Around the world, people are moving to cities. The U.S historical experience shows that an environmental benefit of moving people from the countryside to the cities is that the rural trees grow back. See Alex Pfaff's nice work on this point.

A similar dynamic is now playing out in Central America's and South America's Rainforests. History provides some useful lessons! New York Times Piece on trees

In this Internet age the New York Times is trying to seek out its profit niche. This article on Dating Wall Street Dudes was interesting. Bloggers can't compete with this stuff. The New York Times had to invest to find this set of daters and to encourage them to form a focus group to get these young ladies to speak from the heart and wallet. Symmetry should have required the Times to have paid the Wall Street hourly wage to their boyfriends in order to assemble these "Masters of the Universe". Once seated, these guys could tell their side of the story. Such a "he said/she said" going on in public is good stuff.

More generally, this suggests that the New York Times should be studying new short run sociological trends going on in cities. Academics move to slow to detect these and require too much data to convince themselves that observed behavioral change isn't a statistical fluke. I'm not convinced that bloggers actually speak to other people. --- So, it is up to the media to get out and talk to people --- not simply quilting together quotes from "experts" to flesh out a story that a journalist wants to write.

What are other sociological possible topics the Times could cover?

1. Are the Obama daughters the cool kids at their new school? At the school, Who has tried to freeze them out and why?

2. Nepotism among Successful politician's children. Returning to Caroline Kennedy; are any of the children of successful politicians doctors or scientists? (i,e. in positions of influence unrelated to what their father/mother does and the network they have tapped into)

3. For people who used to make 5 million a year who are now making 1 million a year, is Dennis Gilbert right? Are they happy? How have the reconfigured their lives?

Have you ever read a newspaper article and this shifted your research agenda? I must admit that this happened to me after I read this piece. I have written about "pollution havens" and the pollution content of international trade between rich and poor countries but this article, with its focus on the choices of consumers, got me thinking.

I called Lucas Davis. Lucas is a great economist and I knew that he is an expert on pollution issues in Mexico. We started to work together to build up an empirical project taking a close look at the scale and composition of used private vehicles that have been exported from the United States to Mexico under NAFTA over the calendar years 2005 to 2008. Over 2.5 million vehicles were "mailed" to Mexico. Given that Mexico's total vehicle stock was 20 million vehicles, this is a significant expansion. Today we received a nice writeup, see Salon Article Today about the Davis/Kahn paper

If you have the time and patience, here is a Free copy of the Davis/Kahn paper.

In a nutshell, here are our key findings:

1. At a point in time, used vehicle trade between the rich country (the exporting USA) and the poor country (the importing Mexico) causes average emissions in each nation to decline! Yes, the USA exports "dirty" vehicles to Mexico and these vehicles are dirtier than our average vehicle so since marginal > average, average emissions decline in the USA after we export. BUT, the vehicles that Mexico imports are CLEANER than the average vehicle on the Mexican roads so from the Mexican perspective, marginal < average --- so average emissions decline in both nations.

For you retired labor economists, this is one of the funny Roy Model cases. You remembers the joke of the student who transfers from Yale to Harvard and this lowers the average brains at each school.

2. Vehicles are durables and durables can live a long time. In the USA, 99% of vehicles are scrapped and dead at age 15. In Mexico, vehicles can live on to age 30. We argue that a perverse environmental effect of trade is that by moving a 12 year old USA vehicle to Mexico, this vehicle would have lived 3 more years in the USA but lives on another 10 years or more in Mexico and thus its total greenhouse gas emissions goes up because of endogenous life expectancy.

We recognize that Mexicans drive fewer miles than people in the USA but this doesn't offset this lifeexpectancy effect.

We also recognize that Mexican buyers of used USA vehicles are of 2 types. There are past bus takers buying their first vehicle and there are previous Mexican vehicle owners who owned a really low quality vehicle. Used vehicle trade may lower the emissions of the 2nd group as they move up the quality ladder. The "bus people" experience an increase in their emissions because buses are "green" per-capita.

