I suggest you read pages 244 and 245 of Climatopolis where I discuss my relationship with Quentin Tarantino.

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"In fall 2050, Pete Carroll will be entering his 41st season as the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks. As he walks the streets, he will notice that the outdoor summer temperature reminds him of his days at USC. Due to climate change, Seattle’s future average temperature will look a lot more like Los Angeles’ today. Kings County’s average July temperature over the years 1968 to 2002 was 65 degrees. One climate change model (with the catchy name CCSM) predicts that Seattle’s average July temperature will be 71 degrees in the year 2070."

Crisis creates opportunities. Basic Books has just published Edward Kohn's book that highlights how a heat wave helped to make Teddy Roosevelt a star. I don't know if this "cause and effect" (that the heat wave "made" Teddy Roosevelt) is as clean as this books claims but it highlights an important point.

"The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt

One of the worst natural disasters in American history, the 1896 New York heat wave killed almost 1,500 people in ten oppressively hot days. The heat coincided with a pitched presidential contest between William McKinley and the upstart Democrat William Jennings Bryan, who arrived in New York City at the height of the catastrophe.

As historian Edward P. Kohn shows, Bryan's hopes for the presidency began to flag amidst the abhorrent heat just as a bright young police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt was scrambling to mitigate the dangerously high temperatures by hosing down streets and handing out ice to the poor. A vivid narrative that captures the birth of the progressive era, Hot Time in the Old Town revives the forgotten disaster that almost destroyed a great American city."

Now, I know who I am. I thought that I was this guy but now I know that I am a urban sociologist.


Heroes and Cowards: The Social Face of War, by Dora L. Costa & Matthew E. Kahn

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. Pp. xxvi, 215. Illus., tables, append., notes, biblio., index. $27.95. ISBN: 0691137048.

Heroes & Cowards attempts to look at how social factors influenced the lives -- and deaths -- of soldiers during the Civil War.

Using official documents, letters, diaries, census returns, and other materials, the authors, respectively an economic historian and an urban sociologist, used Robert Fogel's data base on roughly 41,000 soldiers, both North and South, among them a substantial number of African-American troops. Based on this material, they discuss the effects of such diverse factors as localism, ethnicity, faith, friendship, class, and numerous other elements of "social capital" on the behavior of these men from their choices about the side they supported and their decisions to enlist, how they adapted to military life, and how they behaved in combat and as prisoners-of-war, and even how these factors influenced their post war experiences.

An insightful look at the things that make soldiers tick, with applicability even in the present, and a valuable read not only for students of the Civil War but for anyone interested in military history.


Reviewer: A. A. Nofi

http://www.strategypage.com/bookreviews/520.asp

In the Spring of 2010, the USC Deans did not tell me that the great 1970s musician Steve Miller would be joining their faculty. They should of. I live my life at the margin and this would have been quite valuable information. I recently taught my son the words to "Jungle Love". Hiring Professor Miller is a big big deal to me. I would like to write a paper with that "space cowboy".

I am back in Berkeley after several days in Novato. From Novato, we went to Pt. Reyes to climb all the steps to the lighthouse. To our surprise, there was no fog and we spotted two whales who swam by. They surfaced every 60 seconds or so and you could see their water spout and the full shape of their big body. I wish that I could be that graceful. But, I was created for another purpose rather than to swim around nude all day long and be admired by strangers.

Instead, my purpose is to be a food sampler. After seeing the whales, we sat down for lunch at a nice park overlooking a lake. Dora's Aunt handed me some brie cheese and a knife. She had just bought the cheese at a well known supermarket (which I won't name). It was hard to cut but I didn't think much of that. It was a strange color and when I bit into it -- it tasted weird. I looked at the box to find the expiration date and the renown supermarket had just sold her cheese that expired in September 2009! I thought I was going to die on the spot but I didn't even hallucinate. My wife and son yelled at me for not studying the cheese box before I bit into it. At that moment, I made a promise to myself that I will never trust anyone again. So, if in the future you meet me and I appear to be strange or rude -- it is nothing personal --- it is what I learned from that old piece of nasty cheese.

Permit, me to change the subject and introduce my guest blogger for the day. Tom Rooney is the President and CEO of SPG Solar, in Novato, California. SPG Solar is one of the larger solar integrators in the country.

I had a very good phone talk with him a few months ago and we are both proud to be graduates of the University of Chicago.


Why Conservatives Are Bad on Energy: It's All About the Costs

By Tom Rooney


Conservatives, let's talk about energy. And why so many conservatives are so
wrong -- so liberal, even -- on wind and solar energy.

Let's start with a recent editorial from the home of 'free markets and free people,"
the Wall Street Journal. Photovoltaic solar energy, quoth the mavens, is a "speculative and immature technology that costs far more than ordinary power."

So few words, so many misconceptions. It pains me to say that because, like many business leaders, I grew up on the Wall Street Journal and still depend on it. But I cannot figure out why people who call themselves "conservatives" would say solar or wind power is "speculative." Conservatives know that word is usually reserved to criticize free-market activity that is not approved by well, you know who.

Today, around the world, more than a million people work in the wind and solar
business. Many more receive their power from solar. Solar is not a cause, it is a business with real benefits for its customers.


Just ask anyone who installed their solar systems five years ago. Today, many of their systems are paid off and they are getting free energy. Better still, ask the owners of one of the oldest and most respected companies in America who recently announced plans to build one of the largest solar facilities in the country.

That would be Dow Jones, owners of the Wall Street Journal.

Now we come to "immature." Again, the meaning is fuzzy. But in Germany, a country 1/3 our size in area and population, they have more solar than the United States. This year, Germans will build enough solar to equal the output of three nuclear power plants.

What they call immaturity our clients call profit-making leadership. But let's get to the real boogie man: The one that "costs far more than ordinary
power."

I've been working in energy infrastructure for 25 years and I have no idea what the WSJ means by the words "ordinary power." But, after spending some time with Milton Friedman whom I met on many occasions while studying for an MBA at the University of Chicago, I did learn about costs.

And here is what every freshman at the University of Chicago knows: There is
a difference between cost and price.

Solar relies on price supports from the government. Fair enough -- though its
price is falling even faster than fossil fuels are rising.

But if Friedman were going to compare the costs of competing forms of energy, he also would have wanted to know the cost of "ordinary energy." Figured on the same basis. This is something the self-proclaimed conservative opponents of solar
refuse to do.

But huge companies including Wall Mart, IBM, Target and Los Gatos Tomatoes figured
it out. And last year so did the National Academy of Sciences. It produced a report on the Hidden Costs of Energy that documented how coal was making people sick to the tune of $63 billion a year.

And that oil and natural gas had so many tax breaks and subsidies that were so interwoven for so long, it was hard to say exactly how many tens of billions
these energy producers received courtesy of the U.S. Taxpayer.

Just a few weeks ago, the International Energy Agency said worldwide, fossil fuels receive $550 billion in subsidies a year -- 12 times what alternatives such as wind and solar get.

Neither report factored in Global Warming or the cost of sending our best and bravest into harm's way to protect our energy supply lines.

Whatever that costs, you know it starts with a T. All this without hockey stick graphs, purloined emails or junk science.

When you compare the real costs of solar with the fully loaded real costs of
coal and oil and natural gas and nuclear power, apples to apples, solar is cheaper.

That's not conservative. Or liberal. That comes from an ideology older and more
reliable than both of those put together: Arithmetic.

When I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, I was impressed by the fact that each of the senior faculty had a "research program". These ambitious fellows sought to answer a single question and took years crafting their papers. At the start of my career, I didn't imitate them. Instead, I engaged in some "hit and run" applied micro. I'd track down a data set, do something clever and write it up and move on. A wise move?

In recent years, I have stumbled upon two big research questions. One concerns cities and climate change and examining both mitigation and adaptation issues. Climatopolis is the big "deliverable" from this research program.

