In this series of blog posts I will discuss some of the assigned readings for the Sustainable Planning Seminar (Urban Planning/Geography/Landscape Architecture 446) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).

This week’s readings were:

1. “The Incidence of a U.S. Carbon Tax” by Kevin Hassett et al.
2. “The Great Climate Debate” by Reddy, B.S., Assenza, G.B.
3. “The Bankruptcy of Capitalist Solutions to the Climate Crisis”
   by Christine Frank
4. “Carbon Tax or Cap?” by Janet Pelley
5. Ecosystems and Human Well Being (Millenium Ecosystem Assessment)
6. “The Value of the World’s Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital”
   by Costanza, R., et al.
7. “National Natural Capital Accounting with the Ecological Footprint Concept”
   by Wackerangel, M., et al.
8. “The Human Nature of Unsustainability” in The Post Carbon Reader
   Chapter by William Rees

Notes

Hassett:

• Carbon tax could be applied in two ways: Directly (by looking at the direct consumption from end-users) and indirectly (by measuring the increased production costs that are passed onto consumers).
• A “progressive” carbon tax would increase costs for higher income consumers (i.e. individuals with a greater carbon footprint) than others.
• The main finding of this study is that the direct and indirect components of carbon taxes have not changed the distribution of wealth.
• The “regressivity” of a carbon tax is diminished by considering the policy’s lifetime.

Reddy:

• Economic losses from natural distasters have been increasing.
• Data on economic losses from natural disasters shows that between 2000 and 2010 the average economic loss was 202 billion dollars U.S. and between 2010 and 2020 it was 292.6 billion dollars U.S.
• More data shows similar results and breaks down each year by disaster event. The damage from extreme weather and flooding is increasing.
• There are opportunities for win-win solutions: economic, which is a net negative cost for the whole economy, and financial, which is a negative cost (i.e. profitable) for a particular investor.
• It’s unclear how many win-win opportunities exist.
• Development should be driven by considerations for economic prosperity, human development, and environmental benefits.

Frank:

• The author seems to be a doomsayer. It’s true that we, as a global society, will change our way of life, or nature will change it for us. However, I don’t agree that this spells annihilation for us all. She underestimates human tenacity.
• To the author, all solutions to the climate crisis that attempt to work within the prevailing economic system are merely license to pollute and abuse the environment.
• Passionate ideology makes this article challenging to read.
• I find it interesting that the author claims that nuclear power isn’t low carbon (nor environmentally friendly) because greenhouse gases are generated at every stage of the lifecycle. Yet doesn’t consider this fact for renewable energy (rather… not for solar or wind). This is cherry picking and fallacious.
• Yikes, her solution is a “planned” economy? Planned economies and just-in-time free market economies both have limited flexibility, but for different reasons.

Pelley:

• This article was brief. The question was: is a carbon cap better than a carbon tax? The author’s answer is: the optimal solution is likely a mixture of both.

Rees:

• Humans are genetically predisposed for resource acquisition.
• Humanity belongs to a class of species called “k-strategists.” Which have successful and stable populations.
• Negative population feedback is required to reduce this behavior – yet humanity has confounded natural feedbacks through innovation (i.e. Malthus was wrong).
• Memes are a form of horizontal gene transfer (bacteria exhibit this behavior).
• True solutions require global cooperation (obviously).
• The book this essay comes from criticizes nuclear energy. I can’t engage without knowing what those criticisms are, but nuclear should absolutely be a part of the solution. There are valid criticisms of nuclear energy but if your goal is to reduce carbon emissions and decelerate resource use, then you need nuclear.

Wackerangel:

• Sustainability requires maintaining natural capital.
• This paper quantifies national resource use with the “ecological footprint.”
• Ecological footprint is calculated by estimating the productivity of land resources and the countries’ population. This is a challenging process of recording and tracking resource flows.
• Well they used a spreadsheet for data processing… someone call EuSpRiG (European Spreadsheet Risk Interest Group)
• Solutions include: increasing productivity (via agroforestry or other farming techniques – which I advocated in my paper on resource use), reducing demand, or improving efficiency.
• The calculations in this paper are knowingly incomplete but offer a foundation for more complicated analyses.

Constanza:

• How do changes in quantity or quality of ecosystem services and natural capital affect human welfare?
• Valuation is present in every choice, regardless of acknowledgement.
• How much are beneficiaries willing to pay to keep a good or service?
  E.g. If a forest provides aesthetic value, how much would you be willing to pay to keep it there?
• Some ecosystem services are irreplaceable.
• If the value of natural capital was adequately captured, the world economy would look very different.
• The value of ecosystem services and natural capital are estimated at 16-54 trillion U.S. dollars.
• This paper answers the exact question I had regarding “replacement cost” of natural capital (it’s very hard to replicate everything we use from the ecosystem).

Millenium Assessment: