On Carbon Dioxide, a Better Alternative — Nov. 29, 2007
Instead of the complicated "cap-and-trade" system to reduce carbon emissions proposed in current congressional legislation, a tax on carbon dioxide refunded directly to individuals would cut emissions while cushioning the impact on the pocketbooks of American families, write Keith Crane and James Bartis.
Commentary
Energy and Environment Research Area
A New Analytic Method for Finding Policy-Relevant Scenarios — Jul. 9, 2007
Scenarios play a prominent role in policy debates over climate change, but questions continue about how best to use them. A new analytic method, based on robust decisionmaking, can be applied to water resource management in California and climate change policy questions.
Full DocumentEnergy and Environment Research Area
Policy Issues for Coal-to-Liquid Development — May 24, 2007
In testimony presented before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, James T. Bartis discusses the key problems and policy issues associated with developing a domestic coal-to-liquids industry.
Full DocumentAddendum
Modeling Climate Change Threat Can Help Improve Policy Decisions — Feb. 02, 2007
Climate change presents decisionmakers with a fundamental quandary: how to address a potentially serious, long-term, and uncertain threat. A joint project of RAND Infrastructure, Safety, and Environment and the RAND Pardee Center seeks to address this problem through basic research and computer modeling.
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Global Warming, Let's Take This Decade To Prepare —1993
The most important near-term policy responses to the potential threat of climate change are research and development for emission-reducing technologies, institutional reforms, and technical aid to developing countries, all designed to facilitate large future worldwide reductions of greenhouse gas emissions if such reductions prove necessary.
Full Document
Shaping the Future — 2005
Rigorous, systematic methods for dealing with deep uncertainty can help frame strategies that work well over a very wide range of plausible futures, offering ways to address long-term problems, such as climate change.
Read the Article at sciam.com
A Sequential-Decision Strategy for Abating Climate Change — 2004
Current debate on policies for limiting climate change due to greenhouse-gas emissions focuses on whether to take action now or later, and on how stringent any emissions reductions should be in the near and long term. Any reductions policies implemented now will need to be revised later as scientific understanding of climate change improves.
Full Document
Adaptive Strategies for Climate Change — 2002
Climate change presents a problem of decision-making under conditions of deep uncertainty. In the face of this uncertainty, we should seek robust strategies. Robust strategies are ones that will work reasonably well no matter what the future holds.
Abstract Read the Full Document at evolvinglogic.com
Capital Cycles and the Timing of Climate Change Policy — 2002
This report, commissioned by the Pew Center, finds that the patterns of capital investment, and the factors that drive this investment, present key opportunities for and constraints on policy-makers attempting to address the threat of climate change.
Read the Full Document at pewclimate.org
Carrots and Sticks for New Technology: Abating Greenhouse Gas Emissions in a Heterogeneous and Uncertain World — 2002
Technology incentives appear attractive, but their record in practice is mixed and economic theory suggests that in the absence of market failures, they are inefficient compared to taxes and trading. This study uses an agent-based model of technology diffusion and exploratory modeling to examine the conditions under which technology incentives should be a key building block of robust climate change policies.
Abstract
The Environmental Implications of Population Dynamics — 2001
Understanding the effects that population growth has on the environment will be paramount in developing policies that will mitigate the negative environmental effects. This report discusses the relationship between population and environmental change, the forces that mediate this relationship, and how population dynamics specifically affect climate change and land-use change.
Full Document
Robust Strategies for Abating Climate Change — 2001
Robust strategies for climate change are possible. In the near term, the key components of such strategies should include: establishing the physical and institutional capability to monitor the relevant climate and economic systems, establishing the capability to effectively regulate greenhouse gases, and encouraging the development and diffusion of new emissions-reducing technologies.
Full Document
The Impacts of Climate Variability on Near-Term Policy Choices and the Value of Information — 2001
Variability is one of the most salient features of the earth's climate, yet quantitative policy studies have generally ignored the impact of variability on society's best choice of climate-change policy. This study compares the performance of a wide variety of greenhouse-gas-abatement strategies against a broad range of plausible climate-change scenarios.
Full Document
May Cooler Tempers Prevail: Let Technology Reduce Hot Air over Global Warming — 2000
The argument for alternative energy technologies is not new, but today we know more than ever about the promise they hold. Developing countries no longer need to choose between reducing pollution and expanding their economies, because new technologies can allow developing nations to "grow clean."
Full Document
Developing Countries & Global Climate Change: Electric Power Options for Growth — 1999
This report, prepared for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, investigates policy and technology choices in the electric power sector that can lower carbon dioxide and other air emissions, while maintaining or improving economic growth.
Full Document
When We Don't Know the Costs or the Benefits: Adaptive Strategies for Abating Climate Change — 1996
Most quantitative studies of climate-change policy attempt to predict the greenhouse-gas reduction plan that will have the optimum balance of long-term costs and benefits. The large uncertainties associated with the climate-change problem can make the policy prescriptions of this traditional approach unreliable.
Full Document
Future Emission Scenarios for Chemicals That May Deplete Stratospheric Ozone — 1988
In this report, scenarios are developed for long-term future emissions of seven of the most important manmade chemicals that may deplete ozone, and the corresponding effect on stratospheric ozone concentrations is calculated using a one-dimensional atmospheric model.
Full Document
Projected Use, Emissions, and Banks of Potential Ozone-Depleting Substances — 1986
The release of certain synthetic chemicals, including the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), may contribute to the depletion of the earth's protective stratospheric ozone layer. This document examines, from an economic perspective, the forces that will shape long-term emission profiles for seven chemicals, including the two major CFCs, suspected of contributing to potential ozone depletion.
Full Document
The Problem of Climate: A Review for the Nonspecialist — 1975
The need for understanding climate is urgent due to the seeming inevitability of natural and anthropogenic climatic changes in the future. We need to construct improved models and also begin the systematic collection and analysis of global climatic data necessary to calibrate the models and to support diagnostic and empirical studies.
Full Document
Transition Paths to a New Era of Green Industry: Technological and Policy Implications — 2002
Full Document
Climate-Change Strategy Needs to Be Robust — 2002
Abstract
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