Women in the labor force

A World Bank working paper co-authored by my friend Liza Perova finds a strong link between the provision of child care and mothers' access to the labor market. While the overall conclusion is positive, there are a few factors limiting the benefits of the policies, such as the fact that women end up doing more uncompensated work around the house and often don't end up increasing their income very much.

And I just became aware of this heartbreaking 2018 study of an experiment that involved sending out resumes to a variety of jobs. It turns out that GPA helps men get interviews, but the relationship for women is less clear: it seems employers prefer females who are B students to those who are A students. 

Even well into the 21st Century gender continues to limit job access! Wow.

Trade, smoke, and climate change

 Not even going to try to pretend these are related, but all interesting to me! 

* China's rapid industrialization and manufacturing boom around the year 2000 is being blamed for economic stagnation in many small and medium-sized communities across the US. As lots of domestic manufacturing jobs were lost, people tied to mortgages in these towns were hung out to dry. More forward-thinking government programs to retrain folks might have made a big difference.

* The toll of air pollution continues to climb as more and more studies show that small particles damage people's lungs, leading to asthma, disability, and 4 million premature deaths a year. Most deaths are in developed countries and near factories. 

* Carbon sequestration is one way to combat climate change. If carbon can be trapped underground (or underwater) then it's not in the atmosphere. Cattle ranching can sequester carbon, though I'm not sure that will overcome the bad rap that beef production currently gets as far as climate.

Diet, COVID, and sustainability

Kinda related, kinda not. First, this Politico piece talks about the role that obesity is playing in increasing the injury and death toll associated with COVID. The below map shows obesity rates by state, and the article discusses how the Federal Government spends more money on treating diabetes than the entire USDA budget. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had a come-to-Jesus moment after his obesity was linked to the intensity of his own bout of COVID, has begun to see the role that government policy plays in determining diet.

Also investigating the ramifications for diet is this article, which investigates the affordability of a variety of alternative diets, all of which are supposedly healthier and more sustainable than current diets. While costs are higher in developing countries, a lot of money can be saved in the US and in other rich countries while health and sustainability are likewise encouraged.

Too bad this is not a priority! 

Meaty problems

The meat industry is highly concentrated: could that be why the price of meat is rising so much faster than other food prices? It's certainly part of the picture, though probably not all of it. The ability to abuse market power is well known in economics, and the consequences are stated here by a rancher: "[the] vertical-integration model is abusive — to the animals, to the workers, to the consumers." 

Child obesity in a pandemic

One secondary impact of the pandemic is turning out to be obesity. This Axios piece talks about how the pandemic is tied to a rise in eating disorders in the US; it also links to this CDC research, which shows a jump in BMI, particularly among children who were heavier to begin with. 

Hopefully vaccines come to the rescue in October and kids are able to resume more normal lifestyles!

Food systems

I'm an economist: optimizing (or economizing!) is what is in my head a lot. That makes things tricky when I go to the grocery store because there are so many ways to conceive of what makes a good deal. Probably the first thing you would think of is a price reduction, but is even half price tuna a good deal? You'll want to check the "best buy" date, of course, but is it good for us? After all, tuna may be part of a healthy diet, but what about the amount of mercury it might contain? Finally, it's also a good idea to check the product's impact on the environment; the Monterey Bay guide can help you learn whether it casts your fish in a favorable light. So to sum up, in our shopping cart we need to optimize over different aspects of health, price, taste, and environmental impact. Get all that?

If we step back from the grocery store to think in slightly larger terms, we might start thinking in terms of food systems. In fact, the choices available to us in the supermarket are driven only partly by consumer choice: the food system makes a lot of choices for us. GAIN is an organization that's working at a high level to transform food systems, and they are preparing for the UN Food Systems summit in a few days. One of their goals is to produce an "IPCC for food," modeled on the tremendous amount of scientific resources that contributed to the Nobel Peace Prize shared with Al Gore. [***Update: this article is opposed to the idea, arguing that similar organizations already exist.]

One example of a way that food systems might change is this example of a reimagination of the diet of Indonesia. That country gathers lots of data on its diet, and this research team investigated how to optimize the country's diet across the many dimensions of health and environmental impact. Their plan calls for some serious changes, including eating less rice in favor of more animal products and/ or more pulses, nuts, and seeds. I wouldn't have guessed that more meat would be the way to go, but here's the figure!

Got wood?

It seems the lumber boom is over! Back in April I posted on the huge increase in the price of wood, driven in part by folks' desire to renovate their homes, build decks, etc. since they were stuck at home. Now, less than a year later, prices seem to be basically back to normal. That's good news for inflation; maybe it portends a drop in other markets as well? 

h/t MSN

Cool graphs

 Sorry, these aren't about resource Econ, but they catch my eye... and now they can catch yours too! The first few are from JP Morgan, as tweeted by Derek Thompson.

