Dickinson to Durban » Archive
How Much is the Future Worth?
By Timothy Damon ’12 The economics behind policies to address climate change can be highly confusing, especially with different economists reaching very different conclusions. One example of such disagreement is seen between the work of The Stern Review and the review of the Review made by Nordhaus. Their point of contention centers upon the implementation of an economic principle known as “discounting”. But what is discounting? Simply put, discounting is a means of comparing the relative values of present and future costs or benefits. The idea is that $100 dollars would benefit you more today than it would a year from now. This is due to the fact that time itself has a value; money now can be invested to generate more over time. Thus, your $100 dollars today could, just by … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change, Environmental Politics
What America Can (and should) Learn from Europe
By Timothy Damon ’12 America has a long and proud history of firsts – the first airplane, the first man on the moon, and so forth. This heritage makes it all the more surprising that the United States would give up its leadership in innovation when it comes to the world’s greatest problem: climate change. One of the largest examples is allowing Europe to establish the first-ever market mechanism for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In 2005, the European Union (EU) implemented the Emissions Trading System (ETS), a cap-and-trade system aimed at reducing its GHG emissions. The principle of cap-and-trade (C&T) is relatively simple, and the idea actually came from a previous program the US EPA used to fight acid rain pollution. Basically the government sets an annual limit on GHG emissions … Read entire article »
Filed under: Carbon Markets, Climate Change, Summer Reading Responses
“Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing”
While studying British literature in high school, it never occurred to me that one of Shakespeare’s most famous lines might one day aptly describe the outcome of international climate negotiations – and certainly not the Copenhagen meeting in which so much hope was invested. Yet alas! For, to borrow Macbeth’s own words, the non-binding Copenhagen Accord was “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. But could a document signed by so many top government leaders and diplomats really be deserving of such a comparison? Well, let’s take a look. The Accord has 5 pages (the actual statement is only 3) to outline the agreement everyone reached. It impressively acknowledges that “climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time” and asserts that the Parties have “strong political will to … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change, Summer Reading Responses
The Devil’s in the Details
In a previous blog post, I discussed the need for a “moral compromise” between the developed and developing countries of the world in order to reach an agreement on climate change. Though I identified three points of compromise that most people would consider “fair”, this does not mean it is easy to act on them – as the students of our Mosaic and another class learned firsthand in a mock climate negotiation devised by Climate Interactive. This simulation divided us into the representatives of individual countries that comprised three different blocs: developed (USA, EU, UK, etc), rapidly developing (China, India, Brazil, etc), and less developed (Sudan, Middle East, small island states, etc). We were not given countries based upon our knowledge, and most students did not know much at all about … Read entire article »
Filed under: Mosaic Action, Student Research
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