ECON372/OK2021WT2/NewsWiki1
Environmental Economics News Wiki #1
- Add your group's news item and analysis to the bottom of the page.
- Each item must include:
- A link to the article.
- A summary of the article (~150 words).
- An analysis of the article using course concepts (~300 words).
- A discussion of political issues related to article topic (~150 words).
- Names of group members.
- Note that the Wiki system does a poor job of managing multiple simultaneous edits. To avoid having to redo your work, you should prepare your contribution in an editor and then copy and paste it into the Wiki page.
Group #1
Link
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-surrey-59921201
Summary
This article explains the protest campaign against the drilling for oil in south of Dunsfold Road, Surrey, the United Kingdom. Local council members and Jeremy Hunt, a local conservative member of Parliament, also joined the protest. There are two reasons why the protesters hold campaign. First of all, the potential drilling site is narrow, so vehicles would block residents out from common land. The other and more important reason is that it would be unsustainable to extract oil from the site. The oil and gas reserves in the site are quite small, so it would be unsustainable for future generations. Furthermore, the oil and gas will produce carbon dioxide which accelerates global warming. The protesters also mention about COP26 in Glasgow, saying that it is clearly against the national and international goal to stop global warming.
Analysis:
Three economic concepts are salient in this article. These are: the negative externalities of production from drilling, the negative externalities of consumption from burning oil and gasses, and the bequest value from maintaining the oil reserves.
First of all, the drilling would interrupt the residents’ life in various ways. The residents cannot go through the site because the vehicles would block the road, and noise from the drilling would disrupt their life. The marginal social cost is higher than the marginal private cost, so it needs to be fixed to reach the socially optimal level.
Furthermore, extracting the oil and gasses and using those fuels to generate electricity would produce a lot of carbon dioxide. This is a classic example of negative externalities of consumption because people share the consequences of burning fossil fuels regardless of whether they use the fuels.
Another important aspect is nonuse value. The protesters mention about bequest value that they would like to leave as much fossil fuel reserves as possible for future generations. Oils and gasses are examples of non-renewable resources; thus, their amount is expressed by S1 = S0-Q0, and dS=0. According to the theory, the marginal benefit gained from future will be discounted by r. In this case, r was so small that marginal benefit gained from future is large enough to make protesters willing to keep reserves. This is a small village, so the future generations living in the village would likely be offspring of the current residents, so it is worthwhile to keep the reserves to benefit them.
However, we can interpret that protesters believed in the obligation to keep reserves, regardless of their or their descendants’ benefit from keeping reserves. This interpretation is beyond the assumption of homo economicus, and thus is hard to evaluate by economic theories.
Political challenges:
Although protesters hold campaigns against drilling, their residents might be willing to sell the property rights if the UK Oil & Gas offered a substantial payment. One reason why resident protest drilling is the access to the land, so UKOG may offer to build another road so that their work would not interfere residential life. Furthermore, the village is quite small, so the oil and gasses may generate substantial amount of income. The village can also use money to develop the village and widen its potential. Therefore, the opportunity cost of refusing the drilling site may be significant. The residents and city council are the ones who ultimately has the rights to decide the use of lands, so the bequest or moral values held by protesters outside the county only have the secondary influence on this matter.
| Prof's Comments |
|---|
| On my read, I see two issues. One is that using more fossil fuel contributes to climate change. There seems to be lots of evidence now that the future costs of adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is large. Unless we care very little about the future (have a high discount rate), it seems like we should not be using more fossil fuels.
