There is much international media coverage today of various scenarios by which Greece more extensively defaults on its debt and possibly exits the euro. The FT provides a nice graphical summary here.
Month: November 2011
There have been strong reactions to the announcement by the Minister of the Environment that he will not be introducing a Climate Change Bill quite yet. See Irish Times (again, and again).
The Irish Examiner has a response by Friends of the Earth: “With seven billion people on Earth, it is more important than ever that we reduce our carbon emissions. Ireland is never going to be the bread basket of the world and we must recognise the profound impacts that climate change will have on food security.” FoE argues at once that Ireland is too small to have an impact on global food supply and so big that is has an impact on the global climate.
(FoE omits that climate change will increase global food supply, at least according to the IPCC, and that biofuels have a negative impact on food production.)
The Irish Times broke the story. The Review of National Climate Policy has yet to be published, so I won’t discuss its contents. It is worrying that the government releases documents to a select few. They then set the public agenda. By the time the public gets access to the document, the news has moved on.
I agree with Minister Hogan that a Climate Change Bill is not a priority. The government has a lot on its plate, including the Department of the Environment — floods, water charges, septic tanks.
Besides, a Climate Change Bill is not required for climate policy. Ireland has had climate policies for many years now, and there is no sign that these policies will be abandoned.
The two draft Bills (discussed here and here) were primarily about creating new bureaucracy and had little to do with emission reduction or adaptation.
Ireland’s emission reduction targets are set by the EU.
UPDATE: The Review of National Climate Policy was published less than an hour after I posted this. It notes that Ireland will probably miss its 2020 targets with current policies, but does not suggest how policy could be reformed. It does not discuss the Climate Change Bill.
Announcement is here.
As part of ongoing protests in the US, a group of Harvard students staged a walk-out from Greg Mankiw’s introductory Economics class. Mankiw links to their letter, the Harvard Crimson article on the matter and a letter of defence here. In total, according to Mankiw, about 5-10 per cent of the students walked-out, and a group of other students then walked in as counter-protesters. It is an interesting question as to how students who object to the way Economics is taught deal with this issue, and how universities respond to them.