Environmental Law Prof Blog

Emission of ozone precursors exacerbates sulfate levels and climate change

Those of you interested in air quality and climate issues should take a look at this open access article by Unger et al. published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Link: Cross influences of ozone and sulfate precursor emissions changes on air quality and climate -- Unger et al., 10.1073/pnas.0508769103 -- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Tropospheric O3 and sulfate both contribute to air pollution and climate forcing. There is a growing realization that air quality and climate change issues are strongly connected. To date, the importance of the coupling between O3 and sulfate has not been fully appreciated, and thus regulations treat each pollutant separately. We show that emissions of O3 precursors can dramatically affect regional sulfate air quality and climate forcing. At 2030 in an A1B future, increased O3 precursor emissions enhance surface sulfate over India and China by up to 20% because of increased levels of OH and gas-phase SO2 oxidation rates and add up to 20% to the direct sulfate forcing for that region relative to the present day. Hence, O3 precursors impose an indirect forcing via sulfate, which is more than twice the direct O3 forcing itself (compare -0.61 vs.  0.35 W/m2). Regulatory policy should consider both air quality and climate and should address O3 and sulfate simultaneously because of the strong interaction between these species.

Utah Environmental Congress v. Bosworth

The 10th Circuit applied the 1982 Forest Service planning regulations in this case and found the Forest Services' selection and monitoring of management indicator species to be inadequate.  The Court sounds extremely skeptical about the post-2000 attempts to change the Forest Service planning regulations. Link: Find Result - 2006 WL 446040.

Climate Change Books

If you are teaching climate change, in addition to Gus Speth's book, you may want to consider Tim Flannery's"The Weather Makers" and Elizabeth Kolbert's "Field Notes From a Catastrophe" to help your students make sense of what Carl Zimmer calls the "fiendishly complex" scientific and political puzzles.

Zimmer writes:

The "The Weather Makers" and "Field Notes From a Catastrophe" cover much of the same scientific ground, they are not carbon copies. Flannery, who has written several previous books for a popular audience, takes a long view, offerng an account of the history of earth's shifting climate. Climate change, he makes clear, is itself nothing new, and organisms have long played a role in it. Ever since earth formed some 4.5 billion years ago, heat-trapping gases have kept the atmosphere warm. The planet has simmered and cooled, its changing temperature influenced in part by fluctuating levels of greenhouse gases. Life itself has helped control global warming, both by absorbing greenhouse gases and then by releasing them at death. Sometimes this release has been catastrophic. About 55 million years ago, Flannery writes, a surge of carbon dioxide and methane (another greenhouse gas) flooded the atmosphere, raising the average surface temperature of the earth by 9 to 18 degrees Fahrenheit and causing mass extinctions in what he calls a "vast, natural gas-driven equivalent of a barbecue." Scientists suggest that much of the gas had been stored at the bottom of the sea floor by methane-producing bacteria.

Over the past 50 million years, the planet has been gradually cooling as those greenhouse gases dwindled. Antarctica, once covered by forests and roamed by dinosaurs, grew an ice cap. The earth fell into a cycle of ice ages, in which glaciers expanded and then retreated over tens of thousands of years. The trigger for this cycle was probably earth's wobbly orbit, which changes the amount of sunlight reaching the poles. But greenhouse gases seem to have helped drive the cycle. At the beginning of each ice age, levels of carbon dioxide and methane plunge, and at the end they surge back.

The last ice age ended 13,000 years ago, and by 8,000 years ago the global climate had settled into a comparatively stable lull. This "long summer," as Flannery calls it, may have made civilization possible. Only then did agriculture and cities flourish and spread. Ironically, though, civilization brought with it a new source of greenhouse gases — ourselves. By burning wood, coal and oil, humans liberated the carbon stored away by other forms of life. Viewed on a geological scale, it's as if a bomb went off.

In "Field Notes From a Catastrophe," Kolbert sets out to see the signs of this change. Kolbert — whose book first appeared as a series of articles in The New Yorker — visits researchers drilling ice cores in Greenland in order to study ancient climates. Parts of the Greenland ice cap are melting rapidly, and her tent fills up with water. In Alaska, houses are falling into holes in the collapsing permafrost. In England, Kolbert finds changes that are subtler but no less significant. She meets with biologists who survey the ranges of butterflies each year; they've found that some species are steadily shifting their ranges north as the planet warms. Scientists — who have observed similar migrations elsewhere — are concerned that this may cause catastrophic extinctions in coming decades. Animals and plants adapted to living on mountainsides can move only so far uphill before they run out of mountainside. Lowland species may find their migration toward the poles obstructed by oceans, mountains or sprawl.