I have also been fascinated by the causes and consequences of environmentalism. On the consequences of environmentalism, here are 4 smart papers

paper #1

paper #2


paper #3

paper #4

I have circulated a paper that I hope the Journal of Urban Economics will soon accept that documents that more liberal/environmentalist cities block new housing development in California relative to the average city in the same metropolitan area (think of Berkeley versus Emeryville).

I have also done some work on the causes of environmentalism. One paper was about the "silver lining" of natural disasters: see this paper .


Recently, Matt Kotchen and I released this paper .

Environmental Concern and the Business Cycle: The Chilling Effect of Recession

This paper uses three different sources of data to investigate the association between the business cycle—measured with unemployment rates—and environmental concern. Building on recent research that finds internet search terms to be useful predictors of health epidemics and economic activity, we find that an increase in a state’s unemployment rate decreases Google searches for “global warming” and increases searches for “unemployment,” and that the effect differs according to a state’s political ideology. From national surveys, we find that an increase in a state’s unemployment rate is associated with a decrease in the probability that residents think global warming is happening and reduced support for the U.S to target policies intended to mitigate global warming. Finally, in California, we find that an increase in a county’s unemployment rate is associated with a significant decrease in county residents choosing the environment as the most important policy issue. Beyond providing the first empirical estimates of macroeconomic effects on environmental concern, we discuss the results in terms of the potential impact on environmental policy and understanding the full cost of recessions.


All sorts of people ranging from Rush Limbaugh, to the Freakonomics Blog, to Andrew Leonard are talking about it.

I don't write papers to be cute. I'm interested in cause and effect. Leading economists have argued that recessions are good for the environment because the economy slows down. Matt Kotchen and I have figured out a rigorous way to test this claim and we counter with a more nuanced claim that the median voter loses interest in environmental policy tightening during recessions. If this hypothesis stands up, then greens need booms to make progress in promoting their progressive agenda. That is interesting and we are challenging the conventional wisdom.

Why are greens green? When would Rush Limbaugh go green? If more people were green, how would each live their lives? In aggregate, would this really help to shrink our "footprint"? My research program seeks to answer these questions.

For young graduate students looking for something to work on, I encourage you to join me! You know where to find me.

I am in Novato, California. My friends at UCLA won't see me on campus for a few more weeks. In this post, I'd like to return to an old theme that is at the intersection of economics and sociology. The topic is the costs and benefits of living and working in a "diverse" environment. Each fall, millions of 18 year old first year college students are assigned by some unknown dean to live with a stranger (the roommate). How should your precious 18 year old be assigned this stranger? Random matching? Matching on observables (a love of guitars and tattoos)? In the past, random matching (with the exception of not pairing smokers and non-smokers) was the norm. Now, the NY Times reports on the new "marriage market" as potential roommates interview each other and shop around.

If you bother to read the article , you will see a righteous quote from Dr. Dalton Conley on his opposition to this new reality. He hints that students are choosing to avoid exposure to diversity by choosing a clone today. This benefits the suburban student in the short run but will cost him/her in the long run.

Now, as you know --- Dora Costa and I have written a serious applied econometrics paper on this very point. Using the Civil War as our laboratory, we document in this 2007 JEH paper the short run costs BUT the long run benefits of living and working in a diverse environment. Other academics have looked at samples of university students, but they have no way of following these students decades after they finish university to see how their exposure to different types of people affects their later life outcomes.

Here is a Climatopolis Podcast . I promise to broadcast no more "informercials" for at least 10 days!

Recent Media Coverage and Accolades:

The prolific writer and Luskin Scholar Matthew Kahn regularly contributed to the Christian Science Monitor, Huffington Post and the Los Angeles Times on topics including the non-organic Egg McMuffin and a cost/benefit of California’s Assembly Bill 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act. In addition, his studies─ on topics ranging from energy conservation to household carbon emissions in Chinese cities compared to U.S. cities─ were highlighted in The New York Times, The Economist, and American Public Radio, among others.

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Given that I plan to retire soon (when I turn 45 next February), I will want to be remembered for my path breaking work on the egg mcmuffin.