This week's Economist (June 2nd - 8th) has an excellent special report on business and climate change. Meant to post this a few days back but definitely worth a read if you can still get hold of it. The Economist, long a sceptic of climate change, has definitely become converted to the cause and produces it usual high standard of analysis and reporting on what's going right, what's going wrong and what's on the horizon. I particularly enjoyed the article 'Irrational incandescence' which highlights that there are around 6 gigatonnes of CO2 pollution per annum which if abated would actually save us all money and improve economic growth. This ties in with a point made in the IPCC report that I blogged recently (here):
"Note that the bottom up analysis [of greenhouse gas mitigation] anticipates potential mitigation even at a zero carbon tax."
The second article is online at Yahoo Finance by Dr Charles Wheelan. It looks at plans in the US Congress to subsidise the liquidisation of coal to make fuel and the broader economic and environmental issues it raises. Judging by some of the responses to the article there are a lot of people who just don't understand the relationship between 'free' markets, state regulation and the purpose of subsidy and taxation in relation to things like pollution. This is a pity as it increasingly plays a role in all our lives.
As a brief aside, in the UK there are plans to increase airport capacity in the very crowded South East of England (the area around London). This, to me, raises a very simple question. How do you balance the economic gain accruing to the airport operator BAA and the airlines against the economic (reduction in house values) and environmental (air and noise pollution) losses faced by the residents affected?
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