Economist David Friedman makes three important points in his recent Substack column: According to mainstream predictions, global warming will cause worldwide per capita income by the end of this century to be a few percentage points lower than if there were no warming. “If you go by expert opinion, William Nordhaus or the body of the IPCC…
Author: John C. Goodman
Michael Shellenberger Critiques Radical Environmentalists
John Tierney and Joel Kotkin review Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, by Michael Shellenberger. Tierney (in the Wall Street Journal) writes: “He chronicles environmental progress around the world and crisply debunks myth after gloomy myth,” writes Tierney. “No, we are not in the midst of the ‘sixth mass extinction,’ because only 0.001%…
Is Climate Change Killing People?
Numerous news sources are reporting a claim that a warmer climate is killing so many American that health departments aren’t equipped to handle the upsurge in cases. Yet the most precise measurements we have show there has been no increase in U.S. temperatures since 2005, writes Heartland Institute scholar James Taylor. He goes on to…
Barry Asmus, RIP
Barry Asmus, who died March 30, 2020, studied at Montana State University, where he was mentored by economists at PERC, the Property and Environment Research Center. He picked up his appreciation of the free market from them (Richard Stroup was his thesis adviser). While Barry didn’t enter the environmental field, he became an advocate for…
The Environmental Impact of Coronavirus
The World Meteorological Organization said the coronavirus pandemic is expected to push carbon dioxide emissions down by 6 percent this year, which would be the largest one-year decrease since World War II. WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a virtual briefing that the drop could be traced to the “lack of emissions from transportation and…
A Laffer Curve for Pollution?
Most of us naturally assume that some pollution is the price we must pay for economic progress. That may be true, but studies show that more pollution is bad for health, IQ, productivity and employment. That means that pollution reduces human capital. There may be a “Laffer Curve” for pollution, just as there is for…