A second issue is the externality. Developing this resource will mean that heavy equipment is using the narrow lanes of the community, creating nuisance and hazard for the people living in the community. Politically, the company that owns the property where it wants to develop the oil deposit is asking the national government, through an appeal to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, to allow it to go ahead. It is seeking to override the wishes of the locals, who have twice rejected the company a permit to undertake exploratory drilling. Can the company find a way to ignore the wishes of the locals? Or, as you mention, can it perhaps share its profit in a way that the community is made better off? |
Name of Group Members
Thomas Baxter, Yi Cai, Elabssi Eliwa, Ayaka Ogawa
Group #2
Link
Summary
This article sheds light on the illegal mining of gold that has found a foothold in Raposa Serra do Sol Indigenous reserve in Roraima state, Brazil. The community members at the reserve see this activity as an encroachment of their ancestral land as the mining is taking place on the Ireng River which surrounds the sacred mountain-Serra do Atola – that traditional Macuxi leaders hold sacred. Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro has been pushing forward to use the reserved lands as he feels they’re “large swath of land ripe for productive activities”. This has been met with much criticism and opposition along with his policy for monoculture crop cultivation and infrastructure projects like dams on reserves from activists who say ancestral lands and traditions should be preserved. Critics have also pointed out the ‘divide and conquer’ policy of colonists which is similar to what the president is doing by creating a wedge between sections of indigenous communities and thereby acquiring the land by giving it unprotected status.
Analysis
In analyzing this article, some of the main issues are with regard to the impact of mining on the global climate crisis and property rights. The mining taking place in Serra Do Atola leads to depletion of the Amazon reserves which accounts for one of the world’s highest CO2 absorption rate. Moreover, mining releases a large amount of CO2 emissions. By continuing with this project, it completely goes against the Paris Climate Agreement which aims to sustainably reduce global greenhouse gas emissions in this century to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Another point to note is that the Amazon is home to a large number of endangered species and this mining project may cause irreversible damages like the extinction of certain species. President Bolsonaro is prioritizing the short term gains, that is mining the gold and reaping the benefits of it, when the long term effects of climate change are immense in comparison. With regard to property rights, President Bolsonaro is permitting illegal mining in these areas with 96% of the mining profits going towards outsiders, leaving only 4% for the development of Indigenous communities. Indigenous communities who have lived on this land for centuries are receiving minuscule amounts in compensation for this project in addition to dealing with the environmental consequences and damage to their sacred land. The President of a smaller pro-Bolsonaro group, Irisnaide de Souza Silva has an organization that aims to cultivate 74,000 acres of soybean crop in hopes of improving the Indigenous livelihoods, however this leads to the government gaining more rights over Indigenous lands. Another point to note is that the opportunity cost of mining is leaving the land as it is for the Indigenous communities to take care of in their own sustainable ways. When looking at this from a long term perspective, the opportunity cost outweighs the short term gains of increasing gold reserves, especially today when the climate crisis is a burning issue.
Political Discussion
This article details an issue that goes beyond the natural resource and economic implications representing a pervasive political issue. Colonization and natural resource economics have been intricately linked since the 15th century. While the actors have changed, the conflicts, strategies, and motivations have not. On one side are the Indigenous peoples in Raposa Serra do Sol who have stewarded the land and its natural resources for millennia. For most of these people the intrinsic value of the undeveloped land is greater than the extrinsic value of the gold. The risk of destroying culturally vital sites as well as contaminating their water with mercury and other pollutants makes the opportunity cost of development unacceptable. On the other side are those who see the use value of the gold as greater than the use value of the undeveloped land, typically people who do not live on the reserve. Since the state has a vested economic interest in promoting rent seeking to generate revenue, their policies have historically favored development, especially under the right-wing Bolsonaro administration.
| Prof's Comments |
|---|
| There is clearly a question of benefits and costs. The benefits of gold mining are reflected in the profit that the miners can earn. The costs, beyond the direct costs of the mining, are the costs on the environment. The mercury and other pollution of the waterways, the desecration of a sacred site, etc. are costs. These costs are external to the miners themselves, who either are not from the area, or no longer hold the cultural and environmental values of their ancestors. Are the profits earned being reinvested to replace the loss being experienced by the local Indigenous people? It doesn't sound like it.