1) Vaccines & politics

I won't editorialize beyond saying that it's heartbreaking that this is a political issue.

2) Office vs. work-from-home

Three Texas cities: Austin, Houston, and Dallas, have higher rates than other cites.

3) Finally as tweeted out by Resource Economist Ngaio Hotte; 

Shipping costs are going nuts! No wonder there's so much inflation.

Climate change this summer

I visited my family home in Reno, Nevada this past August: I don't think that the air quality ever dropped below the "unhealthy" level and spent most of the time in the "hazardous" range. The index, which tops out at 500, was regularly in the 200's and reached the 400's due to the Dixie fire and then the Caldor fire, which was still small when I left. Ash was visible in the air, like tiny flurries of snow, and accumulating on cars.

It turns out that I wasn't alone: the Washington Post reports that nearly 1 in 3 Americans has already experienced a weather disaster in 2021, including the fires but also storms like Ida. The New York Times reports that Ida dropped more in New York City in one hour than has even fallen there, at least as long as rainfall has been tracked. It turns out that hotter temperatures increase the intensity of storms. The below graphic shows the heightened intensity, but it may be hard to see; regardless, it's real!

Subsidies? Nah, just taxes

I heard some stories long ago about why corn is so cheap: Michael Pollan and others talked about the giant system of subsidies.

Today Dr. Sarah Taber clarifies (in her usual, spicy way) that it's more about tax policy than about actual subsidies. She tweets, "You buy it, it appreciates with very little tax burden, you sell it later. Farmland is a piggy bank. That's why corporations are buying it now! Farmers legislated it into the best tax shelter in the world. But! You have to farm it for it to count as farmland & get the tax breaks! And that's why we grow so damn much corn, soy, beef, & other low-effort commodities. They're the shortest path to a tax break."

Update, Sunday August 29th: This morning's Washington Post includes this article about an outspoken British farmer responding to a new law there that will provide payments to farmers in a different way than it has been done before. It'll be interesting to see how this new law works out....

Food, Nutrition, & the Environment

In the US, we are really good at producing corn. What happens to the corn? Well, a lot of is used for animal feed, some of it is turned into high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or ethanol (often added to gasoline), and basically none of it is an ear you see on the dinner table. As the price of corn drops, the price of meat drops, and our diets end up out of whack. The result, is that "Health impacts are the biggest hidden cost of the food system, with more than $1 trillion per year in health-related costs paid by Americans, with an estimated $604 billion of that attributable to diseases — such as hypertension, cancer and diabetes — linked to diet." (from the Washington Post quoting this original research.)

However, the deeper we dig, the more we see. Climate change is affecting crops from corn to vegetables and fruit, and food production is just the first step in our food system. How does food processing affect the choices we have available to us, much less the choices individuals make? What is the impact of plastics throughout the supply chain? This article is a great summary of the many questions we need to investigate.

Valuing ecosystem services

This article, featuring one of my heroes Prof. Sir Partha Dasgupta, is about how to include the value of natural assets that are often overlooked. For example, "conserved or restored habitats were strongly associated with greater overall 'net present value' in 75% of the 24 main sites when compared with their human-dominated alternative state." In other words, in most situations it makes more economic sense to forgo planting or harvesting of any crop in favor of allowing the land to provide ecosystem services. 

 

Drying out in California

As Portland, Seattle, and British Columbia bake, seeing temperatures hotter than ever recorded in Las Vegas, California is starting its fire season with the Lava Fire in the extreme northwest of the state. The rising heat is sucking dry the state's water reserves as well: as reported here, farming is under increasing pressure to cut back water usage. The preceding article talks about a few farmers who have taken some of their almonds out of production, and the end is about building solar arrays. What does the future hold for the state with the most amazing soil and climate for agriculture?

Market concentration in meat

I've covered chicken in the past: students in my class will have watched either Supersize Me 2 (an entertaining film by a director with a checkered past) or Eating Animals. Both talk about the difficult conditions faced by chicken farmers working for the big names in chicken like Tyson or Perdue.

 This week's article is about how control over the beef industry by meat processors is leading to profits for the meat packers at the expense of farmers. Such is modern capitalism: keep growing until you have a large enough market share to mess with people, and then do so....

Postsecret

 Just saw this on postsecret.com, though it's labeled "classic secrets" so it isn't a new one....

