Environmentally unfriendly jobs booming

This article claims that the key to job creation in the U.S. is non-renewable domestic energy in the form of natural gas and oil. The industry has grown 80% more jobs and 20% of total new net private jobs since 2003 are in the domestic oil and gas industry. The author credits the boom in non-green jobs to new technologies like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing that are renovating the harvesting processes in both oil and natural gas. Areas in the U.S. seeing the job boom are North Dakota with 200 oilrigs producing just under half a million barrels/ day and a subsequent 3.5% unemployment rate. Pennsylvania Marcellus shale formation is credited with creating 18,000 new jobs in the first half of this year. I understand where the author is coming from when he/she criticizes Obama administration and the political left for proposing a 5-year plan to ban drilling on outer shelf and delaying the Keystone pipe-laying project. However, I am hesitant to say that more jobs now is more important than a cleaner planet for future generations. All in all I do not agree. Although investing in renewable energy is not yet cost effective, I think is still an important option in terms of a healthy earth. Even though Obama’s green loan program has failed to create the 65,000 estimated jobs (only 3,500 have emerged from the $38.6 billion loan) I think it is important that the research continues hopefully resulting with a viable green energy option in our country’s future.

~Natalie Ciletti

Movies!

In our class we just completed a movie assignment with some pretty amazing results. I'm impressed by the work students put in to (in most cases) get interviews and then edit them into short, attractive, often amusing short videos. Take a look!

Climate Change and the Chesapeake

Canary in a Wet Mine: Fish & the Chesapeake

Valuation of the Chesapeake Bay

Agricultural Effects on the Chesapeake Bay

Clean Energy and the Chesapeake Bay

Air Quality and the Chesapeake

Bayline: Boats on the Chesapeake

Fishing & regulations

Interesting article on cod fishing in Gloucester, Mass. Regulations limiting catch hurt people trying to make a living by fishing, and it's really hard to hold people to limits. It can be done, but in this case doing so provoked a political backlash. In the end it seems that catch shares (ITQ's) are the way things are going to go, but systems don't change lightly.

Since there are externalities in this "commons" situation, using catch shares or taxes are the way to get to the social optimum. It's not easy to figure out what that social optimum is, though, and spreading the pain around so that it doesn't hit anyone disproportionately is virtually impossible. Clearly effective regulations are necessary, but also humane implementation of the regulations is something to strive for. There's already enough pepper spray in the air these days!

Sprawl is good

So contends Marta Mossburg, op-ed writer for the Sun in this column blasting Gov. Martin O'Malley for his PlanMaryland scheme. She raises a few good points, and while I don't agree with her overall let me reiterate some of her points.

I don't doubt that people are moving away from Baltimore City, and I'll believe her that people are also leaving PG and Montgomery counties. Could this be because people prefer to live in rural areas? (She also says that more people have moved to rural areas, but this looks to be largely because of the growth of Aberdeen Proving Ground.)

She makes a valid point that O'Malley's shifting state money from rural to urban areas benefits him politically: Democrats tend to be concentrated in such areas, and this can be seen as an excuse to send money to his supporters. On the other hand, moving money from areas where there are few people to areas where there are more people could also be seen as simply efficient: investing in public goods that benefit the most people is generally a good idea, though some public goods such as wilderness area do not lend themselves to urban investment.

Her next contention is that high density is bad because it tends to produce highly concentrated pollution. I won't argue with that either, except to say that pollution abatement measures can alleviate some of that. For example, urban areas are more likely to impose more stringent air quality controls on vehicles. However, ultimately she's right: concentrated people produce concentrated pollution, and that is expensive to deal with. The question I'd ask is what her preferred alternative is. If everyone is commuting by car from a rural area to an urban job, the total amount of pollution is almost certainly more, though it's more distributed. And though she dismisses climate change as "subjective," I am not as sanguine about the issue.

Her dismissal of Maryland emissions and of mass transit in general don't impress me, but she is more convincing when she says that limiting growth will raise housing prices. That seems likely to me: any kind of an increase in restrictions is likely to raise prices. On the other hand, she ignores prices completely when she says that increased density means more pressure on existing systems. So, the implication is that it's cheaper to build new ones than to repair the old? That doesn't make much sense.

It's expensive to internalize externalities, no question. That doesn't mean that it isn't the right thing to do.

Tax on a Christmas Icon

The Federal government is thinking of imposing a 15-cent tax on Christmas trees this year, in an attempt to improve “the image and marketing of Christmas trees.” The secretary of agriculture was going to appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board who was going to be in charge of researching and designing new strategies to strengthen the industry of Christmas trees in the market. The 15-cent tax was going to be levied on the sellers of fresh-cut Christmas trees, but only for sellers who met or exceeded the sale of 500 trees a year. But, the tax could be easily passed on to the consumers, who are already in a financial bind coming into the holiday season because of still high unemployment rates.

The Obama administration decided to delay their proposal for this tax the following day, as there was such a large outcry from the public. The public was upset and so was the Christmas tree industry, as many in the industry did not even want the tax. The industry has tried three prior times and after a period of time the revenue of the tax decline to the point that the programs were no longer effective to run.

This tax can be seen as another attempt by the Federal government to have a say in the market operations in the United States. The government is already extended itself further and further, while there is still an issue of a large national debt. The implementation of a tax on Christmas trees can also be seen as an infringement from the government on the ability of its citizens to choose their own religion freely. What is special about the Christmas tree to those who do not celebrate Christmas? Why should there be a tax to improve the image of the Christmas tree if not everyone cares about Christmas trees? These are the gray areas that the federal government needs to be cautious proceeding on, especially in an economically tight time where many are not happy with the government as it is.
--Meredith Springsteen

FUEL ECONOMY RULES TO COST $157 BILLION

That's the headline of a Business Week article. You have to wait to the bottom of the second paragraph to find out that,"Benefits of $419 billion to $515 billion in fuel savings would offset the costs." Seems like a net benefit of around $300 billion would be a good thing, but maybe that's just me....


This article is the first for the last quiz. You don't need it or anything more recent for the 11/18 quiz #4.

US = Spain?

An article in today's NYT looks at the large number of subsidies available for producers of solar and other alternative energy and concludes that the US will see real benefits from the major investments that have been made in these areas over the past few years. However, the glut of spending, mostly from the stimulus funds spent over the past few years, has been pretty inefficient: industry could have done more solar with less money if the incentives had been structured better. Let's just hope we're not building a house of cards like they did in Spain!