The Price of Everything - Eduardo Porter [143]
216-220 The Price of the Future: Nicholas Stern’s evaluation of the investments needed to avert catastrophic climate change is drawn from The Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change, Chapter 13, “Towards a Goal for Climate Change Policy,” p. 295 (webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/sternreview _index.cfm, accessed 07/19/2010); Lauren Morello, “Is 350 the New 450 When It Comes to Capping Carbon Emissions?,” New York Times ClimateWire, September 28, 2009; and Juliette Jowit and Patrick Wintour, “Cost of Tackling Global Climate Change Has Doubled, Warns Stern,” Guardian, June 26, 2008. Analysis of the discount rate is drawn from William Nordhaus, A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 9-11. Nordhaus’s disagreement with Stern is discussed in William Nordhaus, “The Challenge of Global Warming: Economic Models and Environmental Policy,” Yale University Working Paper, July 2007; and William Nordhaus, op. cit., p. 11. Estimates of economic growth over the past two hundred years come from Angus Maddison, “Historical Statistics for the World Economy: 1-2008 AD” (http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/Historical_Statistics/horizontal-file_02-2010.xls, accessed 08/11/2010).
220-222 Torn Between Two Prices: Stern’s and Nordhaus’s contrasting prescriptions are found in William Cline, “Climate Change Economics 2008,” Lecture presented at Colgate University, Center for Ethics and World Societies, Hamilton, New York, March 10, 2008; and William Nordhaus, A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), especially pp. 1-29, 88-93, and 165-191. Data from the European Climate Exchange is at www.ecx.eu. Dasgupta’s difficulty in reaching a conclusion on how much to spend to slow global warming is in Partha Dasgupta, op. cit.
222-225 Salvation on the Cheap: Comments about geo-engineering solutions to global warming are found in Catherine Brahic, “Hacking the Planet: The Only Climate Solution Left?,” New Scientist, No. 2697, July 2009, pp. 8-10. The tale about the wager between Julian Simon and Paul Ehrlich is in John Tierney, “Betting on the Planet,” New York Times Magazine, December 2, 1990. The price of Brent crude is drawn from the Energy Information Agency database (at tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=Plastic&s=RBRTE&f=D, accessed 07/19/2010). Martin Wolf’s despair is in evidence in Martin Wolf, “The Dangers of Living in a Zero-Sum World Economy,” Financial Times, December 18, 2007. The price of the contents of Ehrlich’s basket can be found in U.S. Geological Survey, “Historical Statistics for Mineral and Material Commodities in the United States” (minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/index.html, accessed 07/19/2010).
226-229 When Prices Fail: The estimate of the impact of the financial crisis on the world’s economic output in 2009 is drawn from the International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook, April 2010 (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2010/01/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=64&pr.y=7&sy=2008&ey=2015&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=001&s=NGDPD&grp=1&a=1, accessed 08/09/2010). The relationship between the price of orange juice and the weather is drawn from Richard Roll, “Orange Juice and Weather,” American Economic Review, Vol. 75, No. 5, 1984. Data on the rise and fall of home prices is from the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Home Prices Index (www.standardandpoors.com/indices/sp-case-shiller-home-price-indices/en/us/?indexId=spusa-cashpidff