Climate change: mostly about energy

Richard Newell is an economist with the RFF and in this podcast, with Scott Kirby, the CEO of United Airlines, he puts things in perspective: "Energy production and use is currently about 80 percent of all US greenhouse gases and 97 percent of carbon dioxide emissions." Kirby notes that the prospects are bright for sustainable fuels.

On a related note, the economics of electric cars are steadily improving. Even though the sticker price remains higher, the lifetime costs of ownership are lower for electrics. 

Krugman says inflation's not real

He could be right- what do I know?- but the FAO is noticing rising sugar prices, and the USDA says soy prices are at their highest levels in nearly 10 years. And gas, don't forget gas.

Update July 6, 2021: Washington Post says that food prices are up globally, under pressure from climate change, changes in food systems sparked by COVID, and geopolitical rivalries. We'll see how that translates for us back in the US!

Another cost of pollution

Today's Washington Post featured an article on the number of deaths attributable to air pollution in the US- about 17,900 per year, mostly associated with agricultural emissions. (Original research here.)

While that's sad, it doesn't surprise me. The award for the surprising result of the day on pollution goes to Nature Communications, which finds that water pollution in lakes is associated with a great deal of methane emissions: the researchers estimate the damages in the trillions of dollars- estimates range from a minimum of $500 billion / year to upwards of $2 trillion per year. That is a jaw-dropping number; for Lake Erie, they say that the costs exceed the money spent on beach trips and sport fishing by a factor of 10. Picture from Twitter link.

Corn prices jumping too

This article in the Wall Street Journal starts with a few quick implications- the rise will raise prices of tortilla chips and Coca cola!- but fortunately the story deepens as it goes. 

Anyway, the quick headline: corn prices are up 50% in the last few months, and have doubled over the past year. That's a big jump. The question is, why? Is it the changing US economy as we step back from the pandemic and prepare our vaccinated selves to return to indoor dining? In a word, NO. 

It turns out that China had an outbreak of disease among hogs and they had to kill many, so now they are eager to fatten up and sell off the next crop. At the same time, central South America has had less rainfall than usual, which means less harvest of that corn crop... and difficulties exporting the crop they do harvest, since some rivers are low. 

There is actually one piece that is linked to US corn- I had no idea how much ethanol was still put in folks' gas tanks. Turns out that accounts for about 40% of US corn- wow.

And of course, as corn prices rise they will take the price of chicken to new highs, which too are already well above pandemic lows. Inflation, anyone? *Image below from ^^

Lumber markets going boom

Found this April 2021 article on lumber prices post COVID. Prices in 2021 are the highest they've been, probably ever:

CNBC's website is obnoxious, but it does have some good information. A quote: "The surge in lumber prices in the past year has added $35,872 to the price of an average new single-family home and $12,966 to the market value of an average new multifamily home, according to the NAHB." Home prices are high, and low availability is raising the prices of new homes. Curiously, Baltimore is one of three markets noted to have the least inventory (with San Diego and San Francisco). Not sure what's going on in Balmer- not a crowd we usually hang with!

Update: this article, also from April, is about the growing market for wood pellets, which we touched on briefly in class.

Mammalia

 True confessions: found this via Twitter, but check it out on Our World in Data: only 4% of mammals are wild animals. Fully 1/3 are humans, and most of the rest are cows and pigs. I wonder what that balance was like 100 years ago?

Cultured meat

Ezra Klein is a journalist formerly of Vox media and now at the New York Times. While he tends to talk about himself a little too much in interviews (instead of focusing on the person he's supposedly interviewing) he makes a number of good points in this Twitter thread based on his NY Times article. He thinks that Beyond and Impossible are the first entrants into a new group of meat substitutes, and he wants Biden to pump investment into the category. Someone else attached this document on cultured meat, which contends that scientists can make a much better product much more efficiently, most notably avoiding the miserable CAFO situation. That would sure be great! Unfortunately (gross out warning!) I have heard that basically cultured meat relied on amniotic fluid as a key input, and I can't imagine that scaling very well. I hope I'm wrong!

Which energy source is best?

 Ok, true confessions: I was scrolling reddit when I came across this interesting chart. (The first two columns are from Our World in Data.) It makes natural gas look pretty good, no? 

Citations

Everybody lives in Asia

That's the title of a post on Slate referring to the idea that more than half of the world's population lives in a pretty tight circle. A Reddit user first posted the idea and then a professor did the math: it turns out that the tightest version of the circle excludes not only most of Japan, but also Java, an island in Indonesia that is home to more than 150 million people. If we expand to include these places, I wonder what % of the world's population really does live in Asia?