I boasted to my students today that I would be interviewed by Reuters TV concerning President Obama's Green Jobs plans. I had even created a list of cogent points that I spent 15 minutes in class today talking about. But, as usual, my opportunity past. The birth of octuplets is certainly bigger news than anything I have to say and the camera man who would have interviewed me is still at the California hospital nearby covering this story.

I've also had to live with the cosmic injustice that the new Senator from New York is younger than me
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/nyregion/26gillibrand.html?hp. I was happy to read that she is UCLA Law School Graduate.

Now back to that pack of new diaper wearers.


Q&A: The Incredible Birth of Octuplets
Jeanna Bryner
Senior Writer
livescience.com
2 hrs 47 mins ago

The birth of eight babies at a California hospital yesterday is a gestational feat that has happened only one other time in the United States, doctors said.


The event required a team of 46 to carry out the Caesarean section at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center. As of this writing, Mom and all eight babies - six boys and two girls - were said to be doing fine, despite being 9 weeks premature.


This birth of octuplets raises a slew of questions surrounding multiple births:


How could a woman conceive octuplets?


"It would be very unlikely that this would be natural," said James Airoldi, maternal fetal medicine specialist and director of Obstetrics at St. Luke's Hospital and Health Network in Bethlehem, Pa. "It's very likely this was the result of some form of ovarian stimulation with the use of fertility drugs." This method would cause the ovaries to produce more follicles (each of which releases an egg) than normal.


"In vitro fertilization won't get you this [octuplets], because most doctors who do in vitro fertilization will only put two or three embryos back," Airoldi said, adding that even if a doctor inserted three embryos back into a woman's uterus and one of these split to produce twins, you'd only get four embryos.


"There's no doctor who would've put seven or eight embryos back in. That would be totally irresponsible of any doctor," he said.


The likely cause: so-called ovarian stimulation and fertility drugs, which cause a woman to produce more eggs than normal.


Do multiple babies share the same placenta?


Only identical twins, which would come from the same egg that splits, could share the same placenta, a pancake-shaped organ that attaches to the inside of the uterus and is connected to the fetus by the umbilical cord. The placenta delivers nutrients and oxygen from the mother's blood to the fetal blood, while transferring the baby's waste in the other direction.


The other babies, which come from separate eggs, would each pull nutrients from a separate placenta.


Does a mom carrying octuplets need to eat more?


"We recommend 300 extra calories per baby," Airoldi said, adding though that with eight babies, the extra calorie intake would not be feasible (multiply 300 by 8 ... 2,400 extra calories).


"They can't because their bellies are so big. So usually it amounts to trying to eat small frequent meals and trying to keep your calories up to at least 3,000 calories per day," he added.


Does carrying octuplets put more stress on a woman's body?


A resounding yes. "These babies are the most efficient parasites in the world," Airoldi told LiveScience. "They are taking every ounce of iron to build their red blood cells and every ounce of calcium to build their bones. So if mom isn't supplemented, mom is going to end up with nothing in the bank."


Have multiple births increased in the United States?


"Absolutely," Airoldi said. "I'll see 25 patients a day and at least five of them will be multiple gestation."

Over the past two decades, multiple births in the United States have skyrocketed, with the number of twins born between 1980 and 2003 increasing by more than 65 percent and the number of higher-order multiples (triplets or more) jumping four-fold during that time, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Today, more than 3 percent of all babies born in the United States are multiples, with most being twins.

Why? The fact that more women are getting pregnant at older ages and the use of fertility drugs and other artificial fertility methods, according to Airoldi.

For older women, "their ovaries are trying to get that one last party in, that one last shot at conceiving so they have this overshoot phenomenon where they may release two eggs at once, trying really hard to desperately conceive before they go kaput," Airoldi said.

"Older women that conceive are at higher risk of multiples," he said. "And we are seeing women conceiving at later ages. And we also see higher rates in fertility medication used to conceive."

