Common Resources

Cap and Trade in China: How Might It Work?

China plans to start a nationwide cap-and-trade market in 2016. But can China, whose economy still contains many nonmarket features, properly design and implement a fundamentally market-based policy? In our new RFF discussion paper, my coauthors (RFF’s Richard Morgenstern, Zhongmin Wang, and Xu Liu) and I attempt to answer this question by examining cap-and-trade pilot […]

Designing Cost-Efficient Surveillance to Control Invasive Species

Invasive species can cause substantial reductions in a region’s ecological, industrial, and human welfare, and often require significant control expenditures. The Emerald Ash Borer, for example, established itself in the United States in the early 1990s and has caused the death of hundreds of millions of ash trees and is estimated to cause billions of […]

Climate Change Policy Imperatives: Let’s Not Neglect Adaptation

Each succeeding year in which the world fails to agree to forceful and binding commitments to slash releases of greenhouse gas emissions underscores the increased urgency of complementary measures to strengthen resilience to impacts of global warming that may no longer be avoided or sufficiently mitigated through just emissions reduction. Framing that dilemma in shorthand […]

Fuel Conservation Policies in the Indian Car Market: Examining the Welfare Effects

India’s car market has expanded rapidly since the country’s economic reforms in the early 1990s, a trend that is expected to continue well into the future; its passenger fleet alone is projected to swell from 22 million to 112 million vehicles between 2010 and 2030. In the wake of this growth, India is considering the […]

How US Gridlock May Handicap Climate Leadership

Next week, world leaders will meet at the United Nations in New York City at the invitation of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss actions the leaders will take to limit their country’s emissions of greenhouse gases in an effort to forestall global climate change. For many, success of […]

How Should the World Bank Estimate Air Pollution Damages?

One of the indicators the World Bank uses to measure the sustainability of a country’s growth is adjusted net savings (ANS), which includes an estimate of the costs of health damages from exposure to outdoor air pollution. This pollution damage indicator is published annually in the World Development Indicators, together with estimates of annual average […]

Pursuing a Global Climate Treaty: Next Stop, New York

Climate change takes center stage in New York City two weeks from now when world leaders will attend the United Nations Climate Summit—a stepping stone along the path to a new global climate agreement to emerge in Paris in late 2015. Don’t expect a “kumbaya” moment at the summit. Rather, expect to see a very […]

The Importance of Reviewing Mitigation Contributions in International Climate Policy

As the international community continues climate negotiations on the road to the Paris 2015 UN-sponsored climate talks, attention has turned to the review of countries’ emissions mitigation contributions and commitments. This builds on the evolution toward a pledge and review regime established in the 2009 Copenhagen and 2010 Cancun negotiations. In my new RFF discussion […]

On Proposed Regulations for Arctic Offshore Oil Drilling

This entry previously appeared as a comment on the National Journal’s Energy Insiders forum “Can Arctic Drilling Be Done Safely?”. On August 15, the Obama administration took a long awaited step forward in the development of safety standards for Arctic offshore drilling operations. The submission of proposed regulations by the Department of the Interior (DOI) […]

Taking Steps toward Green Growth in China

For decades, China’s government has focused on economic growth and has paid less attention to the associated environmental consequences. But today, the need for environmental regulation is more widely recognized as a critical ingredient for continued, sustainable growth in the world’s most populous country. In a new RFF discussion paper, Green Growth (for China): A Literature […]