Climate change is cutting into agricultural productivity

In class we watched a video about climate change, and one part talked about how crops will be less nutritious after climate change. In today's news, we are learning that we are getting fewer crops altogether. Sobering news from Prof. Ortiz-Bobea!

Vox on Meat

I don't have a lot at "steak" in the culture wars around meat: I grew up loving ribs and steak, but became a vegetarian in college. I have since done some backsliding and I do occasionally have a little meat, but it's just not a large part of my diet.

On the other hand, for a lot of people meat is life, or at least meat provides the seasoning for life. I totally get this! I'm an economist and it's easy for me to think of life in terms of incentives and prices, but believe it or not I do understand that there is more to life. 

This article from Vox is about the struggle to just have meatless meals in a very meat-oriented part of France. The point is very well taken: issues of identity and diet are not something that is very price-sensitive!

Tips about food

Economist Ph.D. and food scientist Lawrence Haddad contributes to Marie Claire (!) with a few ideas about food and sustainability: "The greater the variety of foods on your plate, the more sustainable your diet. Why? Well, as doctor Haddad explains, 'the more different foods farmers grow, the better it is the variety of life the planet supports.'"

On an unrelated note, COVID is making folks unreasonably nervous about their food choices. While exposure while shopping is possible, there is very little risk associated with foods and yet folks still fear it. 

Runoff

 I don't usually get this deep into the manure, but.... This article on fertilizer in Iowa says, "extraordinary N [Nitrogen] loss per crop acre exceeding 50 pounds in each [watershed] and topping out at 78 pounds in the Yellow River watershed. We can see from the runoff numbers that this was the wettest part of Iowa; still 78 pounds is 78 pounds..." Iowa's corn production is well known, but recently it has also used some land to turn that corn into meat. So now in addition to fertilizer put on the crops, some of the CAFOs are also adding to the waste that is going down the river. "Corn yields can be very good here, but the environmental cost of row crop in this area of Iowa is very, very high.  Yes, when they try really hard and suck everything in, agriculture can squeeze the intense corn/soy/CAFO production model into this area of Iowa. Kind of like an old guy trying to get into a pair of skinny jeans. In theory, maybe it can be done, but…"

Another article on farming in Iowa is on deck, this time talking about the lost topsoil. "The authors aren’t talking about reduced soil fertility or loss of mineral nutrients. They’re talking about the complete removal of the medium in which crops are grown — the utter bankruptcy of the organic richness that lay for centuries under the tallgrass prairie....Previous estimates of erosion, they write, 'may have greatly underestimated the extent of A-horizon loss, and therefore the thickness or mass of soil that has been eroded from hillslopes in the Corn Belt.'"

The article continues: "What drives the research behind this new study isn’t just geological or financial cost-accounting. It’s also carbon-accounting.... [And] as practiced now — with massive reliance on fossil fuels, on soils stripped of organic carbon — industrial farming is a major contributor to the global crisis of atmospheric carbon." Maybe Vandana Shiva's ideas of organics and opposition to monocropping make some sense after all?

Food prices rising worldwide

Although the article talks about prices from Indonesia to the UK, here's a bit about the situation in the USA.

"In the U.S., prices rose close to 3% in the year ending Jan. 2, according to NielsenIQ, roughly double the overall rate of inflation. That small jump adds up, particularly for families already near the edge. The poorest Americans already spend 36% of their income on food, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and mass layoffs in lower-wage work like retail and transportation have increased the strain on household budgets.

Meanwhile, the price of staples like grains, sunflower seeds, soybeans and sugar have soared, pushing global food prices to a fresh six-year high in January. They’re not likely to fall any time soon, thanks to a combination of poor weather, increased demand and virus-mangled global supply chains."

Whither glyphosate?

Mexico recently announced that it will ban glyphosate for domestic production and also imports of GMO corn, which are a big component of their livestock industry. Is Mexico's policy, enacted by Pres. Lopez-Obrador (popularly called AMLO) just more clueless populism? 

source: NY Times

This picture shows the President of Mexico with the "magic amulets" he used to protect himself from COVID. While fortunately he seems to have made a recovery, it will probably not come as a surprise to learn that the protection they provided him was somewhat lacking. 

It is easy lampoon someone like AMLO: are his beliefs about GMOs equally nuts? 

On the one hand Mexico is home to an incredible wealth of biodiversity in terms of corn; on the other hand, the livestock trade is big in Mexico, and feed (mostly GMO corn) is mostly imported from the US. Will they shut down all of that? If they do, the economic repercussions are likely to be considerable. The same actually may not be true of glyphosate: although Bayer (the producer) is on the hook for over $11.5 billion to claimants alleging that they got cancer from the herbicide, revenue from its sale is over $8 billion per year (PER YEAR!) with forecasts of as much as $13 billion in 2027. Translation? Cancer shmancer. Other commentators continue to argue that the cancer scare is bogus. 

