economics23
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The Geithner-Summers Plan is Even Worse Than We Thought
Two weeks ago, I posted an article showing how the Geithner-Summers banking plan could potentially and unnecessarily transfer hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth from taxpayers to banks. The same basic arithmetic was later described by Joseph Stiglitz in the New York Times (April 1) and by Peyton Young in the Financial Times (April…
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Operational Coconut Yield Predictions
The Coconut Research Institute of Sri Lanka (CRI) has sustained an improved prediction scheme for national coconut production for the last four years. Coconuts are an important source of food and raw materials and also provide income to millions in the tropics. Coconuts are the most important food crop after rice in Sri Lanka and …
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(Almost) Ten things I learned at GROCC-6
The sixth meeting of the Global Roundtable on Climate Change (GROCC) took place on February 26 and 27. Around 150 corporations, non-governmental organizations, and government groups have been meeting since 2005 to discuss the science, technology, and economic considerations required for sound public policies on climate change. Some commenters to our posting to announce the meeting wondered…
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McKinsey’s New GHG Abatement Curve
McKinsey & Company has just released a new study outlining the potential costs of climate change mitigation. The report, which revises work originally published in 2007, evaluates 200 greenhouse gas abatement opportunities across 10 sectors and 21 world regions. It concludes that greenhouse gas emissions reductions of 35-40% below 1990 levels by 2030 are achievable…
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Orange you glad we counted the carbon?
There’s an article in today’s New York Times about PepsiCo’s effort to calculate the carbon footprint of its products, starting with Tropicana orange juice. A half-gallon of Tropicana represents the equivalent of 3.75 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. This is roughly the same amount of carbon dioxide emitted by a 5-mile drive to the grocery…
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Using Insurance in Adaptation Efforts
If the recent Conference of the Parties in Poznan, Poland was any indication, next year’s buzzword in the climate-change community will be climate risk insurance. “Dealing with insurance is of fundamental importance in order to meet adaptation objectives,” said UNFCCC Secretary General Yvo de Boer. “If you can’t get insurance because climate change makes you…