The New York Times

The Opinion Pages

Posts tagged with

ECONOMICS

See all tags »

April 17, 2012, 9:21 am

Young People Tire of Old Economic Models

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

At the recent United Nations conference on “gross national happiness,” a scattering of young participants looked on with a clear sense of urgency as mainly graying dignitaries, economists, scholars and others pondered ways to gauge progress that go beyond traditional monetary measures. One was Christopher Stampar, a sophomore from the University of Miami who works for the nonprofit group Nourish 9 Billion. He received one of the most enthusiastic rounds of applause when he let it slip that he was 19. Read his blog post on the experience here.

Also on hand was Michael Sandmel, who is graduating this year from New York University and involved with the organization U.S. Youth for Sustainable Development. After the one-day session, which included briefings from economic luminaries including Jeffrey Sachs and the economics Nobelist Joseph Stiglitz, he reacted this way in an e-mail message:

It’s great to see new paradigm slowly making its way into the mainstream.  I think this is demonstrated quite well by the comments made by professors Sachs and Stiglitz, neither of whom, even four years ago, I would have expected to reference the Easterlin Happiness Paradox or the Planetary Boundaries Framework.

But he added that his generation was not taking a transition for granted, pointing to the student-organized Transition to a New Economy conference that had just been held Harvard:

We had around 140 attendees from universities around the country.  Many of us study in mainstream neoclassical economics departments where interdisciplinary ecological-economics, and the questioning of G.D.P. growth as a primary (or, depending on who you ask, desirable) objective, is still very much fringe thinking.  I don’t attempt to speak for all of my peers, but I know that many of us share an enormous frustration with the way in which our supposedly leading institutions teach us about the economy in a way that is myopic, ahistorical, and devoid of nearly any critical conversation about sustainability or human well being. 

This is particularly troubling as we regularly see our schools accredit future leaders in business, finance, and government, sending them into a world of 21st century problems with a 20th century toolkit.  Many of us have been involved in our local Occupy movements, including Occupy Harvard, and have been trying to use the crisis as an opportunity to push an agenda of plausible alternatives to unsustainable and inequitable finance-dominated capitalism. Many of us will be getting together again in June for the Strategies for a New Economy conference at Bard College and will be in Brazil for the Rio+20 conference and the events surrounding it.  

He put me in touch with Rina Kuusipalo, the Harvard student who was one of the organizers of the campus economics meeting. She sent the note below: Read more…

April 2, 2012, 10:09 am

Seeking Happiness on a Finite and Human-Shaped Planet

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

12:16 p.m. | Live Updates below |
I’m at the United Nations today for the Bhutan-led “High Level Meeting on Wellbeing and Happiness: Defining a New Economic Paradigm.” The details are nicely summarized in a recent Op-Ed article by Timothy W. Ryback, the deputy secretary general of the Académie Diplomatique Internationale in Paris. As Ryback explains, the meeting was approved in a U.N. resolution last year recognizing that “the pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human goal” and “the gross domestic product [G.D.P.] does not adequately reflect the happiness and well-being of people….”

I’ll be adding live updates here through the day (see bottom of post). You can get a sense of the conversation by reviewing the online discussion over a draft statement the group plans to adopt.

Bhutan is a tiny, poor, once-isolated Himalayan nation well into the process of moving from monarchy to democracy and opening to the world. Recognizing problems attending a growth-driven economic sprint in other developing countries, in the early 1970’s King Jigme Singye Wangchuck decided to make his nation’s priority not its G.D.P. but its G.N.H., or gross national happiness. The goal ever since has been a mix of economic and social progress shaped to sustain cultural and environmental assets. (There’s a fun explanatory video here.) I first wrote on this concept in 2005, when several dozen Bhutanese leaders, scholars and other citizens, attending a conference in Nova Scotia, described efforts to move from happiness as a concept to a set of policies.

happiness surveyThe New York Times A continuous survey in the United States now gauges day-to-day shifts in feelings of happiness or sadness. (Click for full graphic.)

Today’s meeting (you can track it via the Twitter hashtag #gnh) reflects a global build-up of this notion under other names, as an array of nations and agencies develop systems for measuring well-being that go well beyond what can be measured in dollars. (The Gallup pollsters and the health-care company Healthways have developed a polling project that aims to be a real-time U.S. Well-being Index. I think that a short-term time scale like that — daily polling of 1,000 people — kind of misses the point, but it’s a useful experiment.)

On a different scale is the newly published World Happiness Report, prepared for this conference by economists John Helliwell of the University of British Columbia, Richard Layard at the London School of Economics and Jeffrey D. Sachs of Columbia University (the full document as a pdf file). You can read a short excerpt below. Read more…

March 2, 2012, 2:41 pm

An Economist Rebuts The Wall Street Journal “16″ on Climate Risk

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

In a contribution to a recent Dot Earth post, William D. Nordhaus, a Yale University economist who has spent many years examining the costs and benefits of various climate policies, angrily rejected a description of his work used by 16 scientists questioning concerns about global warming in an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal.