Kolbert is clearly appalled that even in the face of such overwhelming evidence we keep emitting more greenhouse gases each year. Yet she allows herself only a few terse condemnations. She calls American opposition to the Kyoto Protocols "deeply, even obscenely, self-serving." Mostly, she lets the scientists do the talking. Peter deMenocal, an expert on ancient climates at Columbia University, worries that global warming will destroy modern civilization, just as abrupt climate changes caused earlier civilizations to collapse. "The thing they couldn't prepare for was the same thing that we won't prepare for, because in their case they didn't know about it and because in our case the political system can't listen to it," deMenocal says.

"I have tried to keep the discussion of scientific theory to a minimum," Kolbert writes at the beginning of her book. Yet a greater understanding of the science is exactly what we need right now. Climate science often seems counterintuitive. As a result, self-proclaimed global warming "skeptics" are fond of pointing to individual weather stations where temperatures have gradually dropped over the past few decades. But global warming does not mean uniform warming. It means a rise in the mean global temperature. "Field Notes From a Catastrophe" would have benefited from a deeper exploration of the science of global warming.

Flannery makes a different mistake, sometimes overreaching in his attempt to make an absolutely overwhelming case. For example, he cites the current slaughter in the Darfur region of Sudan as an example of how desertification, fueled by global warming, drives farmers and nomads into conflict. There's good reason to think that global warming has caused desertification in Sudan, but it's wrong to ignore the role of the Sudanese government's support for the militias (drawn from herding groups) in their attacks against farming villages. Elsewhere Flannery raises the possibility that global warming will carry malaria into heavily populated mountain valleys such as Mexico City. But the link between climate and malaria is nowhere near as solid as he implies. A recent article about global warming and disease, published in the journal Nature, concluded that when it comes to malaria, "a definitive role of long-term climate trends has not been ascertained."

Both Flannery and Kolbert present current global warming as an unnatural evil — the result of Promethean tinkering with what should be left alone. Flannery calls it "attempted Gaia-cide," a reference to the concept of the entire biosphere united as a single being. But this is not a useful way to think about global warming; it makes no sense to separate ourselves from nature this way. Long before Henry Ford fired up his first Model T, the climate changed drastically many times, and living things often played a major role in those changes. As trees evolved leaves and roots 350 million years ago, they sucked up an estimated 90 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And again, the methane gas that came surging out of the ocean floor 55 million years ago, leading to a spike in global temperature and mass extinctions, was probably produced by bacteria.

We are only the latest species to alter the atmosphere, and until recently we've been as unwitting as the trees and the bacteria. But now, as Kolbert and Flannery demonstrate, we know a little bit better. Their books do not merely satisfy scientific curiosity. Whatever their flaws, with any luck they may help force us to take more responsibility for our collective actions.

Economic Literature on Environment

Interesting articles published include a worldwide analysis of participation in environmental organizations, banking behavior under the US acid rain program, the contribution of cultural capital to sustainability and willingness to pay for billboard removal.

Contents.

1. The Willingness to Pay to Remove Billboards and Improve Mountain Views

   Date:	2006
   By:	Peter A. Groothuis Jana D. Groothuis John C. Whitehead
   URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:apl:wpaper:06-04&r=env
   We use the contingent valuation method to measure the amount citizens are willing to pay to improve mountain-view aesthetics through the removal of billboards. Our approach addresses both the perceived property rights as well as the perceptions of the status quo in the southern Appalachian Mountains. We find that individuals who retire to the mountains have different preferences for land use and mountain views than individuals who have ancestors who lived in Watauga County. In the aggregate, we find that citizens are willing to pay up almost one-half million dollars to remove billboards from Watauga County roadsides. This study provides insights to the debate surrounding land use in the mountains.

