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The authors of the bestselling Freakonomics, which was largely an attempt to make sense and fun of economics for those who don’t think they care about such things, are now back with a title that sounds like a bigger and better version of the original: Superfreakonomics. Exploring the topics of global cooling, patriotic prostitutes, and why suicide bombers should buy life insurance, economist Steven Levitt and New York Times journalist Stephen Dubner are again unabashedly aiming for mass appeal.

But on the topic of global cooling….(er, don’t they mean warming, or is that just the theme of the week?), critics are none too impressed with Levitt and Dubner’s analysis. Having tried their utmost to discredit global warming, the authors none-the-less propose a solution, which goes something like: basically, let’s forget about mitigation, pump a load of sulphur into the atmosphere and be done with it.

The trouble here, as Joe Romm and William Connolley have already detailed on their respective blogs, is that Levitt and Dubner clearly have virtually no understanding of atmospheric science. As such, they fail to account for some of the other planetary woes their proposed scheme - a sulphur-spewing 18-mile-long hose pipe - would engender. Ocean acidification? Ozone depletion? Alan Robock’s latest paper gives a more complete list.

"We could end this debate and be done with it," Levitt says, in Monday’s Guardian, "and move on to problems that are harder to solve."

Sorry guys, but it looks like we’ll still need to redefine our energy system and the global economy too.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on October 14, 2009
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, Economics, Olive Heffernan, Opinion, Technology | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Oxford economist Dieter Helm co-edits an upcoming book, The Economics and Politics of Climate Change, that he says takes "a colder and harder look at the challenge". In a Q&A on Nature Reports Climate Change this week, Helm gives his take on a long-term strategy for reducing emissions. Here's an excerpt:

Where, in your view, has policy gone wrong?

Let's remember what lies behind Copenhagen. The Kyoto Protocol measures countries' production of carbon, not consumption. It's no accident the Europeans like Kyoto. It's a set of measures which, as they de-industrialize and production moves to countries like China, makes them look good. But the carbon consumption record of Europe, once you take those imports back, is pretty awful. That's why Kyoto looks like a success, and yet it hasn't caused even a blip in the emissions path.

Do we also need to re-think climate economics?

What we have learnt is that politicians tend to choose the most expensive options first. Faced with climate change, what's our solution? In Europe, it's to devote most of our energies to a rapid build-out of wind power. This is the sort of thing that makes nuclear power look cheap. Climate change is about the massive increase of coal burning internationally, especially the growth of China and India fuelled by coal-based energy — and America too, where the Obama plans are also small relative to the problem.

What exactly will windmills across Europe do to address that overwhelmingly dominant effect? Of course they'll play some role, but it'll probably take a couple of weeks for China to add sufficient new coal power stations to cancel out any renewables effort in Britain. It's time to grow up. It's time to realize that coal is where the core of the problem lies, and to think cleverly about solutions towards that.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on September 07, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, Economics, In the News, Mitigation, Politics | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

In April I reported that economic and political pressures were beginning to impact the UN carbon-credit programme that supports clean technology projects in the developing world, otherwise known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The full story is also in the latest issue of Nature Reports Climate Change.

Now, for the first time in two months, fresh data are being reported on the number of new projects entering the programme's approval process. While the dip in project submissions that I wrote about has turned out not to be as bad as it looked at the end of February, the figures from the UNEP Risoe research centre confirm that the CDM is likely to do less in the long run to cut greenhouse gases that was expected pre- credit crunch.

Continue reading "CDM crunch continues " »

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 05, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Business, Economics, Mitigation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Economist Nicholas Stern released his new book just a couple of weeks ago, in which he updates his assessment of the costs of tackling climate change from his 2006 review for the UK government. In Blueprint for a Safer Planet, Stern frames this as an affordable, effective global deal that could be adopted at the UN negotiations in Copenhagen in December.

Fellow economist Frank Ackerman, who has written extensively on the costs of climate change, and who has critiqued Stern’s 2006 Review, gives his take on the new book over on Nature Reports Climate Change. Here are are some excerpts on the science. Ackerman writes:

Stern’s latest offering updates his arguments from 2006. For a start, the science has grown even more ominous, prompting him to revise his recommendation for the upper limit at which we should aim to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations. Now he says they should be held below 500 parts per million (p.p.m.) of CO2-equivalent (roughly 450 p.p.m. of CO2 alone) — compared to 550 p.p.m. CO2-equivalent in the Stern Review — and then reduced further over time if necessary.

