Editor Note: Robert Murphy’s peer-reviewed article in The Independent Review, “Rolling the DICE: William Nordhaus’ Dubious Case for a Carbon Tax”, is available online [.pdf].
When I first began working for the Institute for Energy Research, my preliminary research indicated that William Nordhaus (now a co-author of Paul Samuelson’s famous economics textbook) was a great representative of the mainstream case for a Pigovian carbon tax. I have gone on to study his case, presented in articles and a book, in great detail. What I have found is an eager willingness to spot “market failure” coupled with a naive faith in government “solutions.” The full article deals with these big picture issues, but this post will dwell on the narrow technical results–using Nordhaus’s own numbers–that should give average economists pause when it comes to the typical recommendation of a carbon tax to “internalize the externality” of greenhouse gas emissions.…
Last month, an article in The Economist tried to make the case that global warming is or ought to be an urgent concern for developing countries. My letter protesting the speculative and unsubstantiated claims of the piece was prominently published in the current issue. Although the editors of The Economist changed my title, dropped the references, and made it somewhat briefer, the printed version is quite faithful to the spirit of the original, which is available here.
For the public record, my full version is provided below.
A badly developed climate backgrounder
SIR — The Economist’s article, A bad climate for development (September 17), which also serves as a backgrounder for an online debate on climate change, is not only selective in the information it presents, it is riddled with speculation and unsubstantiated claims.…
Editor’s note: This article is the second of two on shale gas production. The first dealt with the U.S. situation; this one looks at the potential impacts of shale gas production in Europe and China.
Natural gas production in Europe, currently just over 11 Tcf, has been falling rapidly over the past decade. About three fourths of Europe’s gas is produced in just three countries: the UK, Norway and the Netherlands. Production peaked in 2003 at 13.5 tcf.
Consumption, on the other hand, continues to rise. Gas use in Europe stood at 20.5 tcf in 2008 and is likely to increase further as coal-fired power plants retire or are phased out of service for environmental reasons. Most of Europe’s imported gas comes from Russia (about 80%), with the remainder mostly as LNG.…