Well, the market thinks that we should keep using the product. While the profits are surely poorly distributed, meaning that as monopolists they will surely take more than their share, actually that might mean a drop in use compared to the regular market outcome.

Finally, I wonder if this will continue: for example Germany appears poised to ban the use of the herbicide. Mexico's ban is sure to be tested in court. We'll see how things shake out!

Power from the sun

A quick dump of links on solar power recently:

1) This article riffs on an Our World in Data article showing the falling price of solar. Watch out- you might get hit!

2) The full set of benefits associated with solar power are enumerated in this article based on this research (behind paywall) include the fact that solar is most productive during times when the grid is under the most stress, i.e. when air conditioning requires a lot of electricity. Also they say that having solar on the grid helps make sure that the grid itself is better maintained.

3) Finally, not about solar but about the alternative: the Guardian (lefty-alert!) writes that fossil fuels were associated with over 8 million deaths in 2018, mostly due to air pollution, and mostly in East Asia, including India and China. The former was dramatized in a NY Times piece in December. 

Shifting demand curves

 An example in the news today: as new car production has dropped, used car prices have risen. From NPR

Oysters in the Bay

One type of collateral damage from the COVID pandemic is that many people's diets changed significantly. For example, there were not a lot of people eating at oyster bars, leaving many oysters unsold. The good news is that the SOAR (Supporting Oyster Aquaculture and Restoration) program is using many of these to re-seed the Chesapeake Bay. The downside? Just that it takes really a lot of oysters to make a dent in the pollution: 100,000 oysters remove six pounds of pollution. So is that a lot? Well, according to this 2017 article, a good assumption is that about 23 grams per day of nitrogen are emitted from a single septic system. That's about 18 lbs per year, so you'll need 300,000 oysters to clean up a single septic system. Given that these systems are really common on the Delmarva peninsula, and that many, many other sources of pollution are out there besides septic systems... just ugh.

Externalities and meat

I'm just getting ready to teach externalities in class, and so it was pretty great to find this Vox piece on the price of meat. We will watch Super Size Me 2 in a week or two to learn about the chicken industry: it's pretty entertaining movie that makes some good points even though the director, Morgan Spurlock, has confessed to some pretty abhorrent behavior.

Tabarrok on vaccines

Libertarian economist Alex Tabarrok talks about how he thinks the government should have handled COVID vaccinations. Some interesting facts here....

Tracking bicycling fatalities

While we will learn later about the use of roads for driving in the US, this article shows that folks' use of roads for biking is somewhat different. (They do miss the relatively obvious point that surely places with more people will account for more cyclists and for more deaths.) There are a few interesting bits, though; for one thing, Louisiana?! For another, deaths on rural roads are way over-represented: they are 1/3 of the total, while I'm sure that a lot fewer vehicle miles traveled are located there. Cyclists, be safe: stick to the rivers and lakes that you're used to.

Land use change

New research in Nature on the impact of agriculture and land development shows that although greenhouse gas emissions have increased over time, total emissions from land use change were fairly low for a long time. That changed in about 2001, perhaps in large part due to aggressive deforestation in Southeastern Asia and the South American rainforests. Since then, the share of global emissions attributable to land use change has increased to as much as 25% of the total. This graphic shows that although agricultural production per unit of land has increased greatly, other trends offset that progress, leading to a net increase in emissions.

Renewables coming on strong: will it be enough?

For the first time, the EU produced more energy from renewables (mostly solar and wind) than it did from fossil fuels. That's a big deal, but in the same breath this organization is reporting that they are still not close to reaching the targets for decreased emissions and later carbon neutrality. While definitely good news, it is somewhat undercut by today's other news that global ice is melting at an unprecedented rate, leading a glacier researcher to apocalyptically warn, "[T]hese feedbacks are kicking in faster than we thought." 

Carbon sequestration

One link between Maryland agriculture and climate change is carbon sequestration in agricultural soils. This recent article from the Washington Post puts names and faces on a problem that is pretty old: so old that I once contributed to a paper on the topic. (Just joking- obviously the science had been around WAY before I worked on that project!) Actually this one sentence in the WaPo article, fairly far down the page, sums up our finding: "But studies that sampled deeper soil layers revealed that carbon was lost there, wiping out most of the apparent gains." We weren't sure if that finding was real: it could have come from the functional form we used to model carbon accumulation, or could have just been swamped by the relatively small differences as we compared deeper samples. But that's what it looked like to us, and it's similar to the findings of more recent studies cited in the news article. One researcher concludes, "An overfocus on soil carbon is a diversion from the climate strategies that can have a bigger impact."