Ackerman later questions whether Stern’s analysis understates the severity of the problem and the extent of the action required:

Climatologist James Hansen, among others, has argued that stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at 450 p.p.m. would leave them at a dangerously high level and has called for a safer limit of 350 p.p.m. Stern responds that his global deal, putting us on track to 450 p.p.m., is at the outer limits of what is politically feasible in the near term; achieving Stern’s goals for 2050 would position us to revise global targets downward in the future, if needed.

Overall, Ackerman gives the book the thumbs up, writing:

This book is not fundamentally aimed at advancing knowledge of either science or economics. Rather, it uses what we know about those fields as the basis for a sweeping policy proposal. With the Copenhagen conference fast approaching, the book outlines a vision for a global deal that could be acceptable to all major parties to the negotiations.

His conclusion highlights the striking congruence between parts of the Stern proposals and parts of UK climate policy:

It is not clear which came first: earlier government policies may have shaped Stern’s sense of what is possible; conversely, the Stern Review has served as a basis for revisions of some government positions. Coming from a country that has done less on the issue than Britain to date, I don’t view this as a mark against either Stern or his government. The British Empire was rarely so skilfully and persuasively served by its citizens and scholars.

Read the review in full here.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on April 09, 2009
Categories: Economics, Olive Heffernan, Reviews, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Leaders of the world’s 20 richest nations “missed an opportunity” to kick start the green economy in their efforts to arrest the global financial downturn at a summit in London yesterday.

Science and green leaders expressed “disappointment” at the G20 summit’s failure to include a commitment to spend a proportion of the agreed $1.1 trillion financial injection to resuscitate the global economy on a low carbon stimulus package.

The meeting’s final agreed statement on actions to take forward leaves mention of climate change and low carbon technologies to the final paragraphs. It says, “We agreed to make the best possible use of investment funded by fiscal stimulus programmes towards the goal of building a resilient, sustainable and green recovery. We will make the transition towards clean, innovative and resource efficient, low carbon technologies and infrastructure.”

The statement adds that world leaders “reaffirm” commitments to address climate change and to reach a deal at the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December.

Responding to the outcome, Martin Parry, past co-chair of the IPCC’s working group II on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, told Nature, “The statement on climate change looks like an afterthought and appears to restate commitments that have already been made.”

David King, chief scientific advisor to the UK government from 2000 – 2007 and a vocal campaigner on the need to tackle climate change, told Nature that world leaders had “missed an opportunity” to integrate the recovery of the world economy with the future sustainability of the global financial system.

Camilla Toulmin, director of the International Institute for Environment and Development, an independent research organisation based in London, UK, told Nature, “There was very little recognition of the real crunch issues of climate and natural resources. It could be really damaging to restart the global economy on the same line as we left it.”

World leaders agreed to a further G20 meeting later this year, to review progress made on goals set at the London summit. Read the full story on Nature News [subscription].

Natasha Gilbert

Posted by Olive Heffernan on April 03, 2009
Categories: Conferences and Meetings, Economics, G20 London Summit, 2009, Natasha Gilbert, Politics, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Economist Nicholas Stern laid out his new vision for and a safer and more prosperous planet today in London.

Speaking at the launch of his new book ‘A Blueprint for a Safer Planet: How to manage climate change and create a new era of progress and prosperity’, Lord Stern urged world leaders to see the opportunity for a green recovery from the economic downturn. His hope is that the Group of 20 developed and developing economies meeting in London this Thursday will emphasize the need for a transition to bouyant green economy. “It’s the only option. Low economic growth in a world that has poverty and that is aspirational is unacceptable”, said Stern today at the London School of Economics.

A former World Bank economist, Stern is best known for his landmark report on the Economics of Climate Change, which was published at the behest of the UK government in 2006. The 700-page dossier reframed climate change from being an environmental issue to one of concern to industry and investors alike.

Since then, “emissions have grown faster than we had assumed and the buffering capacity of the planet has lessened", said Stern. "But the pace of technological change has been faster than expected and the level of political commitment is now stronger than it was 2-3 years ago”, he added optimistically.

Still, in his new book Stern has scaled down his recommendation for where atmospheric greenhouse gas levels ought to be stabilized. Whereas his 2006 report suggested an upper limit on atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations of 550 ppm CO2-equivalent, Stern now says we should hold levels below 500ppm CO2-equivalent [or 450 ppm of CO2 alone]. “We will be at 450ppm CO2* within 6 or 7 years anyhow, but it’s possible to hold levels below 500ppm and to then come down from there”, he said.

Asked whether he was advocating the use of geoengineering to reduce atmospheric concentrations from 500ppm, Stern said it will be part of the solution, but suggested that technologies such as biomass or carbon capture and storage could perhaps be used to sequester the gas rather than “throwing dust or mirrors into the sky”. He also critized efforts to allow new coal fired power stations, such as the one at Kingsnorth, Kent, to proceed without such schemes in place to capture the emissions.

