Tag Archives: emissions

New IPCC economic models

An arti­cle from Forbes Mag­a­zine on the IPCC’s lat­est “socio-economic mod­el­ling” of emis­sion and growth sce­nar­ios has attracted a lot of atten­tion because it claims the IPCC now shows that… The high­est eco­nomic growth model leads to the low­est level of emis­sions con­sid­ered. Less eco­nomic growth leads to higher emis­sions. Extract from Forbes But the authors …

August 12, 2011 – 7:52 am | By pwg | Posted in Public policy | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Smoking and climate change

Mal­colm Turn­bull, in a recent speech invented a para­ble about a fool­hardy smoker to illus­trate his claim that con­test­ing the views of the “best sci­en­tists” on man-made climate-change is an “attack on sci­ence”. But does this para­ble make sense? Should we con­sider the the claimed “con­sen­sus” of science-policy bod­ies on dan­ger­ous global warm­ing to be …

July 26, 2011 – 4:54 pm | By pwg | Posted in Ideas, Public policy | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Treasury’s advocacy of a CO2 tax

One thing on which I agree with Julia Gillard is the poor qual­ity of many jour­nal­ists’ analy­sis of her pro­pos­als. But when you cram jour­nal­ists with non­sense, you must expect some of them to regur­gi­tate it from time to time. “In the­ory, this is an inge­nious model for adapt­ing our fos­sil fuel econ­omy to global cli­mate …

July 16, 2011 – 3:03 pm | By pwg | Posted in Public policy | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Why shoot elephants?

It’s the most effec­tive way to kill them. Any game-keeper will tell you that. Just as any econ­o­mist will tell you that the most effec­tive way to con­trol obnox­ious behav­iour, like pol­lut­ing the river, or just unde­sir­able behav­iour, like dri­ving your car into the city, is to tax it. Are there alter­na­tives to shoot­ing? Yes, it …

July 14, 2011 – 11:06 am | By pwg | Posted in Policy | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

The “clean energy” hustle

Some aspects of the Prime Minister’s advo­cacy for her coal tax are, at best, mis­lead­ing: a wedge for the much greater costs implied by the Labor/Greens agenda. She says: “Putting a price on car­bon will drive inno­va­tion and invest­ment in clean energy tech­nol­ogy, mov­ing pro­duc­tion towards less pollution-intensive processes.” But that is far from the …

July 11, 2011 – 11:09 am | By pwg | Posted in Policy | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

When is “reform” not a reform?

No doubt Ms Gillard will assure us, next Sun­day when she announces the coal tax she has agreed with the Greens and two “inde­pen­dents”, that this is a “reform” that will secure a bet­ter eco­nomic future for Aus­tralia. But a “reform” is no reform when… It is not adapted to its pur­pose: The Gillard-Brown coal …

July 6, 2011 – 10:14 am | By pwg | Posted in Policy | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

It’s the politics (stupid)!

If his­tory has rules, one must be that inter­est smoth­ers con­cept (and eats its lunch). The polit­i­cal chal­lenges of imple­ment­ing any big, dis­rup­tive tech­nol­ogy on a large scale inevitably deflate the hopes of tech­no­log­i­cal opti­mists. The com­mer­cial chal­lenges track closely behind. This is why, if for no tech­ni­cal rea­son, the pro­jec­tions in Treasury’s 2008 ETS …

July 5, 2011 – 2:24 pm | By pwg | Posted in Resources | Tagged , , | Comments (0)