While I'm probably most jazzed to see my work continuing to be debated (and relevant!) it's also neat to see that policies are catching up with the science, paying farmers for their contributions in the fight against climate change. Are those subsidies worth it? That is the question....

Car cost & environmental impact widget

This NYT article points to this online app, an exploration of the long-term costs of various cars and their environmental impacts. One big takeaway that although up-front costs are higher for many electric vehicles (EVs), they are a lot cheaper to maintain and fuel than gas-powered vehicles. Of course the price of gas is going to be part of that calculation, but surprisingly it doesn't change things too much. (Click on the "Customize" button at the top to put in your own gas price.) It's pretty hard to get folks past the sticker shock and into seeing the full price of their purchases- kind of like the economics of printer ink!

On a related note, Biden has apparently signed a few executive actions that will promote electric vehicles. This could mean lots of American jobs, though unions grouse that gas-powered vehicles are better- because they require more assembly. Analysts duly note that EVs require more jobs throughout the longer supply chains, though the assembly time may actually be quicker (and hence require fewer employees).

Latest on Uber

My first class this year will be all about the economics of Uber- the benefits and (mostly hidden) costs of the service. I am updating my picture of the company via some recent news articles.

* This unexpectedly encyclopedic webpage covers everything from user reviews to their miserable profits. Another tidbit: "A report from MIT found that US drivers working for Uber and Lyft made an average of $8.55 an hour – higher than a previously reported figure of $3.37 (and the federal minimum wage of $7.25), though still below what any would consider a decent salary (and the minimum wage in 20 states)."

* Yahoo! finance pegs Uber as having an impressively bad profit margin of negative 50% or so.

* A bit about the new California law: the NYT opinion page in June of 2020 notes that "By one estimate, Lyft and Uber saved more than $400 million from 2014 to 2019 by not paying into California’s unemployment fund....One study found that, under the ballot proposal, hourly wages would be a meager $5.64 after factoring in driver down time and other expenses, like fuel and vehicle maintenance. Uber’s threat to halt operations in the nation’s largest state is implausible, particularly as it struggles to overcome billions in annual losses."

* Another NYT opinion article, this one in January of 2021, sums up the arguments against the new California Proposition 22, which passed in November. They argue that time between gigs should be compensated as it is for regular employees; as it is, gig workers don’t get traditional wage protections, workers’ compensation, health insurance, overtime, or unemployment benefits. They argue this is against other labor laws.

* An August article about business is going for the company: "Uber has consistently lost money....Uber said it still intended to become profitable sometime next year.....But in the United States, which is one of Uber’s largest markets, rides were down 50 percent to 85 percent in many major cities." 

* Obviously the pandemic has taken a huge toll on Uber's business, but the bright side has been Uber Eats. Unfortunately, (again from the encyclopedic page): "Uber Eats’ revenue contribution looks considerably less impressive .... it accounts for 10% of net revenue, while rides accounts for 85% (compared to 69% of gross bookings)."

* While Uber has held on due to investor's generosity, the recent spinoff of their automated car division, and a bit of help from Uber Eats, Uber is eating taxis' lunch. Grim times for cabbies.

* Meanwhile, a recent review finds that Uber vehicles continue to contribute to traffic congestion and increase car ownership, while incentivizing use of vehicles with low gas mileage and bad records of killing pedestrians. There is a bit of recent activity from the companies as far as encouraging connects with public transit.

* Seattle has recently implemented a 24% fare hike designed to ensure that drivers earn at least the $15 minimum wage. Meanwhile, Lyft has introduced a program cutting wages (while allegedly increasing rides). 

* During the pandemic, Oregon decided to treat unemployed gig workers as worthy of unemployment benefits. That was pretty nice of them- and it saved some of them a lot of stress- but of course it came from Uber's decision not to pay their part of unemployment payroll taxes, which in California alone would have been about $80 million/ year.

* Update, February 2021: Overall Uber lost $6.8 billion in 2020, but say they are "well on track to achieving our profitability goals in 2021."

Meat impact

 This has appeared on these pages in various forms over the years, but here's the latest version (from this paper):

The first takeaway is obviously how much worse cattle are than other types of meat, but on Twitter iconoclastic economist Emily Oster reminds us that it's also interesting to see that some crops have basically the same impact as some types of meat. 