I know how to make a cup of coffee. I know how to make a decent economics lecture. I don't know how to produce a unit of "confidence". The micro-econometrics literature has emphasized the importance of accounting for heterogeneity. In a diverse world, how do different policy actions that President Obama, Drs. Bernanke, Romer and Summers may propose affect individuals' "confidence" that the USS Enterprise is flying in the right direction on its way back to prosperity?

When I read Paul Krugman's columns, he seems to be saying that government needs to send a credible signal that it is "on the job" and that everything will be okay. The hope appears to be initialize a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There needs to be some explicit discussions by researchers who work on social networks and social interactions (so the macro guys would be Brock and Durlauf) on how you set off a macro chain-reaction.

For example, suppose that Paul Krugman is an influential person in the sense that if he were to start to write OP-ED pieces saying that the crisis is over that other people (like my mom) would read this and increase her optimism about our short run future.

The math equation here is that my mom's probability of being bullish on America depends on her own views of the fundamentals and what she thinks the influentials (i.e Paul Krugman) thinks.

So we get into an infinite regress here. Under what conditions does Paul Krugman grow more optimistic about our short run future? He clearly would be more optimistic if there was an enormous New Deal. While John Cochrane may not agree with him, suppose we get the New Deal.

Krugman gets optimistic and this causes my mom and her friends to get optimistic. This beneficial contagion spreads and consumer demand rises and factories start to hire again. The banking sector would get unfrozen as ambitious bankers see money flying around again.

In aggregate, the recession ends.

Is this story right? Note that the recession ends even if the Government Big Push achieves nothing but make Dr. Krugman optimistic.

Now I am giving him a very large treatment effect coefficient in this confidence production function but it is up to macro-economists to estimate this equation.

So, my question for macro-economists is whether they need to start to work with sociologists on determining how social-interactions feed into "panic" (the loss of confidence) and who are the influentials for helping to bring back confidence in the cheapest way possible.

Does Obama have FDR clout? What did FDR do to earn that clout? Has Watergate and past wars made us too cynical about Presidents for the new generation of presidents to have this historic clout in boosting our "confidence"?

What did Keynes say about what is the production function of "Animal Spirits"?

Drug companies have always been accused of price gouging. Now , the Associated Press is making the case that drug manufacturing and the disposal of unused drugs is a major cause of water pollution in the USA and in the developing world. In terms of polluting rivers, the easy geography answer here would be to not allow multiple drug factories who produce pills with the same chemicals to locate near each other. If they were spread out, then water samples indicating elevated chemical levels would allow authorities to immediately to know which factory is responsible for the dumping and they could be held accountable. Without such a 1 to 1 mapping, how will drug factories be held accountable for their water pollution?

In the US the problem appears to be drug disposal. Abstracting from changing our culture, how do you incentivize pill poppers to dispose of their chemicals in a responsible way? Perhaps there is another drug that these individuals could take that would help them be more responsible for their other pills' disposal? On college campuses, we could introduce another garbage bin for these pill. As we separate our trash into an uncountable number of categories, there isn't much extra cost of adding an extra bin.

World's highest drug levels entering India stream
By MARGIE MASON, AP Medical Writer Margie Mason, Ap Medical Writer

PATANCHERU, India – When researchers analyzed vials of treated wastewater taken from a plant where about 90 Indian drug factories dump their residues, they were shocked. Enough of a single, powerful antibiotic was being spewed into one stream each day to treat every person in a city of 90,000.

And it wasn't just ciprofloxacin being detected. The supposedly cleaned water was a floating medicine cabinet — a soup of 21 different active pharmaceutical ingredients, used in generics for treatment of hypertension, heart disease, chronic liver ailments, depression, gonorrhea, ulcers and other ailments. Half of the drugs measured at the highest levels of pharmaceuticals ever detected in the environment, researchers say.

