Articles from 2012

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An Economic Approach to the Environment 
Wall Street Journal, 24 April: Economists haven’t enjoyed much popularity since the financial crisis, with their profession painted as recklessly focused on flimsy mathematical models over common sense. But in tackling humanity’s biggest challenges—climate change, malaria, natural disasters, education—we need more economic science, not less. Cost-benefit analysis, in particular, is a far more effective and moral approach than basing decisions on the media’s roving gaze or the loudness of competing interest groups.

The Problem of Priorities
Project Syndicate, 16 April: COPENHAGEN – This decade has seen remarkable progress against humanity’s greatest challenges. Consider the declaration of victory over polio in India, which seemed impossible ten years ago. January marked one year since the country’s last reported case. Or look at the strides made against malaria: over the past decade, the number of cases has been reduced by 17%, and the number of deaths has dropped by 26%.

Gone With the Wind 
Project Syndicate, 16 March: COPENHAGEN – Efforts to stem global warming have nurtured a strong urge worldwide to deploy renewable energy. As a result, the use of wind turbines has increased ten-fold over the past decade, with wind power often touted as the most cost-effective green opportunity. According to Connie Hedegaard, the European Union’s commissioner for climate action, “People should believe that [wind power] is very, very cheap.

Germany’s Sunshine Daydream 
Project Syndicate, 16 February: COPENHAGEN – One of the world’s biggest green-energy public-policy experiments is coming to a bitter end in Germany, with important lessons for policymakers elsewhere. Germany once prided itself on being the “photovoltaic world champion”, doling out generous subsidies – totaling more than $130 billion, according to research from Germany’s Ruhr University – to citizens to invest in solar energy. But now the German government is vowing to cut the subsidies sooner than planned, and to phase out support over the next five years. What went wrong? 

The Emperor’s New Climate-Change Agreement
Project Syndicate, 11 January: COPENHAGEN – Dressing up failure as victory has been integral to climate-change negotiations since they started 20 years ago. The latest round of talks in Durban, South Africa, in December was no exception.