Fire Sale
How Does State-Level Carbon Pricing in the United States Affect Industrial Competitiveness?
Brendan Casey et al.
NBER Working Paper, January 2020
Abstract:
Pricing carbon emissions from a jurisdiction could harm the competitiveness of local firms, causing the leakage of emissions and economic activity to other regions. Past research concentrated on national carbon prices, but the impacts of subnational carbon prices could be more severe due to the openness of regional economies. Focusing on subnational carbon pricing in the United States, we specify a flexible model to capture competition between a plant in a state with carbon pricing and plants in other states or countries. We estimate model parameters using confidential plant-level data from 1982–2011 and simulate the effects of regional carbon prices covering the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic (regions that currently cap carbon emissions from the electric sector) on manufacturing output, employment, and profits. Importantly, we model industry mix within a state or region, not simply energy price differences. A carbon price of $10 per metric ton reduces employment in the regulated region by 2.7 percent, and raises employment in nearby states by 0.8 percent; the effects on output and profits are broadly similar. National employment falls just 0.1 percent, suggesting that domestic plants in other states as opposed to foreign facilities are the principal winners from state or regional carbon pricing.
Global warming to increase violent crime in the United States
Ryan Harp & Kristopher Karnauskas
Environmental Research Letters, January 2020
Abstract:
Recent studies have revealed large and robust correlations between seasonal climate and violent crime rates at regional scales within the continental United States, begging the question of how future climate change will influence violent crime rates. Here, we combine empirical models from previous studies with 42 state-of-the-art global climate models to make such projections, while accounting for key factors like regionality and seasonality, and appropriately combining multiple sources of uncertainty. Our results indicate that the United States should expect an additional 3.2 [2.1–4.5] or 2.3 [1.5–3.2] million violent crimes between 2020 and 2099, depending on greenhouse gas emissions scenario. We also reveal critical dependencies of these violent crime projections on various global warming targets, such as those associated with the Paris Agreement (1.5˚C and 2˚C). These results emphasize the often-overlooked socially-mediated impacts of climate change on human health, with an estimated economic cost of $5 billion annually.
Assessing California's progress toward its 2020 greenhouse gas emissions limit
Michael Mastrandrea, Mason Inman & Danny Cullenward
Energy Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
California law requires statewide greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to return to 1990 levels by 2020—a goal achieved in 2016, four years early. We conduct the first independent retrospective analysis of California's greenhouse gas emissions to assess how the state has achieved faster-than-expected emissions reductions. We analyze the extent to which economic activity, climate policies, and market forces drove California's greenhouse gas emissions trends overall and in two key categories: electricity and light-duty vehicles. We also compare historical trends with business-as-usual and policy expectations from the 2008 Climate Change Scoping Plan, California's official strategy for achieving the 2020 emissions limit. Our analysis, based on data through 2017, indicates that reduced economic activity during the 2008–2009 recession and its aftermath has been a major contributor to early achievement of the 2020 emissions limit. Policies and market forces, however, have played a larger role in reducing emissions in recent years — particularly in the electricity sector, which has decarbonized more rapidly than expected. Meanwhile, GHG emissions from light-duty vehicles in recent years were rising, not falling, in contrast to expectations. Our analysis demonstrates how decomposition methods can be used to track climate policy implementation and inform future policy development.
High Ambient Temperature and Infant Mortality in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: A Case–Crossover Study
Leah Schinasi et al.
American Journal of Public Health, February 2020, Pages 189-195
Methods: We conducted a time-stratified case–crossover analysis of associations between ambient temperature and infant mortality in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the warm months of 2000 through 2015. We used conditional logistic regression models to estimate associations of infant mortality with daily temperatures on the day of death (lag 0) and for averaging periods of 0 to 1 to 0 to 3 days before the day of death. We explored modification of associations by individual and census tract–level characteristics and by amounts of green space.
Results: Risk of infant mortality increased by 22.4% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 5.0%, 42.6%) for every 1°C increase in minimum daily temperature over 23.9°C on the day of death. We observed limited evidence of effect modification across strata of the covariates.
Mortgage Markets with Climate-Change Risk: Evidence from Wildfires in California
Paulo Issler et al.
University of California Working Paper, December 2019
Abstract:
Climate change is leading to significant increases in destructive weather events, especially wildfires. In this paper, we study wildfires in California from 2000-2018 using a comprehensive data set of houses and mortgages in California, merging data on fires, mortgages, property characteristics, and weather. Using a difference-in-differences approach, confirmed via panel regression, we find a significant increase in mortgage delinquency and foreclosure after a fire event. More surprisingly, we find that default and foreclosure decrease in the size of the wildfire. We argue that this second result arises from the coordination externalities afforded by large fires, whereby county requirements to rebuild to current building codes and insurance-covered losses work together to ensure that rebuilt homes will be more valuable than they were pre-fire. This is only true as long as there exists a well-functioning insurance market, and the size of recent losses, combined with regulatory distortions in the market, casts doubt on the continued ability of insurance companies to absorb fire-related losses. The technology in this paper can help by providing the California Department of Insurance (CDI) and other insurance regulators with a framework for building benchmark models to evaluate proposed insurance-company models, much like the bank stress-testing carried out by the Federal Reserve System.
A benefit–cost analysis of floodplain land acquisition for US flood damage reduction
Kris Johnson et al.