From the political perspective, this situation clearly illustrates the importance of the distribution of impacts. While there is good reason to think that the costs imposed by the mining are larger than the benefits, the benefits are being captured by a small group of people, most of whom are not locals. The costs are being borne largely by the local Indigenous peoples. The miners are being supported by a national president who has little respect for traditional Indigenous ways, preferring to see the Indigenous people integrate into the 'modern' capitalist Brazilian economy. |
Group Members
- Akanksha Sumanth, Avaneendra Sathivada, Izak Olson, and Partesh Ramana
Group #4
Link:
https://www.watercanada.net/lethbridge-water-treatment-plant-improvement/
Summary:
In 2021, new upgrades were made to the city of Lethbridge, AB water treatment plant to improve its recirculation of sediments removed when discharging water back into the source river. The treatment plant, which draws water from the Oldman River, previously released the waste streams brought about by the treatment process back into the river untreated, allowing for a majority of the processed waste to re-enter the water instead of properly treating and disposing of it. To better protect the local environment and provide a cleaner raw water source, the treatment plant has improved its processes to ensure better relocation of the waste streams by treating the waste after clarification. In doing so, the sediment and particles removed from the water are separately treated in the new dewatering facility. Here, solids that are settled out are now put into a sludge dewatering tank to remove the liquid so that only the solids volume is discarded and can be put in the landfill, and any reclaimed water is sent back to the river. To protect against waste pollution found in other stages of the treatment process, equalization tanks were added, where water volume can accumulate and concentration can stabilize, allowing the effluent water quality to be more consistent when discharged into the river.
Analysis Using Course Concepts:
In resource economics, we take inputs from the environment to use in our economic processes. We also discharge back into the environment some waste from these economic processes. This can be visualized by thinking of the economy as an element enclosed in the larger environmental system, drawing inputs and disposing outputs into that closed system. In the instance of the Lethbridge water treatment plant, the city was taking raw water from the Oldman River as an input to create potable drinking water, and then discharging some of the by-products of the process back into that source. In doing this, they were polluting their key resource for production and reducing its value. When changes were made and they started treating the effluent products, they benefited as the quality of their input would increase over time compared to its condition had nothing changed.
They are also now treating the water in the system as a recyclable resource in the treatment process. Part of the normally discharged water, about 10%, is being put back into the treatment process to be used again. This diminishes the amount of raw water needed to be pulled from the river in order to achieve the required daily volumes. Putting this in terms of quality of a resource available over time we see that:
S1 = S0 - Q0 + αQ0
Where α is the recycling ratio (10%), Q0 is the utilization rate of the water from the river, and S0 and S1 are the remaining amounts of source water available to the plant from the Oldman River. Because the net utilization rate is decreasing via the recycling process, the overall amount of valuable source water remaining in the Oldman River will be greater. This allows the river to remain an input for a longer period of time, which is important as water scarcity increases and good source water becomes hard to find.
Political Challenges:
The water treatment plant in Lethbridge is owned and managed by the city, so any operational or improvement decisions will be inherently influenced by current political agendas. Devoting a city’s limited resources to any project is bound to drive up scrutiny from citizens who think the money is better spent somewhere else, so the deciding parties need to be able to defend their decision. The changes made to the water treatment plant led to no noticeable changes to the consumer (no improvement was made to the quality of potable water delivered to the residents), so it may be a challenge to justify the spending to people who do not understand the value of the environment.
The reason the project was ultimately accepted was because of new regulations implemented by the Alberta Environment and Parks that required improved quality of discharge into the environment. Policy and regulations have a large impact on where money gets allocated in the economic system, especially if there is a fine of threats and legal fees that would be more costly than to make the changes. This also demonstrates the reach that larger governments and organizations have over the actions of individual communities. Although this may not be how the city of Lethbridge would have chosen to spend their resources, a larger organization deemed it necessary and so the project was completed.