2. Tourism specialization and environmental sustainability in a dynamic economy

   Date:	2006
   By:	Fabio Cerina
   URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cns:cnscwp:200602&r=env
   This study focuses on the dynamic behaviour of a small open economy specialized in tourism based on natural resources when tourist services are supplied to foreign tourists who are crowding-averse and care for the environment. We analyse the steady-state properties of the model and a unique locally saddle-point equilibrium is found for both the market and the central planner solution. Then we compare the effects of two policies aiming at improving the market solution: in the first the government poses a corrective tax on residents' income and then redistributes the tax gains with lump-sum transfers while, in the second, the government taxes residents' income and employs the tax gains in pollution abatement technology. We find that the first policy is able to direct the economy towards its first-best dynamic path but the second policy, by relaxing the dynamic constraint on the environment, yields a higher steady-sta te utility when the externality effects and/or the natural regeneration rate of the environmental asset are low enough. Both policies, insofar they lead to an increase in tourists' willingness to pay, might work as an "implicit" tourist tax paid by tourists, with the difference that the first policy always leads to to this result, while the second obtains it only when tourists' aversion to crowding is not too high.
   Keywords:	Tourism Specialization, Sustainability, Environment, Taxation, Crowding, Pollution Abatement
   JEL:	H23 L83 O41 Q26 Q56

3. Participation in Environmental Organizations: An Empirical Analysis

   Date:	2006-02
   By:	Benno Torgler Maria A.Garcia-Valinas
   URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cra:wpaper:2006-06&r=env
   The literature on volunteering has strongly increased in the last few years. However, there is still a lack of substantial empirical evidence about the determinants of environmental participation. This empirical study analyses a cross-section of individuals using micro-data of the World Values Survey wave III (1995-1997), covering 38 countries, to investigate this question. The results suggest that not only socio-demographic and socio-economic factors have an impact on individuals’ active participation in environmental organizations, but also political attitudes. Furthermore, regional differences are observed.
   Keywords:	Environment; Environmental Participation; International Perspective; Political Interest; Social Capital
   JEL:	Q26 R22 Z13 I21

4. Communication and the extraction of natural renewable resources with threshold externalities

   Date:	2006-02
   By:	C. Mónica Capra Tomomi Tanaka
   URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:emo:wp2003:0602&r=env
   Non-binding communication, or cheap talk, has been associated with the resolution of coordination failures and social dilemmas in both laboratory and field experiments (see Cooper, et al., 1992, and Clark, Kay, and Sefton, 2000; Isaac and Walker, 1991, Ostrom and Walker, 1991, Ostrom, Gardner and Walker, 1994, and Cardenas, Ahn, and Ostrom, 2003). In simple coordination games, communication is expected to reduce the uncertainty of what other players are likely to do and hence facilitate coordination in the better equilibrium. In social dilemma games, the reasons why communication works are still unclear. Perhaps communication results in an increased sense of group identity, an enhancement of normative orientations toward cooperation, or a necessity to avoid (seek) verbal reprimand (approval) when promises of cooperation are violated (fulfilled). In this paper we use a simple neoclassical growth model with multiple equilibria to investigate the mechanism by which non-binding communication results in lower equilibrium resource extraction. We use a growth model because it provides an adequate dynamic framework for modeling extraction of a natural resource with threshold externalities.

5. Political Institutions, Environmental Policy and Growth

   Date:	2005-09-03
   By:	Laura Marsiliani (University of Durham) Thomas I Renstrom (University of Durham and CEPR)
   URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mmf:mmfc05:38&r=env

6. A general equilibrium analysis of emission allowances.

   Date:	2006-01
   By:	Alexandrine Jamin (CES-CERMSEM) Antoine Mandel (CES-CERMSEM)
   URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mse:wpsorb:b06003&r=env
   Each Party of the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change must achieve quantified green-house gases emission reduction. one of the major policy instrument to be used to comply with these commitments is the opening of an emission allowances market. This paper analyzes, in the general equilibrium framework, the effects of the opening of such a market on the economic equilibrium.
   Keywords:	General Equilibrium Theory, emission allowances, general pricing rules, sensitivity.
   JEL:	D59 Q58

7. Are non-use values distance-independent? Identifying the market area using a choice modelling experiment

   Date:	2005-12
   By:	Giovanni B. Concu (Risk and Sustainable Management Group, University of Queensland)
   URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rsm:murray:m05_6&r=env
   This article tests for the effect of distance on non-use values using a Choice Modelling (CM) experiment. Estimating a distance decay relationship for non-use values (NUVs) is important because it would define the market area for an environmental good, i.e. identify the limits for aggregating individual benefit estimates. In contrast to the common definition of NUVs as non-usersÕ values, the CM experiment designs the environmental attributes so that NUV changes can be disentangled from Use Value (UV) changes. The experiment also allows for testing different specification of the distance covariates. Data are obtained from a geographically representative sample. Results show that NUVs do not depend on distance. Aggregation of NUVs is based on income and individualsÕ environmental attitudes.
   Keywords:	choice modelling, non-use values, aggregation, distance, geographical sampling.
   JEL:	Q51 Q58