He has now greatly expanded on his critique of their argument in “Why Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong,” an essay in the New York Review of Books (hat tip to Climate Progress). His strong words are particularly significant given that Nordhaus has, in the past, strongly challenged analyses — notably the Stern Review — pointing to high economic costs from global warming.

He addresses their science conclusions by citing the peer-reviewed literature. More importantly, he points out a basic error in how they weighed costs and benefits and then examines their use of uncertainty as a justification for stasis on greenhouse gas emissions. Here’s his exploration of the second point: Read more…

January 30, 2012, 1:07 pm

Scientists Challenging Climate Science Appear to Flunk Climate Economics

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

An op-ed article signed by 16 scientists rejecting the need for “drastic action to decarbonize the world’s economy,” published Friday by the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, has been widely and thoroughly fact-checked and challenged elsewhere.

[Jan. 31, 9:42 p.m. | Updated | The Journal has published a rebuttal op-ed piece from a long list of climate scientists under the headlin "Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate."]

Peter Frumhoff of the Union of Concerned Scientists criticizes their take on the science in a piece titled, “Dismal Science at The Wall Street Journal.” Peter Gleick, an analyst of global water and climate issues, chides the newspaper in a Forbes post, noting that the Journal turned down a letter of concern about human-driven climate change from 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences (which ended up published in the journal Science). Chris Mooney dismantles what he calls the authors’ “reductio ad Lysenko” argument. There’s lots more. (Of course Climate Depot finds the letter breathlessly exciting.)

I’ll be publishing some more scientists’ reactions to the piece shortly, but first I wanted to add a fresh element not dealt with elsewhere so far: a critique of the 16 scientists’ take on climate economics.

After all, any conclusion about the pace of emissions cuts necessary to limit dangers from climate change is implicitly as much (or more) about economics as science.

To learn what’s wrong with the signatories’ read of economic literature, review the following excerpt from an e-mail exchange I had over the weekend with William D. Nordhaus, the Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale, whose work is at the heart of the piece’s rejection of the need for “drastic” steps to curtail greenhouse gas emissions (as if that’s the only kind of response being considered): Read more…

January 23, 2012, 1:46 pm

Beyond Hype, a Closer Look at New York’s Choice on Shale Gas

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

More than 40,000 comments have been submitted to New York State aimed at shaping how Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo deals with the huge natural gas resource locked in the state’s portion of sprawling geological formations known as the Marcellus Shale and Utica Shale.

The comments are not publicly viewable at this point. (You can submit a Freedom of Information Law request for an eventual CD, I was told.) But any quick sift of the Web provides a pretty solid sense of the range of views — from environmentalists pursuing an outright ban on hydraulic fracturing and related processes, widely called fracking, to landowners seeking the freedom to benefit from their mineral rights. There was a fresh anti-gas rally in Albany this morning, focused on passing bills (sponsored by lawmakers representing New York City constituents far from the resource) that would limit the governor’s ability to move ahead.

Here’s some background behind the shouting: Read more…

January 21, 2012, 1:21 pm

Tallying Disasters and Gauging a Greenhouse Impact

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Vermont floodingMatthew Cavanaugh for The New York Times. A flood-damaged road in Vermont.

I encourage you to read “Global Warming and Severe Weather: Is There a Link?” This excellent new Green Grok post is by Bill Chameides, the blogging dean of the Nicholas School for the Environment at Duke University. (Hat tip @KeithKloor.)

Chameides’ outreach through the Web is commendable, and part of an exciting trend. At this year’s Science Online conference, which is ending today, I met a host of academicians who, like Chameides, have dived enthusiastically into the “knowosphere.”

His latest post builds on the heavily covered, and critiqued, tally of 2011 disasters from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the disaster research of Roger Pielke, Jr. of the University of Colorado and an excellent analysis by the indispensable Quirin Schiermeier in Nature.

Here’s an excerpt:  Read more…

December 12, 2011, 5:09 pm

A Post-Pollution Path to Global Climate and Energy Progress

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Some hard realities are being acknowledged as diplomats, scientists, scholars and others ponder next steps following the indeterminate Durban climate negotiations — the latest failed attempt to limit climate risk using pollution-style restrictions on carbon dioxide under a global treaty.

The real-time demand for energy and economic vigor continues to trump long-term climate concerns, as has been clear in the climate talks for years.* So a focus on finding ways to boost energy access in places that lack it, while working to cut energy waste and the costs of non-polluting energy choices, is spreading. You can see this in the grudging Tweets from green-energy proponents acknowledging some of the merits of Bjorn Lomborg’s reaction to the climate talks, as with Tom Rand here and Lisa Vickers here.