| Prof's Comments |
|---|
| I think you are absolutely right that this change was largely driven by the tighter provincial regulations. The waste discharge from the water treatment plant going back into the river is something that doesn't affect the people of Lethbridge much. It is an externality. The additional cost of upgrading the treatment is something that they would feel on their tax bill. As such, it might be hard to convince Lethbridge voters to support this. Having a strong provincial law forces the city to make this investment. The benefit is of course downstream from the city, where water quality is improved. Riparian habitat is likely healthier, and so are fish populations. Those people downstream are the beneficiaries. They don't vote in Lethbridge, but they do vote in provincial elections, and the province seems to have heard these types of concerns. |
Name of Group Members:
Taylor Bouchey, Tyler Langtry, Brandon May, Marshall Young
Group #5
Link
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/15/finland-sweden-norway-cull-wolf-population-eu
Summary
The article by Patrick Barkham “Finland, Sweden and Norway to cull wolf population” discusses how the Nordic countries are dealing with the native wolf population. Wildlife conservation groups accuse these nations of creating the most hostile environment for wolves in western Europe, claiming that the cull violates the Bern Convention on the conservation of European wildlife and natural habitats. The primary reason for the culling is to maintain livestock with as few losses as possible. However, not all wolf populations are near farms, they are in important places to hunt moose and hunters want large moose populations. Sami Niemi of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry in Finland states that “The long-term goal is to reach the genetic viability of the wolf population.” Finland’s current population of 300 wolves is the highest it has been for a century, while a genetically healthy wolf population should be more than 500. Norway and Sweden also have populations of wolves that are too low while their habitat could house even more wolves. Wildlife groups have appealed to the European Commission and the European court of Justice to declare the culls illegal, but the national governments maintain their stance that is allowing the legal culling of wolves.
Analysis Using Course Concepts
The approval of the wolf cull has led to a point of contention between, on one hand, groups that advocate for the value of wolves as a non-extractive resource in the sense of conserving the environment, and on the other, groups that see wolves as a threat to livestock, and therefore by advocating for the wolf cull give more value to extractive resources. The decision taken by the Finnish government to proceed with the cull seems to be based on the assumption that non-extractive resources such as wolves are harder to value, and therefore have less value in terms of economic output than extractive natural resources such as livestock. Hence the approval to protect animal husbandry at the expense of wolves is based on a cost-benefit model. Put differently, the opportunity cost of preserving the wolves is the death and therefore loss of economic benefits from livestock.
Another element of analysis can be seen through the applications of discount rates. From the point of view of the farmers and hunters, there is no benefit in conserving wolves this upcoming winter. This is because an increase in wolf population is likely to bring an increase in the death of livestock and hunted animals such as moose. Hence, there is no future benefit in preventing the cull from a farmer or hunter's point of view.
On the other hand, preservation groups argue that a genetically healthy wolf population requires a minimum of 500 individuals, currently, there are 200 wolves short of the objective and this gap is likely to increase with the coming into effect of the cull. So, preservation groups' future benefit in preserving the wolf population today is to reach the genetically healthy threshold in the future.
Discussion of Political Issues
The grey wolf is a valuable asset to nature due to its ability to balance the ecosystem and control other populations of biodiversity, yet they are on the endangered species list due to human activity. The article states within the last couple of years the grey wolf population has significantly increased leading to the need for culling. Finland, Sweden and Norway have already begun culling wolves in preparation for this upcoming winter while conservation groups point out to the European Union this may not be the best course of action because it violates European wildlife and natural habitats. The argument is whether it is acceptable to kill wolves inside of the ‘protection zone,’ where the protection of wolves is a priority. Focusing on Norway with a protection zone of 5% of the country would cull approximately 25 wolves within that zone. Wolves outside of this zone may pose a threat to livestock farmers and potentially hunting dogs used in Nordic nations to track game and deer. While Norway is not part of the European Union it is important from a political standpoint that they are only doing this to protect livestock and food production so that wolves do not leave this zone and disrupt the economy.
| Prof's Comments |
|---|
| We can think of an efficient number of wolves. The cost of a larger wolf population is more predation on livestock, and on animals that humans like to hunt. The benefit of a larger wolf population comes from the contribution of the wolf to overall ecosystem health, and existence values held by people throughout Europe in relation to a 'natural' ecosystem existing in the Nordic countries. The efficient number of wolves would maximize the net benefit.