New kid in town

While the coolest part of the inauguration yesterday was the fantastic poem, since this is a blog about resource economics I will focus on the topic at hand. There is much in the news already on the topic of transportation. In the confirmation hearing for Transportation Secretary nominee Pete Buttigieg, "Buttigieg said options to cover the costs of transportation spending 'could include revisiting the gas tax, adjusting it, and/or connecting it to inflation'....But after the hearing, a Buttigieg spokesman ruled out supporting an increase in the gas tax, saying a 'variety of options need to be on the table to ensure we can invest in our highways and create jobs, but increasing the gas tax is not among them.'" Interesting.

Meanwhile in the Atlantic, a commentator writes, "Rather than try to kneecap America’s oil and gas industries, Biden should pledge a subsidy-palooza that helps bring down the price of every technology in the clean-energy portfolio: hundreds of billions in guaranteed federal purchases of clean-energy tech, such as batteries and electric cars; more subsidies for solar and wind energy; and more R&D spending on clean energy and carbon removal." 

This is the difference between economics and political economics: the former is interested in finding what is most efficient, while the latter focuses on what is most politically palatable. Both matter!

News grab bag

 * 2020 was likely tied for the hottest year on record, and the increases in the past decade have been striking. At least as dangerous, hot temperatures in arctic regions released more CO2 as permafrost continues to melt, making it likely that the effects continue to compound over time: "[T]he world is seeing an increase in heat waves, storms and other extreme weather as the planet warms, and in disasters like droughts, floods and wildfires that result. Last year offered no respite, with record fires in Australia and California, and severe drought in central South America and the American Southwest."

* More on the difficulty of recycling plastic. This is just a post by an anonymous Reddit user but it talks about the various types of plastic, the need for great cleaning and sorting, etc. 

* From a little more reliable source: Ford (and also eventually Volkswagen?) have electric vehicles coming out. They are eligible for government rebates and otherwise match characteristics of Tesla. 

* Wind power and batteries are on the rise in Texas: "Since 2015, the amount of wind-generated electricity has more than doubled in Texas, and last year 23 percent of the state’s power came from wind turbines...Battery storage capacity in Texas is expected to grow more than seven-fold this year, from 215 megawatts of available battery storage last year up to over 1,500 by the end of this year...."

* Are organic foods better for you? No question that they are better for the environment, but I didn't think that it mattered much for people. Articles like this one, while stating the case for organics mostly on environmental grounds, in my opinion undercut their own case with their aggressive language- they recognize that the evidence is not strong but they insist on drawing strong conclusions anyway. However this peer-reviewed article concludes that although conclusions are tentative, there is some evidence that organic foods do help with a variety of conditions. (The preceding link is a meta-study putting together data from lots of studies like this one to draw a bigger conclusion.) I'm skeptical, but this evidence is definitely food for thought! 

COVID & meat-packing

"Up to 8 percent of coronavirus cases in the United States in the first five months of the pandemic could be linked to infections among meatpacking workers" (source) and an article from today's Washington Post says that "Coronavirus cases among meatpackers alone accounted for up to 20 percent of [Nebraska’s] cases over the summer." In Tyson's chicken plants in the state, "witnesses who worked in the plants testified that ... they are forced to breathe through blood-soaked paper masks for hours."

Pandemic-induced emissions drop

Remember back in March and April of 2020 when there weren't as many cars on the road? That really did have an impact, though unfortunately it hasn't been enough to meet goals. And of course, there's the small matter of the fact that we only achieved that decrease as hundreds of thousands died, millions were ill (and we aren't sure how long effects will last for the "long haulers.") Definitely not a drop anyone would choose, but hopefully we can learn something from it, at least.

From a longer-term perspective, the planet didn't get any cooler: 2020 was effectively tied with 2016 for the hottest year on record.

Agricultural productivity

From my inbox today: according to this site, agricultural productivity in the US is 2.5 times what it was in 1950, and that is done using almost the same amount of inputs (actually slightly less). That's impressive! More food for less inputs is definitely a good thing.

Better than offshore wind, it's... carbon pricing!

In a study comparing policies in Britain to Germany, the authors found that carbon pricing did more for less: setting a price for carbon helped the government reach the goal cheaper. Setting a price on emissions did more to get total emissions down than did Germany's heavy investment in renewables. The idea is that if you penalize coal consumption, for example, it will drop in the short term as well as the long term. 

Update 1/14: Norway is also hiking its own carbon tax, more than doubling it from US$94 to $235 by 2030. "It will be expensive, increase costs and weaken competitiveness of the Norwegian continental shelf," said a lobbying group, and they're not wrong!

A related example is stopping gas flaring, which I have heard is one of the cheapest ways to avoid emissions. If gas can be captured rather than being flared, that will keep emissions from hitting the atmosphere right away.

