Author: Richard Tol

Household waste management, episode N

The US Ambassador has again intervened in public in the row over the Poolbeg incinerator. Covanta flew some journalists to Copenhagen and they report enthusiastically about incineration there.

Covanta is concerned about the proposed (but unspecified) levies on incineration, though. They seem to accept the levies proposed by Gorecki et al and endorsed by Forfas. These levies reflect the estimated externalities of incineration, but are lower than the estimates by Eunomia. Minister Gormley, however, has proposed that levies should be unrelated to the damage caused, but should rather be set at punitive levels for undesirable technologies.

The public consultation on this has now been closed for two weeks, but the submissions have yet to be uploaded.

Gender Gap

After the EIU, the WEF now also has a global report on equality between the sexes.

Ireland comes 6th out of 134 countries. That is great.

The build-up is peculiar, though. Ireland tops the bill on equality in educational attainment, although bonus points seem to be given for absent men at third level.

Ireland could do better on wage equality for similar work, on labour participation, and on senior jobs — but does rather well on uncorrected wage equality and on female professionals.

I guess that the data are somewhat older, and Ireland is getting points in gender equality because young men left school to be builders.

Ireland does well in political representation, primarily because of Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese. I would think that the largely ceremonial presidency should be discounted. Ireland does rather more poorly on female parliamentarians and ministers.

It gets strange on “health and survival”. Ireland ranks 89th. One subindex is female to male life expectancy. Irish women do not live long enough compared to men.The other subindex is male to female births — 106 boys for 100 boys, but surely not because of selective abortion or infanticide. [THIS PARAGRAPH WAS CORRECTED]

Not sure what to make of this. Ireland’s rank is too high and too low at the same time.

Grandfathered permits

Cement companies are bound to make a lot of money from selling surplus CO2 emission permits; see Irish Times.

The atmosphere is the common property of humankind. The European Union appropriated part of that. Instead of using this to the advantage of all Europeans, it decided to give most of it to selected companies and some of it to the Member States. The government of Ireland decided to pass its share on to the same companies.

These decisions were made years ago and cannot be reversed. In fact, emission allocations have been decided until 2020. We’ve been had, again.

Budget Perspectives 2010

The conference will start in 80 mins, and is fully booked. Background material is here.

Paddy Morris on the economics of climate change

Over at Think or Swim, Paddy Morris accurately summarizes my work on the economics of climate change pre-Anthoff and pre-Weitzman. The comments are interesting too.