Those Indian factories produce drugs for much of the world, including many Americans. The result: Some of India's poor are unwittingly consuming an array of chemicals that may be harmful, and could lead to the proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria.

"If you take a bath there, then you have all the antibiotics you need for treatment," said chemist Klaus Kuemmerer at the University of Freiburg Medical Center in Germany, an expert on drug resistance in the environment who did not participate in the research. "If you just swallow a few gasps of water, you're treated for everything. The question is for how long?"

Last year, The Associated Press reported that trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals had been found in drinking water provided to at least 46 million Americans. But the wastewater downstream from the Indian plants contained 150 times the highest levels detected in the U.S.

At first, Joakim Larsson, an environmental scientist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, questioned whether 100 pounds a day of ciprofloxacin could really be running into the stream. The researcher was so baffled by the unprecedented results he sent the samples to a second lab for independent analysis.

When those reports came back with similarly record-high levels, Larsson knew he was looking at a potentially serious situation. After all, some villagers fish in the stream's tributaries, while others drink from wells nearby. Livestock also depend on these watering holes.

Some locals long believed drugs were seeping into their drinking water, and new data from Larsson's study presented at a U.S. scientific conference in November confirmed their suspicions. Ciprofloxacin, the antibiotic, and the popular antihistamine cetirizine had the highest levels in the wells of six villages tested. Both drugs measured far below a human dose, but the results were still alarming.

"We don't have any other source, so we're drinking it," said R. Durgamma, a mother of four, sitting on the steps of her crude mud home in a bright flowered sari a few miles downstream from the treatment plant. High drug concentrations were recently found in her well water. "When the local leaders come, we offer them water and they won't take it."

Pharmaceutical contamination is an emerging concern worldwide. In its series of articles, AP documented the commonplace presence of minute concentrations of pharmaceuticals in U.S. drinking water supplies. The AP also found that trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals were almost ubiquitous in rivers, lakes and streams.

The medicines are excreted without being fully metabolized by people who take them, while hospitals and long-term care facilities annually flush millions of pounds of unused pills down the drain. Until Larsson's research, there had been widespread consensus among researchers that drug makers were not a source.

The consequences of the India studies are worrisome.

As the AP reported last year, researchers are finding that human cells fail to grow normally in the laboratory when exposed to trace concentrations of certain pharmaceuticals. Some waterborne drugs also promote antibiotic-resistant germs, especially when — as in India — they are mixed with bacteria in human sewage. Even extremely diluted concentrations of drug residues harm the reproductive systems of fish, frogs and other aquatic species in the wild.

In the India research, tadpoles exposed to water from the treatment plant that had been diluted 500 times were nonetheless 40 percent smaller than those growing in clean water.

The discovery of this contamination raises two key issues for researchers and policy makers: the amount of pollution and its source. Experts say one of the biggest concerns for humans is whether the discharge from the wastewater treatment facility is spawning drug resistance.

"Not only is there the danger of antibiotic-resistant bacteria evolving; the entire biological food web could be affected," said Stan Cox, senior scientist at the Land Institute, a nonprofit agriculture research center in Salina, Kan. Cox has studied and written about pharmaceutical pollution in Patancheru. "If Cipro is so widespread, it is likely that other drugs are out in the environment and getting into people's bodies."

Before Larsson's team tested the water at Patancheru Enviro Tech Ltd. plant, researchers largely attributed the source of drugs in water to their use, rather than their manufacture.

In the U.S., the EPA says there are "well defined and controlled" limits to the amount of pharmaceutical waste emitted by drug makers.

India's environmental protections are being met at Patancheru, says Rajeshwar Tiwari, who heads the area's pollution control board. And while he says regulations have tightened since Larsson's initial research, screening for pharmaceutical residue at the end of the treatment process is not required.

Factories in the U.S. report on releases of 22 active pharmaceutical ingredients, the AP found by analyzing EPA data. But many more drugs have been discovered in domestic drinking water.