Whether stabilizing below 500ppm in the short term will go far enough to avert dangerous climate change is questionable. Some scientists such as James Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, now think that we need to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations to 350ppm to avoid a dangerous level of warming.

But While Stern acknowledged today that 'it's quite possible that Hansen's target is a sensible one for the long term", he is adament that “the first thing is to stop atmospheric concentrations from rising and then to assess the risks. We can’t eliminate the risk [of dangerous climate change], but we can bring down those risks”.

Stern called on world leaders meeting later this week to send out a strong signal on the urgent need to agree a global climate deal in December.

A Blueprint for a Safer Planet (Random House) is out on April 2.

Olive Heffernan

Correction added April 1st: This should refer to 450ppm CO2-equivalent

Posted by Olive Heffernan on March 30, 2009
Categories: Economics, Features, In the News, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

A short while ago, stand-up economist Yoram Bauman reviewed Frank Ackerman’s ‘Can We Afford the Future?: the Economics of a Warming World’, a layman’s guide to one of the most pressing and complex questions of out time, over on Nature Reports Climate Change.

Ackerman objected to the review and I invited him to respond with a letter to the editor. You can find it in the latest issue, but I’ve also copied it here:

To the Editor - Yoram Bauman has written a hostile and dismissive review of my book, Can We Afford the Future?: The Economics of a Warming World (Zed Books, 2009). With my book, he says, "the bumper-sticker culture of cable TV news has finally reached ... the economics of climate change." I allegedly failed to recognize the virtues of mainstream economics and oversimplified the subject "for the masses".

Oddly enough, Bauman is best known for performing as a stand-up comedian making fun of mainstream economics. His signature performance offers a flippant 'translation' of ten principles of economics from a leading textbook. How could a stand-up comic dislike bumper stickers and communication with "the masses"? I plead guilty to summarizing a complicated subject in four provocative, non-technical statements suitable for printing on bumper stickers. This was an intentional strategy to combat the 'eyes glazing over' effect that technical economics has on most people, and to lead the reader into substantive discussion of the big issues about the costs and benefits of climate change mitigation.

Continue reading "Ackerman’s response to Bauman" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on March 10, 2009
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, Economics, Features, Olive Heffernan, Reviews | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The data on 2008 venture capital investment are predictably grim, but in a year of financial heartbreak, the cleantech sector stands out as one of the rare winners.

According to a MoneyTree report, US venture capitalists invested 52% more money in the sector in 2008 than in 2007, bringing the year’s total to $4.1 billion. Compare that to the 8% drop in overall venture capital investment during 2008.

Meanwhile, the folks at Cleantech Group, LLC have international numbers spanning North America, Europe, China, and India. Their 2008 total: $8.4 billion – 38% higher than in 2007.

Cleantech Group says that solar power companies were the biggest winners, capturing $3.3 billion in venture capital funds last year. After that came biofuels ($904 million), transportation ($795 million), wind ($502 million), smart grid ($345 million), agriculture ($166 million), and water ($148 million). US solar companies swept up four of the top five deals: together, NanoSolar, Solyndra, SoloPower, and Solar Reserve garnered $859 million. (The outlier in the top five list was WinWinD, a Finnish wind power company.)

These cheerful numbers don’t mean that the financial crisis has left the industry unscathed. Growth in the industry appears to be slowing down, judging from data in the MoneyTree report. US cleantech investment increased 85% in 2007 compared to 2006, and investment in 2006 was a whopping 160% greater than investment in 2005. In addition, investment in cleantech dropped 14% in the fourth quarter of 2008 compared with the third -- many say the fourth quarter is a more realistic predictor of what’s to come in 2009 than the 2008 totals.

Still, Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association says consumer fervor and government support of cleantech will buffer the industry against the growing economic storm. “Even with a tough economic situation, I think cleantech kind of rises above the economic uncertainty,” he said recently.

For the full story on how the cleantech boom is defying the downturn, see the latest issue of Nature.

Heidi Ledford is a reporter with Nature's online news team

Posted by Olive Heffernan on February 05, 2009
Categories: Business, Economics, Heidi Ledford, Technology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Among the many proposed techno-fixes for climate change, ‘air capture’ seems like one of simplest solutions – what could be more straightforward than sucking greenhouse gases out of air and storing them somewhere else?

But various proposals for the direct removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere have largely been sidelined from serious discussions on climate control. Noteworthy scientists and engineers – including those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – have regarded the technology as a non-starter owing to the large amounts of energy involved. After all, energy costs money and unless we find ourselves in ‘climate crisis’ mode, solutions to climate change will be considered on economic grounds as well as on efficacy.

