Dickinson to Durban » Archive
Climate Kick Boxing: Make the First Strike
By Sam Pollan, ‘14 Environmental policy in the United States is in a precarious position. While urgent action is recognized as necessary, it has not yet been institutionalized. One of the main conflicts in policy making is the epic battle between the economy and the environment. A federal policy that is expensive, even if it is likely to produce the highest reduction in emissions, will never be implemented as a US policy. The current contenders for possible policies are market based solutions. Robert Stavins, in his article “A Golden Opportunity to Please Conservatives and Liberals Alike,” mentions four policies with almost identical yields in reductions. These policies range from absolute regulation, the most costly, to cap-and-trade systems, which are up to 90 percent cheaper. Market based approaches (i.e. cap-and-trade) provide economic incentives … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change
Technology Race: The Solution to Climate Change?
By: Christine Burns ’14 Finding an economically viable solution to global climate change is an arduous task, but if we want a planet that can continue to support life, than we must take up the challenge. Assessing US Climate Policy Options is a report written through the Resources for the Future (RFF). The major contributors to this report are listed in Figure 1. Clearly most of these companies have something to loose should America shift in … Read entire article »
Filed under: Carbon Markets, Climate Change
The Corporations Speak
By: Anna McGinn ’14 Reading industries’ and corporations’ take on climate change policy is an interesting perspective to dissect especially after reading IPCC and scientific documents. Their focus is not to describe the science of climate change or to create international agreements on GHG emissions. Rather their report, “Assessing U.S. Climate Policy Options: A report summarizing work at RFF as part of the inter-industry U.S. Climate Policy Forum,” explains how corporations would like the United States to approach climate change regulations. From page one, they focus on regulating GHG emissions through various market approaches. In the realm of corporations, everything has a dollar value. Further, they are careful to use non-committal language and are vague in their explanations of solutions. Despite some drawbacks, it seems impressive that these 23 corporations came … Read entire article »
Filed under: Carbon Markets, Climate Change
Hub-Caps and Trade
From reading the Kopp-Pitzer paper and the Stockholm Environmental Institute’s Policy Brief, one gets a sense of the overwhelming options available to the US in regards reducing CO2 emission, specifically with cap-and-trade “schemes.” And why do I refer to them as “schemes” you ask? The answer is that that’s just what they are: “schemes.” There has been no real and concrete bi-partisan actions towards implementing one or a combination of the myriad ideas presented in the two papers. When is this to occur, one really can’t say—politics and economics prove to be semi-insurmountable hindrances to definitive actions. Yet, one point to focus on from the articles, which could prove effective in the near future is that of regulating car fuel efficiency and our transportation sector. While a majority of the Kopp-Pitzer … Read entire article »
Filed under: Summer Reading Responses
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