Possibly complicating the situation, Larsson's team also found high drug concentration levels in lakes upstream from the treatment plant, indicating potential illegal dumping — an issue both Indian pollution officials and the drug industry acknowledge has been a past problem, but one they say is practiced much less now.

In addition, before Larsson's study detected such large concentrations of ciprofloxacin and other drugs in the treated wastewater, levels of pharmaceuticals detected in the environment and drinking water worldwide were minute, well below a human dose.

"I'll tell you, I've never seen concentrations this high before. And they definitely ... are having some biological impact, at least in the effluent," said Dan Schlenk, an ecotoxicologist from the University of California, Riverside, who was not involved in the India research.

And even though the levels recently found in Indian village wells were much lower than the wastewater readings, someone drinking regularly from the worst-affected reservoirs would receive more than two full doses of an antihistamine in a year.

"Who has a responsibility for a polluted environment when the Third World produces drugs for our well being?" Larsson asked scientists at a recent environmental research conference.

M. Narayana Reddy, president of India's Bulk Drug Manufacturers Association, disputes Larsson's initial results: "I have challenged it," he said. "It is the wrong information provided by some research person."

Reddy acknowledged the region is polluted, but said that the contamination came from untreated human excrement and past industry abuses. He and pollution control officials also say villagers are supposed to drink clean water piped in from the city or hauled in by tankers — water a court ordered industry to provide. But locals complain of insufficient supplies and some say they are forced to use wells.

Larsson's research has created a stir among environmental experts, and his findings are widely accepted in the scientific community.

"That's really quite an incredible and disturbing level," said Renee Sharp, senior analyst at the Washington-based Environmental Working Group. "It's absolutely the last thing you would ever want to see when you're talking about the rise of antibiotic bacterial resistance in the world."

The more bacteria is exposed to a drug, the more likely that bacteria will mutate in a way that renders the drug ineffective. Such resistant bacteria can then possibly infect others who spread the bugs as they travel. Ciprofloxacin was once considered a powerful antibiotic of last resort, used to treat especially tenacious infections. But in recent years many bacteria have developed resistance to the drug, leaving it significantly less effective.

"We are using these drugs, and the disease is not being cured — there is resistance going on there," said Dr. A. Kishan Rao, a medical doctor and environmental activist who has treated people for more than 30 years near the drug factories. He says he worries most about the long-term effects on his patients potentially being exposed to constant low levels of drugs. And then there's the variety, the mixture of drugs that aren't supposed to interact. No one knows what effects that could cause.

"It's a global concern," he said. "European countries and the U.S. are protecting their environment and importing the drugs at the cost of the people in developing countries."

While the human risks are disconcerting, Sharp said the environmental damage is potentially even worse.

"People might say, 'Oh sure, that's just a dirty river in India,' but we live on a small planet, everything is connected. The water in a river in India could be the rain coming down in your town in a few weeks," she said.

Patancheru became a hub for largely unregulated chemical and drug factories in the 1980s, creating what one local newspaper has termed an "ecological sacrifice zone" with its waste. Since then, India has become one of the world's leading exporters of pharmaceuticals, and the U.S. — which spent $1.4 billion on Indian-made drugs in 2007 — is its largest customer.

A spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, representing major U.S. drugmakers, said they could not comment about the Indian pollution because the Patancheru plants are making generic drugs and their members are branded. A spokesman for the Generic Pharmaceutical Association said the issues of Indian factory pollution are "not within the scope of the activities" of their group.

Drug factories in the U.S. and Europe have strictly enforced waste treatment processes. At the Patancheru water treatment plant, the process is outdated, with wastewater from the 90 bulk drug makers trucked to the plant and poured into a cistern. Solids are filtered out, then raw sewage is added to biologically break down the chemicals. The wastewater, which has been clarified but is still contaminated, is dumped into the Isakavagu stream that runs into the Nakkavagu and Manjira, and eventually into the Godawari River.

