Oikos

Welcome to the archives of the Oikos blog. Oikos is a blog I authored from 2005 to 2009, focussing on environmental economics and environmental policy in Australia. If you'd like to contact me...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2011/06/oikos-archives.html

We have a good idea now of what the so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is going to look like, after the Government and Opposition hammered out a deal on Tuesday and it was endorsed (bare...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/11/some-quick-thoughts-on-oz-emissions.html

> If the tax structure from early last century prevailed today, we > would have to raise $40 billion from excise and $230 billion from > tariffs to meet today's revenu...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/10/ken-henry-on-tax-reform.html

Apparently today is Blog Action Day for Climate Change and I thought I'd throw it open to my wonderful blog readers. I find myself alternatively optimistic and despairing on climate change. H...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/10/climate-change-blog-action-day.html

I saw Maclolm Turnbull interviewed the other night saying that he supported emissions trading and reminding people that emissions trading was indeed government policy under the previous Howard...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/10/whats-oppositions-climate-policy.html

Strange weather in Australia recently: record high winter temperatures, bushfires in spring, hail the size of cricket balls overnight and we woke this morning to an apocalyptic orange glow in S...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/09/red-sky-in-morning.html

I remember reading a nice exposition of the efficient markets hypothesis on Andrew Leigh's blog a while back: > So if we believe shoppers are as rational as traders (why not?), > t...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/09/economics-and-supermarket-checkout.html

The main difference between a carbon tax (emissions tax) and an emissions trading scheme is this. With a carbon tax, the price of emitting a unit of greenhouse gases is fixed but the total level ...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/09/dealing-with-uncertainties-in-carbon.html

Yes, those $900 cheques from Uncle Kevin can kill. That’s the finding of a new study in the Bulletin on Aging and Health : > Many studies find that households increase their consumptio...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/09/stimulus-payments-can-kill-you.html

Four Corners tonight is on progress with "clean coal" (also known as carbon capture and storage, CCS): coal-fired power stations that capture the greenhouse gases emitted from burning the co...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/09/clean-coal-on-four-corners.html

OK, I'm being a bit trivial but indulge me. Sweeping generalisations and grand rhetorical statements bug me at the best of times, but particularly when they're quite obviously wrong. Ziggy Switk...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/09/nitpick-of-day.html

One of the bigger areas of debate in emissions trading is how to allocate permits. The purists (eg, Garnaut) suggest they should all be auctioned while political realities suggest a large chunk w...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/09/great-give-away-allocating-permits.html

If you wanted to offset the carbon emissions of a flight, you can buy carbon offsets from any number of providers. But the price for offsets done in different ways or certified under different s...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/09/carbon-offsets-oils-aint-oils.html

The National Preventative Health Taskforce has just publicly released its strategy "Australia: The Healthiest Country by 2020 ". For probably the first time ever, life expectancy in Australia is...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/09/tax-cigarettes-aclohol-and-junk-food.html

Some good news following last week's defeat in the Senate of the Australian emissions trading scheme. The Senate is voting today on the big increase in the mandatory renewable energy target (M...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/08/renewable-energy-target-expected-to.html

13 September is Sustainable House Day . Greenies around Australia open their homes and share their stories and tips for making your home greener. Learn and be inspired. HT: Greenfoot

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/08/sustainable-house-day-13-september.html

I'm not a huge fan of simple game theory analyses of international climate change negotiations (even though I've been guilty of using them myself ) because they tend to model each country as bein...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/08/game-theory-and-kyoto-negotiations.html

Some common sense observations about wind power's potential in the UK from The Times: it deserves attention as fossil fuels diminish, it has low capital costs, it's plentiful, it's intermittent a...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/08/wind-power-plus-ca-change.html

One area where I think public policy could really help sustainability in Australian cities is by making cycling an easier transport choice. Sydney strikes me as crying out for measures to encou...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/08/making-cycling-safer-idaho-stop-law.html

Malcolm Turnbull yesterday released an alternative carbon plan: "greener, cheaper, smarter ". Sounds great. And finally some opposition policy on climate change. Well, not quite. The plan is a re...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/08/oppostions-rival-carbon-plan-greener.html

An article in the August issue of Energy Policy suggests that people idling their cars (leaving the motor running when stopped) accounts for a surprising and mostly unnecessary 1.6% of US greenh...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/08/idle-thoughts.html

Hi all, Well Oikos is back. Welcome readers old and new! Oikos is a blog I started in November 2005, while enrolled in a Masters in environmental economics and not long after moving from an env...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-ive-been-up-to.html

Stay tuned!

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2009/07/oikos-returning-soon.html

One interesting announcement in yesterday's NSW state mini-budget was the introduction of "congestion tolls" on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Tunnel : the toll will vary depending on the time o...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2008/11/congestion-tolls-in-sydney.html

Andrew Norton has an interesting article on some unintended consequences of proposed reforms to Victoria's local government legislation. Reforms desgined to reduce the potential for conflicts of...

http://greenomics.blogspot.com/2008/10/conflicts-of-interest-in-environmental.html