8. Investigating distance effects on environmental values: A choice modelling approach

   Date:	2005-12
   By:	Giovanni B. Concu (Risk and Sustainable Management Group, University of Queensland)
   URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rsm:murray:m05_7&r=env
   This paper describes a Choice Modelling experiment set up to investigate the relationship between distance and willingness to pay for environmental quality changes. The issue is important for the estimation and transfer of benefits. So far the problem has been analysed through the use of Contingent Valuation-type of experiments, producing mixed results. The Choice Modelling experiment allows testing distance effects on parameters of environmental attributes that imply different trade-offs between use and non-use values. The sampling procedure is designed to provide a Ògeographically balancedÓ sample. Several specifications of the distance covariate are compared and distance effects are shown to take complex shapes. Welfare analysis also shows that disregarding distance produces under-estimation of individual and aggregated benefits and losses, seriously hindering the reliability of costbenefit analyses.
   Keywords:	choice Modelling techniques, distance, aggregation, sampling, functional forms.
   JEL:	Q51 Q58

9. Banking behavior under uncertainty: Evidence from the US Sulfur Dioxide Emissions Allowance Trading Program

   Date:	2006
   By:	Olivier ROUSSE Benoît SEVI
   URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mop:credwp:06.63&r=env
   The aim of this paper is to examine portfolio management of emission allowances in the US Sulfur Dioxide Emissions Allowance Trading Program, to determine whether utilities have a real motive to bank when risk increases. We test a theoretical model linking the motivation of the firm to accumulate permits in order to prepare itself to face a risky situation in the future. Empirical estimation using data for years 2001 to 2004 provides evidence of a relationship between banking behavior and uncertainty the utility is facing with.
   Keywords:	Emissions Trading, Permits Banking, Acid Rain Program Uncertainty, Risk Aversion, Prudence.
   JEL:	D81 G11 Q28

10. Environmental Innovation, War of Attrition and Investment Grants

    By:	Cesare Dosi Michele Moretto
    URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ubs:wpaper:ubs0406&r=env
    The paper analyses the timing of spontaneous environmental innovation when second-mover advantages, arising from the expectation of declining investment costs, increase the option value of waiting created by investment irreversibility and uncertainty about private payoffs. We then focus on the design of public subsidies aimed at bridging the gap between the spontaneous time of technological change and the socially desirable one. Under network externalities and incomplete information about firms' switching costs, auc- tioning investment grants appears to be a cost-effective way of accelerating pollution abatement, in that it allows targeting grants instead of subsidizing the entire industry indiscriminately

11. Convergence in Carbon Emissions Per Capita

    Date:	2005-05
    By:	Alison Stegman (Department of Economics, Macquarie University)
    URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mac:wpaper:0505&r=env
    In late 2003 and early 2004 the Economic Society of Australia surveyed the Heads of Economics Departments in Australia to determine their views on three main issues: student standards, major factors affecting these standards, and policy implications. This paper describes the main results of the survey, reviews the conduct and value of this kind of survey, and discusses policy implications for economics in universities. Most respondents considered that student standards have declined and that the main causes include lower entry standards, high student-staff ratios, and a declining culture of study. However some respondents argued that standards are multi-dimensional and that people may properly attach different weights to different attributes. Strong processes assuring anonymity to respondents minimized strategic responses, but may not have eliminated them entirely. However, these views are based largely on experien ce rather than evidence and a major finding of this paper is the need for more evidence on standards and on the factors that influence them. Most respondents favour a decentralised university-based approach to dealing with these issues, contending that centralised accreditation is inappropriate and that market forces would promote quality issues. In the writer's view, externally set and assessed exams as part of university examination procedures would lift standards and send out improved market signals.
    Keywords:	Emissions, distribution dynamics, convergence, stochastic kernel
    JEL:	C10 C14 Q54

12. On the Sustainability of Cultural Capital

    Date:	2005-07
    By:	David Throsby (Department of Economics, Macquarie University)
    URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mac:wpaper:0510&r=env
    The concept of sustainable development as defined in ecological terms can be extended to apply to culture by recognising parallels between the concepts of natural and cultural capital. This paper reviews the definitions of both these forms of capital and shows how they contribute to sustainability. Criteria for weak and strong sustainability are considered, on the basis of which a strong sustainability rule for cultural capital is derived. It is speculated that certain cultural indicators may be useful in providing first approximations to variables that would need to be quantified in any eventual empirical application of this model.
    Keywords:	Natural capital, cultural capital, sustainability, sustainable development
    JEL:	Q01 Q57 Z11

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