But a new study by Roger Pielke, Jr. (of the University of Colorado and Prometheus blog) shows that air capture could be a cost-competitive mitigation option. His analysis, soon to be published in Environmental Science and Policy [uncorrected proofs available from Pielke], compares the average costs of air capture over the 21st century to other mitigation options (namely international greenhouse gas regulation under the UN framework convention) assuming that technologies available today are used to fully offset net human emissions of carbon dioxide. He runs the analysis for 3 different (and citable) estimates of the cost of air capture – $500, $360 and $100 per ton of carbon. The IPCC estimate falls near the middle of this range.

For the two upper values, the cost of air capture would be comparable to the estimated cost of stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide at 450 ppm or 550 ppm given by Nick Stern in 2007 and by the IPCC in its last report. But if the costs of air capture decrease to $100 per ton of carbon, then it would prove much more cost-effective than stabilizing at 450 ppm or 550 ppm. We must therefore give air capture the same attention as other approaches to mitigation, argues Pielke, Jr.

Continue reading "Could we count on air capture?" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on February 04, 2009
Categories: Economics, Journal Club, Mitigation, Olive Heffernan, Technology | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The UK will get an intriguing new climate research centre next week, with the launch of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy at the London School of Economics and the University of Leeds. In a Q&A for Nature Reports Climate Change, I've interviewed Andrew Gouldson, who will co-direct the centre with Judith Rees under chairman Lord Nicholas Stern - and who envisions a strong focus on regional impacts of climate change.

CCCEP's experts will be closely in touch with policymakers and other local stakeholders, Gouldson says, in a way that "builds both their capacity and ours — ours to do good research, and theirs to use that research to take better decisions on climate change." One of the stakeholders, and a funder of one of the five research streams at the new centre, is the insurance company Munich Re. As I wrote last month, another new project that aims for the cutting edge of policy-relevant research is a hurricane model projection that Greg Holland is now wrapping up at NCAR - also partly insurance industry-funded. Could these academic-public-private three-ways be the way forward? Let us know in the comments.

I thought the most interesting part of the interview was what Gouldson had to say on the new UK Climate Change Act, which imposes a legally binding requirement to cut emissions 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. Here's an extract:

AG: At the national level, I think Britain's been very proactive indeed. The government has been quite brave signing up to this medium- to long-term target which is really quite ambitious. But I don't think there's a public understanding, or possibly even a public acceptance, of what a low-carbon economy might look like — one which is 60, 70, 80 per cent decarbonized.

AB: Does that make it less likely that the policy will actually come through with results?

AG: In the next 10 to 15 years, not necessarily, because there are lots of mitigation options that are relatively affordable and technologically viable. I think the question is what happens in the phase after that. Is there a political appetite to do some really quite painful things which would involve some powerful people or parties losing out? I think there's a need now, in the next few years, to build some sort of broad consensus on the need to shift towards a low-carbon economy.

Read the full interview here.

Anna Barnett

Image: Andrew Gouldson, photographed by Stevie Kilgour at the University of Leeds.

Posted by Anna Barnett on January 23, 2009
Categories: Adaptation, Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, Economics, Politics, Regional climate, Research, Society | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

More than two years have passed since Nick Stern’s report on the economics of climate change was published, yet the question of how to weigh the costs against the benefits of acting on climate change – and whether such an approach in even ethical – is still being hotly debated.

Stern's adherents, on the one hand, support the stance of the former World Bank economist who argues that taking strong, early action on climate change outweighs the costs of doing nothing, or of delaying action. On the other hand, some of Stern’s detractors – most notably ‘skeptical environmentalist’ Bjorn Lomborg - argue that although climate change is happening, major reductions in carbon emissions are simply not worth the money. (Others argues that Stern was right for the wrong reasons, but I won't go into that here).

The latest to weigh on the issue is Frank Ackerman, a research economist at Tufts University in Massachusetts, whose new book Can We Afford the Future?: the Economics of a Warming World is reviewed by Yoram Bauman over on Nature Reports Climate Change. Bauman teaches at the University of Washington, but he is perhaps better known for adding levity to such impenetrable topics as climate economics with his stand-up comedy routines.

Bauman picks out some highlights of Ackerman's analysis, namely his policy prescription for massive government-funded clean-energy R&D and his coverage of Harvard economist Martin Weitzman's work on improbable, but not impossible, catastrophic climate change.

Ultimately though Bauman concludes that Ackerman is the perfect odd couple match for Lomborg.

Continue reading "Ackerman: Odd-couple match for Lomborg? " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on January 15, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Economics, Olive Heffernan, Reviews | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)