In the news / New articles / Conference and seminar annoucements / Open positions
In the news:
- Representative Concentration Pathsways (RCP) should, of course, be understood as scenarios. At the moment we are following the worst one out there, RCP8.5.
All the talk about capping warming at 1.5°C is nice, but now the world has to show its true colors! - The main points from the COP21 agreement (or nicer graphically here):
- The agreement commits 196 countries to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5℃”
- Countries will pursue their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) with a 5 year review process (who cares about this review process since these targets are non-binding anyway?)
- By 2050 the world carbon stock should be non-increasing (given the current pledges, the INDCs lead to a rise of around 3°C)
- Developed nations give at least 100 billion US$ a year from 2020 to help poorer nations deal with climate change. (but they don’t want to feel responsible for the damage they induce upon the poor from climate change)
- And finally, the reason why it is so useful/important/necessary to stay well below 2°C warming is because 18 out of 37 climate tipping points (may) occur when global temperature rises 2℃ or less
- For 1.5°C, we need everything, and we need it now.
- Brad Plumer is not wrong in saying that the fossil fuel era is unlikely to be stopped by the outcomes from COP21 anytime soon. This is especially true since fossil fuels are highly subsidized by the countries that export them and this is unlikely to change in the near future.
New articles/papers:
- Modeling Coupled Climate, Ecosystems, and Economic Systems, by W. A. Brock and A. Xepapadeas (gives a useful introduction to Robust Control)
- Carbon tax, pollution and spatial location of heterogeneous firms
Nelly Exbrayat; Stéphane Riou; Skerdilajda Zanaj (shows that carbon taxes may induce relocation of pollution firms – very similar to the leakage arguments)
- Climate policy decisions under uncertainty
Harry Clarke
- Preferences and pollution cycles
Stefano Bosi; David Desmarchelier; Lionel Ragot (obtains interesting dynamics)
- Going Green : Framing Effects in a Dynamic Coordination Game
Gerlagh, Reyer; van der Heijden, Eline (finds that green framing significantly increases the number of profitable transitions, but also inhibits the learning from past experiences, and thus it reduces coherence of strategies. )
- Green Capital, a new book by Christian de Perthuis and Pierre-André Jouvet
Conferences:
- 31st Congress of the European Economic Association, Geneva, Switzerland, from Monday August 22 to Friday August 26 2016. Submit paper here.
- Venice Summer Institute 2016: Climate Change and Migration, Jul 22, 2016 9 AM – Jul 23, 2016 5 PM in San Servolo, Venice, Italy.
- 2016 International Energy Workshop, Cork, June 1st – 3rd 2016, Deadline for submission: February 1st, 2016
Open positions:
- Lancaster University is opening a full-time Assistant Professor (Lecturer) position in Agricultural and Environmental Economics, with a focus on sustainable development. That is an outstanding position with no teaching at all (unless voluntary) during the first two years. Please contact Jean-Francois Maystadt (j.maystadt@lancaster.ac.uk). Preliminary interviews could be conducted at the January 2016 AEA meetings in San Francisco and RES meetings in London.
ingmar schumacher 