{"id":170,"date":"2010-04-12T14:05:42","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T18:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.riverbendadvisors.com\/blog\/?p=170"},"modified":"2011-07-25T14:32:27","modified_gmt":"2011-07-25T18:32:27","slug":"paul-krugmans-environmental-economics-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.riverbendadvisors.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/paul-krugmans-environmental-economics-101\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Krugman’s Environmental Economics 101"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Friedman is the New York Times columnist most often associated with promoting the new green economy, but Sunday’s Times Magazine article is a reminder that Paul Krugman, who won a Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008 for his work on international trade, has something to say as well.<\/p>\n

And say it he does, in his April 11th, 2010 article Building a Green Economy<\/a><\/em>. The article deserves a prominent place on any short list of recommended must-read pieces on the challenge of sustainability and global climate change. What makes the article so valuable a contribution is not a list of Krugman’s preferred policy choices (because that’s not really the focus), nor even the compelling case for action (though it’s an excellent one), but the thorough review of what Krugman refers to as “Envionmental Economics 101”. It’s a short survey course in the economics of climate change and sustainability that covers the ground both comprehensively<\/strong> and comprehensibly<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

It’s particularly worth making the effort to get people to read Building a Green Economy<\/em> now, as the “glib deniers” seem to be in the ascendant. It is one of the few single pieces that covers the spectrum of what the deniers say, which effectively runs like this – “It isn’t really happening…if it is happening, it’s natural, not man-made…if it is man-made, it’s not really that bad…if it is that bad, it’s too expensive to fix….”.<\/p>\n

For some people, just realizing that they’ve heard that exact sequence of “reasons” may be enough to give them pause. If someone told you that all those nagging noises and warning lights in your car were nothing to worry about, you’d probably want to believe him, too. But as they continue and he’s into his fourth different explanation, you might just be willing to listen to a second opinion….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Friedman is the New York Times columnist most often associated with promoting the new green economy, but Sunday’s Times Magazine article is a reminder that Paul Krugman, who won a Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008 for his work<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,5,12],"tags":[53,54],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-behavioral-change","category-finance","category-policy","tag-background","tag-economics","","tg-column-two"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.riverbendadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.riverbendadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.riverbendadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.riverbendadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.riverbendadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.riverbendadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":490,"href":"https:\/\/www.riverbendadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions\/490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.riverbendadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.riverbendadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.riverbendadvisors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}