Nature Sustainability, January 2020, Pages 56–62
Abstract:
Flooding is the costliest form of natural disaster and impacts are expected to increase, in part, due to exposure of new development to flooding. However, these costs could be reduced through the acquisition and conservation of natural land in floodplains. Here we quantify the benefits and costs of reducing future flood damages in the United States by avoiding development in floodplains. We find that by 2070, cumulative avoided future flood damages exceed the costs of land acquisition for more than one-third of the unprotected natural lands in the 100-yr floodplain (areas with a 1% chance of flooding annually). Large areas have an even higher benefit–cost ratio: for 54,433 km2 of floodplain, avoided damages exceed land acquisition costs by a factor of at least five to one. Strategic conservation of floodplains would avoid unnecessarily increasing the economic and human costs of flooding while simultaneously providing multiple ecosystem services.
Climate econometric models indicate solar geoengineering would reduce inter-country income inequality
Anthony Harding et al.
Nature Communications, January 2020
Abstract:
Exploring heterogeneity in the economic impacts of solar geoengineering is a fundamental step towards understanding the risk tradeoff associated with a geoengineering option. To evaluate impacts of solar geoengineering and greenhouse gas-driven climate change on equal terms, we apply macroeconomic impact models that have been widely applied to climate change impacts assessment. Combining historical evidence with climate simulations of mean annual temperature and precipitation, we project socio-economic outcomes under high anthropogenic emissions for stylized climate scenarios in which global temperatures are stabilized or over-cooled by blocking solar radiation. We find impacts of climate changes on global GDP-per-capita by the end of the century are temperature-driven, highly dispersed, and model dependent. Across all model specifications, however, income inequality between countries is lower with solar geoengineering. Consistent reduction in inter-country inequality can inform discussions of the distribution of impacts of solar geoengineering, a topic of concern in geoengineering ethics and governance debates.
Response of extreme rainfall for landfalling tropical cyclones undergoing extratropical transition to projected climate change: Hurricane Irene (2011)
Maofeng Liu et al.
Earth's Future, forthcoming
Abstract:
Extreme rainfall and flooding associated with landfalling tropical cyclones (TCs) have large societal impacts, both in fatalities and economic losses. This study examines the response of TC rainfall to climate change projected under future anthropogenic greenhouse emissions, focusing on Hurricane Irene, which produced severe flooding across the Northeastern US in August 2011. Numerical simulations are made with the Weather Research and Forecasting model, placing Irene in the present‐day climate and one projected for the end of 21st century climate represented by Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 scenario. Projected future changes to surface and atmospheric temperature lead to a storm rainfall increase of 32% relative to the control run, exceeding the rate expected by the Clausius‐Clapeyron relation given the ~3 K lower atmospheric warming. Analyses of the atmospheric water balance highlight contributions to the increase in rainfall rate from both increased circulation strength and atmospheric moisture. Storm rainfall rate shows contrasting response to global warming during the TC and extratropical transition (ET) periods. During the TC phase, Irene shows a significant increase of storm rainfall rate in the inner core region. This increase shifts to the outer rain‐bands as Irene undergoes ET, collocated with the maximum tangential wind increase and the change of secondary circulation strength. Changes of storm track from the control run to global warming projections play a role in the change of spatial rainfall pattern. Distinct roles of surface and atmospheric warming in storm rainfall and structure changes are also examined.
Climate change contributes to widespread declines among bumble bees across continents
Peter Soroye, Tim Newbold & Jeremy Kerr
Science, 7 February 2020, Pages 685-688
Abstract:
Climate change could increase species’ extinction risk as temperatures and precipitation begin to exceed species’ historically observed tolerances. Using long-term data for 66 bumble bee species across North America and Europe, we tested whether this mechanism altered likelihoods of bumble bee species’ extinction or colonization. Increasing frequency of hotter temperatures predicts species’ local extinction risk, chances of colonizing a new area, and changing species richness. Effects are independent of changing land uses. The method developed in this study permits spatially explicit predictions of climate change–related population extinction-colonization dynamics within species that explains observed patterns of geographical range loss and expansion across continents. Increasing frequencies of temperatures that exceed historically observed tolerances help explain widespread bumble bee species decline. This mechanism may also contribute to biodiversity loss more generally.
Greenland Ice Sheet Response to Stratospheric Aerosol Injection Geoengineering
John Moore et al.
Earth's Future, December 2019, Pages 1451-1463
Abstract:
The Greenland ice sheet is expected lose at least 90% of its current volume if ice sheet summer temperatures warm by around 1.8 °C above pre‐industrial. Geoengineering by stratospheric sulfate aerosol injection might slow Greenland ice sheet melting and sea level rise by reducing summer temperature and insolation; however, such schemes could also reduce precipitation and affect large‐scale climate drivers such as the Atlantic Meridional Over‐turning Circulation (AMOC). Earlier work found that AMOC increased under geoengineering and that might lead to greater mass loss from Greenland than under greenhouse gas forcing alone. We simulated Greenland ice sheet climates using four Earth system models running the stratospheric sulfate aerosol injection experiment GeoMIP G4 and the CMIP RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 greenhouse gas scenarios that were then used to drive the surface energy and mass balance model, SEMIC. Simulated runoff is 20% lower under G4 than RCP4.5, while under RCP8.5 it is 17% higher. The mechanism is through increased Arctic sea ice concentration and reduced humidity leading to surface cooling of the ablation zone. Reduced absorption of outgoing longwave radiation caused by hydrological cycle weakening dominates associated decreases in precipitation under geoengineering and stronger AMOC than under RCP4.5. An ice dynamics model simulates 15% lower ice losses under G4 than RCP4.5. Thus, total sea level rise by 2070 from the Greenland ice sheet under G4 geoengineering is about 15–20% lower than under the RCP4.5 scenario.