A key point here, implicit in the political aspects, is that the distribution of the costs and benefits is very important. The costs of a higher wolf population is borne largely by livestock farmers and hunters in the Nordic countries. The benefits of a larger wolf population are spread over a much larger population, people all over Europe. Since the governments of the Nordic countries are elected by their citizens, not by citizens of Europe as a whole, it follows that they would likely care more about the costs faced by their citizens than by the benefits enjoyed by people who do not live in the Nordic countries. What may be efficient when all impacts are considered, may not be politically possible when the people making the decisions are only experiencing some of the impacts. |
Name of Group Members
Omar Katul
Zeenat Nisa
Julien Peters
Drake Snitynsky
Group #6
Link
Summary
Starting on november 14, 2021, a series of floods occurred in British Columbia, Canada and neighboring Washington State in the United States. The flood occurred due to a tropical plume moving upwards through the region, which led to increased precipitation of 277.5 millimeters. Of particular concern were the areas of the Fraser Valley, the Interior Region, and the Sumas Prairie as well as the corridor connecting Vancouver, Canada's largest port to the rest of British Columbia and Canada. Specifically, Abbotsford, one of British Columbia's largest agricultural centers, was evacuated, leading to the death of upwards of 600,000 animals in the region as well as extensive damage to home, infrastructures, and farming land. While the flood was the result of increased precipitation, many in Abbotsford argue that more could have been done in terms of flood planning and prevention. Specifically, people reference the fact that not enough funds were able to implement said plans.
Analysis Using Course Concepts
The article demonstrates the class concepts of willingness to pay, discounting and opportunity cost, efficiency, and externalities. Tragically, the situation that occurred last year with the floods on Abbotsford could have occurred differently if the economic issue was solved; hence, it is all the more important to pay attention to how these dynamics showcased in the course could play out in real life. Willingness to pay was demonstrated by the payment structure that the local government wanted, which was an investment in the current period; itself juxtaposed by the other government levels “providing flood aid on a case by case basis” (Olsen, 2019). Hence, even if a catastrophe could happen (which unfortunately it did), the provincial and federal governments would not have provided the aid due to a low perceived risk (unwillingness to pay) for the upgrades, and it also would have been very difficult to get the citizens of Abbotsford to commit to long term tax hikes to pay the “$400 million necessary for the dike upgrades“(Olsen, 2019). This is partly explained by the opportunity cost of the government in providing aid, given they usually forgo flood relief for inland towns in favor of coastal cities (Olsen, 2019). Environmental costs were also ignored while allocating resources. The concept of efficiency can be seen as the government had inefficiently allocated resources towards flood relief instead of investing in preventive measures. The discounting is seen in the fact that due to the benefits not being really clear for the aid providers, or rather the positive externalities not being fully clear at the time, in the fact that the upgrades were unfortunately not completed. Therefore, it is important to consider how the concepts apply to the real world, and important care should be taken in dealing with similar situations in the future.
Discussion of Political Issues
Flood Management Strategy is the current project which the Fraser Basin Council has been working on. The strategy that they are creating, according to Braun, won’t be able to be put in practice without the billions of dollars needed for the project, which costs around $20-30 billion dollars and has been discussed for the past 22 years. Due to the high cost of its changes, it needs Federal and Provincial governments funding. Another challenge is to decide who to manage the influx money destined for the flood protection since there is a downside as to each municipalities manage its own area of Highway 1, which may result in a not efficient management of the flooding and the other option, which is to combine the money but may result in some areas not getting enough to cover the expenses and the coastal areas getting more amount of cash since are bigger cities.
| Prof's Comments |
|---|
| Flood protection infrastructure is an investment that may pay off in the future. A flood like this occurred about thirty years ago as well. Spending billions of dollars for something that has at most a 1 in 30 chance of occurring in any year is challenging for politicians, elected for terms much shorter than 30 years, to justify. When we deal with risk, we typically work with expected values, which we have not yet talked about in this course. The expected present value of investing in flood protection is probably positive, for a long enough planning horizon. However, for a short planning horizon, it may be negative. In a four year election cycle, there is at most a 4 in 30 chance of a catastrophic flood, so a politician will be tempted to hope that a flood doesn't happen during their term, and they can win votes by keeping taxes low.