In India, villagers near this treatment plant have a long history of fighting pollution from various industries and allege their air, water and crops have been poisoned for decades by factories making everything from tires to paints and textiles. Some lakes brim with filmy, acrid water that burns the nostrils when inhaled and causes the eyes to tear.

"I'm frustrated. We have told them so many times about this problem, but nobody does anything," said Syed Bashir Ahmed, 80, casting a makeshift fishing pole while crouched in tall grass along the river bank near the bulk drug factories. "The poor are helpless. What can we do?"

___

AP National Writer Martha Mendoza contributed to this report from California.

We know that consumers maximize utility and firms maximize profits. What do government officials maximize? What do reporters seek to maximize? What is the central goal of the New York Times or the New York Post? Educating the public? Entertaining the public? Simply making money? I haven't carefully read this piece on The Media and the Climate Change Policy Debate but it looks important. The media certainly plays a "causal role" in influencing the policy debate and the actual set of policies that are enacted. It is useful to see how a smart insider from the media business views the dynamics of how the media covers events. My one pet peeve is that I would like to see the New York Times hire more PHD economists to do their business and economic reporting. Now, I know from first hand experience that not all economists are good writers. The elite media could certainly choose those individuals who write well but in this age of specialization, I think it would help the media to focus on people with some baseline expertise in what they are talking about and who know how academics use evidence and theory to test hypotheses. In the rush to take theories from "the lab" and turn them into real world policy, we need to have more honest debates about the uncertain consequences of well meaning policy actions --- this true both for macro "TARP" issues today and for climate change policy debates that I hope are coming soon.

In Sacramento yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend a group lunch with Mary Nichols. Mary was the Director of UCLA's Institute of the Environment when I joined the UCLA faculty in January 2007. Later in the day, I also had a very productive meeting with some key staff members of the Sacramention Municipal Utility District (SMUD). Sacramento is an exciting place. I don't know why members of the Sacramento Kings ever say that it isn't a lively city.

First 100 Days: Obama’s first climate change target

By Mary D. Nichols – Reuters
January 22, 2009


Mary D. Nichols is Chairman of the California Air Resources Board, the lead agency for implementing California’s landmark climate change law, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. The views expressed are her own. –

After eight years of inaction on climate change by the federal government, we can now look forward to the Obama administration tackling global warming head on. With not a minute to lose, Lisa Jackson, the soon-to-be new head of the EPA, should move quickly to capitalize on the momentum of states that have so far been the leaders in fighting global warming. There is no better place to start than by establishing a national greenhouse gas emission standard for automobiles based on California’s landmark clean car law.

California has always been a pioneer in setting tough automobile emission standards. Our regulations paved the way for lead-free gas, the catalytic converter, and many other innovations that were later adopted as the national standard. As a result, we have eliminated 99 percent of harmful pollution pouring out of autos today compared to a 1960s era car, leading to clearer skies and cleaner air in our cities.

In 2002, California continued its track record of pioneering environmental legislation when it passed a law that directly addressed greenhouse gas emissions from cars. Personal vehicles produce 20 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gases, and so are increasingly being addressed by governments that are serious about averting catastrophic climate change. Thirteen other states have formally adopted and three states are considering adoption of California’s cost-effective and technologically doable program.

Indeed, the motivation is not only environmental - owners of these cars will save thousands of dollars over the vehicle’s life because cars that meet the standard are also likely to be more fuel efficient.

Together with California, these 16 states constitute almost half the country’s new vehicle sales, creating a huge market for the best that Detroit has to offer.

Despite these benefits, the EPA blocked California from enforcing its greenhouse gas emission standards for cars. It also delayed responding to the Supreme Court, which required that the EPA consider using the federal Clean Air Act to create a program similar to California’s program to reduce emissions from all the nation’s vehicles. Just last month, the outgoing administration failed to carry through on its promise to publish new CAFE rules – national fuel economy standards – as required by Congress.

