Category Archives: Environment

Gaius Publius: Obama’s Flawed Cap-and-Trade, Um, Pay-to-Pollute, Emissions Plan

There’s little force in most market-based systems for carbon emissions. Cap-and-trade works better (depending on the implementation) if the goal is to reduce pollution (like sulphur) by an industry you want to preserve (like coal-burning energy facilities). Cap-and-trade works terribly for an industry you want to destroy — like coal-burning energy facilities. But Obama wants the public to believe that this sort of “market-based approach” is a great solution.

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Ilargi: What is the Earth Worth (6 Years Later)?

Yves here. This is a day-late Earth Day post, but the proper stewardship of this planet is a 365-day-a-year duty. Ilargi focuses on one of my pet issues, that too many of the remedies for climate change (and environmental protection generally) rely on the illusion of new technology eliminating or blunting the need for lifestyle changes.

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Gaius Publius: ​IPCC Accidentally Proves that “International Cooperation” on Climate Change is Dead​ ​​

As you’ve been reading lately, there’s a new IPCC climate report out, the second of three. This report is from Working Group 2, responsible for studying “impacts, adaptation, and vulnerabilities.” In other words, what effect is climate change (“global warming”) having now, what impact will it have if we make certain choices, and where are we vulnerable?

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Yanis Varoufakis: Think Big, Think Bold – A Green New Deal

Yves here. One of the common frustrations expressed by the NC commentariat is that we spend a lot of time on diagnosis and not as much on solutions. I actually don’t think our emphasis on forensics and analysis is misplaced. Too often, people are uncomfortable with examining deep-seated problems and thus rush to devise remedies that are incomplete or worse, counterproductive.

A second frustration, which I sympathize with, is that many of the solutions recommended by economists to our current problems (income disparity, high unemployment, increasing looting of the private sector and government) is based on restoring growth, which will make redistribution and other measures less contentious. Readers correctly point out that more growth is a 20th century remedy, when the 21st century is faces with global warming (meaning an need to start containing and better yet, reducing energy consumption) and resource constraints.

Yanis Varoufakis addresses both issues in his outline of what he calls a “Green New Deal”.

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