Food prices

The pandemic has messed up our food supply. After the well-publicized issues at meat processing plants, the supply chains for all types of food also have struggled as folks stayed away from restaurants and cooked more at home. I'm not sure what led to what there- maybe partly from supply chain disruptions, but also due to issues like drought in South America, in the end food prices have climbed. This article identifies many of the causes such as a spike in the price of palm oil (did you know that palm oil is in half of all supermarket products?). The UN's FAO index has food at a recent high, though not yet approaching the ridiculous levels it hit in 2011. Hopefully it comes back down, particularly for those hard hit by COVID. While food isn't a huge share of our household budgets, the story is different in poorer countries, and it could make a huge difference there.

Update 1/18: Just came across this article on palm oil. I've heard so much bad about its negative environmental consequences and just assumed it's pretty bad nutritionally. Well, it seems like it's a fat: not great for you, but not much worse than coconut oil, for example, and indeed some sources of it more sustainable. I should be more agnostic and less judgmental!

State of the Bay report: CBF gives it a D+

While it's better than two years ago, when flooding brought a surge of agricultural chemicals into the estuary, things continue to be grim for the Bay, and overall things are worse this year than last. Rockfish used to be a success story, didn't it? I guess not so much anymore, after water quality continues to decline; I would have hoped that the pandemic might have cut into the emissions produced. Maybe it's too early to see impacts like this: the press release makes some reference to changes as of 2017.

For and against meat

A lot of news articles on the subject of animal agriculture have caught my eye lately. The environmental impact of animal agriculture is pretty large, including the impacts of water pollution as well as on climate change. Animal source foods are an important part of child nutrition, though in the US there is no shortage.

* Starting off with a bang, here is the iffy source "Eco-watch" making a point about Tyson foods. While it may be a little ambitious to attribute the very real dead zone entirely to Tyson, the larger point is valid: crops in the US Midwest let a lot of fertilizer runoff into the Mississippi River, which then leads to algal blooms in the Gulf of Mexico.

* The same is true in Europe. Taking into account the costs of the environmental damage, the prices of meat and dairy products are much lower than they should be once external costs are taken into account. From Nature, a pretty legit source.

* A peer-reviewed article on nutrition and the environment- food systems FTW.

* Also Brazil is seeing a rise in vegetarianism even as Brazilian President Bolsanaro fueled the fires of deforestation in the rainforest that dominates the interior of his country.

* Animal-source foods are key to child nutrition.

* A peer-reviewed article from 2017 says that animal agriculture is key to human health in the US: particularly a few niche chemicals must come from (or at least are most accessible via) animals. 

* A 2019 article says that animals are key but right now they are too large a share of the US diet: having more protein come from plant sources would be better.  From the introduction: "According to the 2018 report, in the years 2015–2017, meat consumption in North America was an estimated 200 lbs per person per year. In comparison, annual meat consumption in Latin America and the Caribbean averaged approximately 130 lbs per person, in East Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific approximately 60 lbs per person, and in Africa only approximately 30 lbs per person."

* A 2020 article has nothing good to say about meat: they blast the chemicals, links to cancer, and environmental issues like the carbon footprint. 

* Update Jan. 26: Beyond Meat announced a partnership with Pepsi today that has given their (Beyond's) stock a boost. While this is promising news, it could also simply be a sign of the overheated stock market that the news has triggered an impact though, "The specific portfolio of products is still in development." 

Happy New Year!

Last fall semester was crazy: trying to provide my students with quality instruction in a new format as well as finishing up a couple of research projects, including this two year project on child health and this one on COVID co-authored by two other TU Econ profs, on COVID. (Disclosure: Prof. Shrestha was the heavy hitter on this one!)

Anyway, all semester when I saw an article related to Resource Economics I didn't have time to make a post, so here are a few all together.

* Fishing on the high seas only makes economic sense when it is subsidized.

* A relatively unknown cost of CO2 (a cause of climate change): decreases in vitamins produced by plants in high CO2 areas, such as this study showing decreased amounts of vitamin B and iron.

* A review on the causes and consequences of food loss and waste. Another in the same publication finds that the most waste comes from the foodservice sector: probably not true in 2020! Just a guess....

* The Bakken shale in North Dakota has been productive in terms of both natural gas and oil, but the costs to the area are piling up: the state has had to use money earmarked for COVID relief to plug some mines. Here's hoping the benefits to ND outweigh the costs.

* And now for something completely different: more energy may be available from geothermal sources than was previously known. That's good news for everyone but recent grads hoping to get into the oil industry.