While floods do cause damage to things humans care about, floods are also important natural phenomena. The dams and dikes that we have built to contain floodwaters have disrupted the natural processes in these now protected areas, and thus have large ecological costs. In some parts of the world, people are starting to work on 'living with rivers' rather than trying to control them. That means keeping expensive and vulnerable structures and activities away from areas that are prone to flooding. For example, don't put livestock housing on land that is prone to flooding. Keep it at higher elevations. Give the rivers space to flood, in such a way that damage is minimized. Another thing that we also have not talked about is the role of disaster relief. Notice that the article talks about needing federal and provincial money. Why? It doesn't seem to be worth it for the local people to pay for something that caused mostly local damage. Getting a large handout from another level of government lets people continue doing things like building in a floodplain, someplace where a flood is almost certain to happen again at some point in the future. |
Group Members
Latif Qureshi, Diego López, Carlos Real López, Flavia Pinto
Group #7
Link
The Supreme Court Case That Could Upend Efforts to Protect the Environment
Summary
The United States Supreme Court is preparing to hear oral arguments next month in the West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) case. In 2015, the Obama Administration introduced the Clean Power Plan, which intended to reduce CO2 emissions from power plants. However, before the Clean Power Plan could be introduced, a lawsuit was brought forward by over 24 Republican-led states, with the new regulation being blocked in a 5-4 vote. During the Trump Administration, the E.P.A. replaced the Clean Power Plan with a new plan, which some researchers say could have actually led to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Democrat-led states brought a case forward against the Trump Administration, and the US Court of Appeals struck down the new plan based on a misinterpretation of the Clean Air Act. This ruling is currently being appealed by a collection of coal companies and Republican-led states, with the previous cases also being rolled into the same hearing.
Analysis Using Course Concepts
This case is an example of how environmental issues becoming political issues leads to increased economic costs associated with implementing regulation regarding alternative energy sources. In particular, the legality of environmental issues significantly raises the transaction costs associated with a policy like the Clean Power Plan. If you think of policy being ‘bought’ by interest groups, lobbyists, or supportive members of government, raising the costs of implementation due to lawyer's fees, press management, campaigning, and more, means there will inversely be a reduced demand for such policy. In other words, by raising the costs of implementation, fewer actors will find it worth it to proceed with drafting and proposal in the first place.
The Clean Power Plan itself is an example of policy meant to reduce the externalities produced by the continued burning of coal and other fuels known to produce high levels of CO2 emissions. By implementing policy that would restrict allowable emissions, the government places and artificial constraint on the energy market. Replacing high-CO2 fuels with alternative energy sources would reduce air pollutants contributing to global climate change. Climate change is a known externality of manufacturing and transportation processes that produce high levels of CO2, leading to less predictable and more extreme weather, air quality reduction, and other effects. These consequences, not directly accounted for in the price of the good and experienced by third parties, are an example of an externality. By taking up initiatives aiming to reduce these effects, the government is also aiming to reduce the economic externality produced.
The recognition of this externality is crucial to another market effect in the energy sector produced by policy like the Clean Power Plan currently being challenged in the United States. As citizens, perhaps more crucially characterized as voters, become more educated on the effect burning coal and fossil fuels have on climate change, the demand for alternative energy will increase, while the demand for other natural resources like coal and fossil fuels will decrease.
Discussion of Political Issues
This particular legal case can indicate a possible political trend towards the judicialization of climate action, where increasing amounts of decisions regarding climate change and alternative energy resources become actions of the courts, rather than policy actions coming directly from the government. It is often the case that upper level courts are used to avoid political responsibility for certain policy options. Rather than being directly responsible for climate action, governments can unload the difficulties associated with drafting and implementation by making cases such as the one covered by the article an issue of constitutionality to be ruled on by the courts instead of an issue genuinely motivated by the desire to implement meaningful climate action.
Moreover, this case displays the instability of climate policy between administrations. The legal battle has endured through two Democrat administrations and one Republican, and the lack of stable resolution and ongoing legal challenges indicates the difficulties associated with climate policy. These issues are further compounded when they become highly publicized legal or constitutional issues, rather than strictly political ones.