You can also see a shift toward energy action in the latest thinking from William R. Moomaw, a scholar and professor at Tufts University who for decades has assessed international environmental diplomacy. Moomaw and Mihaela Papa, a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Law School, sent me a short piece proposing ways to invigorate the faltering climate treaty process by shifting the focus from confrontations over emissions to collaborative work encouraging access to modern energy choices while limiting environmental harms.

Here’s an excerpt and link to the Moomaw-Papa essay, which I encourage you to read in full: Read more…

November 2, 2011, 11:48 am

More on Energy and Climate Paths for California and Beyond

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Solar array in CaliforniaCalifornia Energy Commission. A parabolic solar-thermal trough like ones that would be used at a solar power plant planned for the Mojave Desert.

Building on my weekend “Reality Check on Ambitious Climate Targets,” here are two “Your Dot” views of energy and climate paths for California and the rest of the planet, one offered by Alan Nogee, an energy consultant who was until recently the leader of the Clean Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Thomas J. Crowley of the University of Edinburgh, a veteran of decades of climate research who here writes primarily as a resident of a place, Scotland, where energy prices are very high.

There’s more amplification coming soon from me, Nate Lewis, Jane Long and others on the California energy post, and on Joe Romm‘s “Charlie Sheen” charge Monday night related to that post (I’m still hampered by what’s now a four-day power and Web disruption from the clash of late foliage and early snow on Saturday).

After reading the piece, Crowley sent a note under the title “Tales of Brave Ulysses” (as per Cream), alluding in part to an essay he wrote for The Guardian in 2007: “In the short term, there’ll be no major action against climate change; to tackle global warming we need a shift in attitudes unprecedented in peace time.”  Here’s his new, and downbeat, line of thinking: Read more…

October 12, 2011, 12:57 pm

Disruption on the Path to Transformation

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Tom Friedman has posted a column that considers two views of world events — one seeing a great disruption, the other an exciting transformation. He ends the piece, not with a conclusion, but by asking readers which narrative they believe. (There’s more on the thinkers behind these views below.)

When one of the leading distillers of big ideas comes up short, that’s a sure sign that society, more generally, may be ready to recognize that what we don’t know about causes and consequences of important events and trends is as important as what we do know.

Perhaps this, too, implies that the world is getting ready to shift to policies and investments that are productive but flexible, that encourage both bending (resilience to hard knocks) and stretching (innovation), that are more durable and adoptable than comprehensive top-down pacts or plans. Read more…

October 3, 2011, 3:58 pm

On Subsidies, Fish and Fishing

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

A report examining the roughly $8 billion in subsidies that have flowed from the European Union or Spanish taxpayers to Spain’s fishing fleet since 2000 was published over the weekend by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

Among other findings, the reporters found that “More than 80 percent of subsidized fishing companies that were fined in Spain for fishing infractions –- and then lost subsequent court appeals –- continued to receive subsidies.”

The report renews questions about the extent and impact of subsidies propping up Europe’s bloated fishing fleets. But the issue of subsidization elicited an interesting and informed response from the folks at Sea To Table. This enterprise, building links between restaurants and fishing communities using sustainable practices, was created in the 1990s by Sean Dimin and his father, Michael. Their initial focus was building New York markets for fish from Tobago. But Sea to Table has since built an array of networks getting fish from “independent-minded fisherman to strong-willed chefs,” as Sean put it in an interview with Peter Hanlon for his Ecocentric blog* earlier this year. (Click on these links to learn about some of the participating fishermen and chefs.)

Here’s Michael Dimin’s take on the need to consider both fisherman and their communities and the fish they harvest:

With the recent discussion on European fishing subsidies, our thoughts turn to the fine balance between rebuilding sustainable fisheries, and supporting fishermen and fishing communities.

Protecting oceans and fishermen go hand in hand, something Sea to Table has seen from partnering with small-scale sustainable fisheries in the United States.

In the past few years, most U.S. fisheries have instituted a catch share management system where fishermen are allotted individual quotas based on scientifically determined catch limits. While fishermen were initially outraged by the new form of management, we have witnessed a recovery of fish stocks, and fishermen have been able to maximize both profit and safety.

Just 20 years ago the collapse of the Gulf of Maine ground fishery appeared to spell the demise of traditional New England fishing communities. Within the past year, the talk we hear from our partner fishermen on the dock in Portland, Maine, includes optimism. The renewed sense of a future within these communities is a powerful reminder that sustainable wild fisheries are possible -– and need not exclude the men and women who depend on them.

I’m convinced that considering the needs of both fish and the communities that harvest them is the best path to sustainable harvests.

But given the steep declines in fish stocks in many of the world’s waters (particularly the Mediterranean), working to end bloated, counterproductive subsidies wherever they distort economies and deplete resources is vital, too.

Oct. 4, 6:20 p.m. | Corrected *I mixed up two Ecocentric blogs in the first go-round!