to catastrophically dangerous levels.

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Economics is Always the First Casualty of Politics

Edward Barbier

Both the past wild week of debt negotiations in Congress as well as the debt downgrade of the US by Standard & Poor represents once again the Barbier dictum: Economics is always the first casualty of politics.

In my opinion, the Obama Administration made a fundamental mistake earlier this year in not endorsing the Bowles-Simpson plan on deficit reduction that called for a combination of revenue increases, spending cuts and entitlement and tax reforms as the basis of a plan for deficit reduction over the medium term, while at the same time arguing that there is the need for continued government spending on selected infrastructure and investment opportunities in the short term while continuing to be in recession.  From the beginning of the 2008-9 recession, such short-term government spending needed to be supported by a number of economic incentives and policies to stimulate private sector investment, too.  However, as long as the US economy remains in a recession with lack of consumer or private investment spending, public sector spending in the short term is necessary.  But by adopting the Bowles-Simpson plan immediately, the Obama Administration would have signaled to the markets and the rating agencies that tackling US deficits and debt in the medium and long term, once economic recovery had started in earnest, would be the main priority.

Instead, the last week or two has demonstrated that sound economic policy has been hijacked by an ideological political debate that has focused purely on cutting spending and not managing either the recession or medium-term budget deficits.  Clearly, the Republican Party has been irresponsible in promoting this ideological political stance, and as a consequence, has brought the US economy to the brink.  Although one can agree with US Treasury Secretary Geithner that Standard & Poor is making its decision to downgrade US debt based on political considerations, the wakeup call to US policymakers should not be ignored: stop playing politics with the US and world economy.  This is a message that the Republican leadership in Congress must especially heed.

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Environmentalism's Original Sin

James K. Boyce

In 2007 the National Audubon Society, one of the leading environmental organizations in the United States, issued a report headlined “Common Birds in Decline.” Based on statistical analysis of 40 years of bird population data, it announced “the alarming decline of many of our most common and beloved birds.”

The story attracted wide press coverage. “Spreading suburbs and large-scale farming are contributing to a precipitous decline in once common meadow birds,” began a New York Times story. An accompanying editorial lamented, “We somehow trusted that all the innocent little birds were here to stay. What they actually need to survive, it turns out, is a landscape that is less intensely human.”  A letter to the editor predicted that the deadly pattern will continue “as long as we ask the earth to support too many people.”

Few commentators bothered to study the study itself. Had they done so, they might have noticed that among 309 bird species for which statistically meaningful trends could be established from data in two population surveys, birds showing a “large increase” exceeded those showing a “large decrease.” Forty-one species recorded a large increase in both surveys; only twelve saw a large decrease.

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Environmentalism’s Original Sin

James K. Boyce

In 2007 the National Audubon Society, one of the leading environmental organizations in the United States, issued a report headlined “Common Birds in Decline.” Based on statistical analysis of 40 years of bird population data, it announced “the alarming decline of many of our most common and beloved birds.”

The story attracted wide press coverage. “Spreading suburbs and large-scale farming are contributing to a precipitous decline in once common meadow birds,” began a New York Times story. An accompanying editorial lamented, “We somehow trusted that all the innocent little birds were here to stay. What they actually need to survive, it turns out, is a landscape that is less intensely human.”  A letter to the editor predicted that the deadly pattern will continue “as long as we ask the earth to support too many people.”

Few commentators bothered to study the study itself. Had they done so, they might have noticed that among 309 bird species for which statistically meaningful trends could be established from data in two population surveys, birds showing a “large increase” exceeded those showing a “large decrease.” Forty-one species recorded a large increase in both surveys; only twelve saw a large decrease.

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The road to Earth Summit: 20 years later

Martin Khor

The outcome of the 1992 Earth Summit was large in ambition but poor in implementation.  With the world in even larger crisis, the search is on for stronger institutions, as a meeting in Solo last week revealed.

“Sustainable development” came into vogue as a result of the United Nations’ Earth Summit in Rio, Brazil, in 1992.

The term is widely taken to mean that environmental, economic and social goals have to be taken together into account and if possible “blended”, when policies are being made and actions taken, internationally and nationally.

It is now enjoying a revival – a hotly debated one – since the United Nations will hold another summit in Rio in 2012, to mark the 20thanniversary.

Putting all three elements – economic, social and environmental – together in the policy mix was Rio 1992’s achievement.

Making policies only on the basis of economic goals like high economic and export growth is simply not balanced, as the environment can be badly damaged and natural resources can soon run out (and thus growth is not sustainable).

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Facing up to the real cost of carbon

Frank Ackerman and Elizabeth A. Stanton*

Your house might not burn down next year. So you could probably save money by cancelling your fire insurance.

That’s a “bargain” that few homeowners would accept.

But it’s the same deal that politicians have accepted for us, when it comes to insurance against climate change. They have rejected sensible investments in efficiency and clean energy, which would reduce carbon emissions, create green jobs, and jumpstart new technologies – because they are too expensive.

While your house might not burn down, your planet is starting to smolder. Extreme weather events are becoming more common, and more expensive: in the first half of 2011, Mississippi River floods cost us between $2 and $4 billion, while the ongoing Texas drought has cost us between $1.5 and $3 billion, according to the National Climatic Data Center. And there’s much worse to come: climate-related extremes are already forcing millions of people from their homes worldwide; ice sheets and glaciers are melting much faster than expected; the latest research shows we are rapidly heading for summer temperatures at which crop yields in America will start to plummet.

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Towards green low-carbon growth?

Triple Crisis Blogger Martin Khor published this article in the Third World Network’s Global Trends Series, on last week’s “green low-carbon development” conference in China.

A conference last week in Beijing heard plans by China and other counties for achieving green low-carbon development to combat climate change.  Despite an upbeat mood, the difficulties are many and serious.

Despite the slow progress in the global climate negotiations, some developing countries are already taking their own climate actions to reduce emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change.

Of course, their actions will fall far short of what is required, unless the funds and technology expected as a result from the global talks materialize.  And unless the developed countries also cut their emissions greatly and leave more “carbon space” to the developing countries.

Read the full post at the Third World Network.