| Prof's Comments |
|---|
| The fundamental environmental issue is climate change, and the resource aspects of this are with coal, a resource that results in a large external cost when used, or with a limited capacity of the atmosphere to assimilate carbon dioxide without changing the climate. Most analyses now suggest that the costs of continuing to use fossil fuels are large relative to the benefits. Thus, from an efficiency point of view, particularly if we use a low discount rate, we should rapidly reduce our use of fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, the distribution of the cost and benefits of reducing fossil fuel use are not distributed equally. In the US there are powerful interests that will be harmed if we get serious about reducing fossil fuel use. They are using the courts to try and hamstring the US federal government in its efforts to reduce fossil fuel use and resulting emissions. I agree that the outcome if these legal challenges are successful is that the transactions costs of bringing in new national rules will be very high. As mentioned in the article, it will require the legislative branch to come up with very specific directives for the executive branch. The executive branch will no longer have the ability to enact regulations that it sees as the most effective way to achieve the objectives asked of it. |
Name of Group Members
Christine Semeniuk
Nathan Deng
Serena Yu
Group #8
Link
Summary
Currently, “Climate action failure” is seen as a very important matter of concern. As we all know, climate change is a concern all over the world. According to many experts and leaders, it can even be described as a top global risk. According to the World Economy Forum’s annual Global Risk Report 2022, “Climate action failure” is an issue all across the world that ranks even higher than all global other threats.
According to many reports from 1000 leaders and experts, the issue of climate action failure is as great as the world's concern of not recovering from Covid. Concerns like extreme weather, climate change, biodiversity loss, natural resource crisis, and climate migration are also among the issues that will be more important than all others after 5 to 10 years. This report of the World Economy Forum matters because, beyond all other problems like international crime and economic crisis issues, this is the one that the economists are worried about more.
Analysis Using Course Concepts
The article discusses how "climate action failure” is the biggest concern, according to the views of 1000 experts and leaders. Furthermore, "Extreme weather” and “biodiversity loss" were the second and third biggest concerns respectively. Extreme weather is already an existing issue as the world faces more droughts, fires, and floods. These changes are a direct manifestation of climate change. Biodiversity is also greatly affected by these temperature changes and natural disasters, that makes their environment uninhabitable. This means the top 3 concerns are all directly related to the problem of climate change.
Interestingly, the world’s failure to keep on their promises to counteract climate change is viewed as a bigger problem than the consequences of climate change itself. This indicates mistrust in society’s ability to combat climate change. Furthermore, only around 4% expressed that they were optimistic about the outlook of the world. This indicates that the “pessimistic view” has become very common amongst these experts.
Discussion of Political Issues
When it comes to the severeness of climate change, multiple political challenges arise due to various people having their own political agendas on climate change. Looking at the politics side of it all within a given country, positive climate change can be used as a campaign promise to gain election votes and eventually these promises aren’t followed through with. Internationally, as each independent state or country has varying opinions, it becomes difficult to set conditions for countries to follow all around the world without creating tension amongst the countries. As the article states, the problem ends up “worsening the pandemic’s cascading impacts and complicating the coordination needed to tackle common challenges including strengthening climate action." Ultimately, political challenges with climate change are delicate in nature and poorly considering these challenges in the present can lead to a series of consequences.
| Prof's Comments |
|---|
| Climate change is a big issue, which from a global perspective it is now quite well accepted that the benefits of action - reduced future costs - are larger than the costs of those actions. This is true unless one has little regard for the future - a high discount rate. However, we do not have a global authority who is looking out for global wellbeing. Rather, we have a collection of nations who are primarily interested in their own wellbeing. And generally, that wellbeing within a nation is focussed not on the whole population, but on a subset of powerful interests.
There are a variety of ideas that can represent this, many of which we have not yet introduced in the course. We can think of the atmosphere as an open access resource, where each individual or nation only considers the impacts of adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere on themselves, ignoring the fact that by adding carbon dioxide, they are making everyone else a little worse off. The atmosphere is not exactly non-rival, but it is effectively non-excludable, the characteristics of an open access resource. We expect open access resources to be overused. Another perspective is that of a prisoner's dilemma style of game. While the collective good is achieved if everyone cooperates and does not use fossil fuels, each player is better off if they themselves keep using fossil fuels. So, all have an incentive to cheat, and it looks like all are doing so. |
Name of Group Members
Eren Bahar
Marwan Abdel Reouf
Rohini Ganguli
Khush Bhagchandani