The new Obama Administration should use this opportunity to set a new foundation for American energy and climate security. Soon-to-be Administrator Jackson should immediately follow through with President Obama’s promise to allow California’s regulations to come into force. She should also begin the process to create a national greenhouse gas standard for cars based on California’s approach – a 30 percent reduction by model year 2016 - and establishing even greater reductions in the future.

At the same time, the Obama Administration should direct the Department of Transportation to fix its flawed CAFE rules to be compatible with new climate change needs. It also needs to address a regulatory process so distorted that fuel economy standards are based on the technology of the “least capable manufacturer,” holding our nation’s energy security hostage to the lowest common denominator. Instead, Obama should direct DOT to work in concert with EPA to create standards that work for both fuel economy and the reduction of greenhouse gases.

Coordinating these two approaches will also provide automobile manufacturers with THE stable set of national policies they have been calling for. This strong national program will also send a clear signal to Detroit to fire their lawyers who have been wastefully battling California’s regulation and hire the engineers who will build the cars consumers want and that will support the future success of America’s auto industry in a global market.

If we’re going to wring the carbon out of our economy, we will need the coordinated actions of government agencies across all sectors and additional investments for rapid economic recovery under a comprehensive national climate change framework. That will take time to develop, and some careful planning. In the meantime, the EPA can immediately draw upon the experience of states like California and its leadership under Governor Schwarzenegger to use its existing authority under the Clean Air Act and take effective and early action against climate change.

By acting now, the EPA will show the world that the United States is finally taking its place among the community of nations to address the pressing challenge of, in the words of our new president, a planet in peril. California, and many other states, stand ready to help.

In the quest to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, states such as California are passing regulations encouraging the adoption of Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) and low carbon fuel standards. Intuitively, the RPS will require electric utilities to produce more of their electricity using renewable resources such as wind and solar. Will this shift in the portfolio away from "dirty" coal and natural gas (the traditional sources of fuel) lower greenhouse gas emissions per unit of power? This New York Times Editorial argues that the marginal effect of these costly RPS regulations will be to decrease natural gas use by electric utilities. Natural gas is expensive and relatively clean, so this author argues that the RPS standard will only have a small net effect on reducing California's average carbon dioxide emissions per unit of electricity generated. He argues that a perverse consequence of focusing on the RPS standard is to reduce investment in new technologies to capture CO2 from coal. He doesn't say whether his company has a stake in this technology but he correctly points out that a cap and trade system (rather than a RPS mandate) would encourage this technology. Such a carbon capture technology would have worldwide benefits because we expect that China will continue to produce power using coal fired plants.

The Low Carbon Fuel Standard is a similar "portfolio" regulation. This gasoline regulation requires that the average fuel used by vehicles have lower carbon content. This paper argues that such regulation is an implicit subsidy for fuels that contain carbon but that are cleaner than the average fuel. So, if people drive more using such "clean dirty" fuels, then this regulation may actually increase carbon emissions from transportation.

As economists point out these "foreseen" ex-ante consequences of well meaning regulations, will the policy makers listen to us and adjust the regulations? Or will they ignore our forecasts and allow the future to play out so that future economists in the year 2030 can write ex-post papers for the JPE and the Journal of Law and Economics on the "unintended consequences of regulation x , y and z".

As we hope you know, Dora and I are trying to sell our new book "Heroes and Cowards". We recognize that you need to make your own luck. Our book examines social economics from a micro perspective. We face the challenge in early 2009 that with the excitement about the New President and financial crisis, microeconomic issues have been pushed to the sidelines. Everyone wants to talk "macro" but our base of knowledge there is not so deep. Fortunately, there is one brave microeconomist who is willing to still discuss "micro" topics. His name is Ray Fisman. In my biased opinion, he writes a mean Slate column -- Ray Fisman's new piece in Slate Magazine.

For all those bloggers who have so far refused to discuss our book, we are requesting that you return them to our UCLA address. We'll pay for the return postage.