Understanding and considering the distribution of per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is important in designing international climate change proposals and incentives for participation. I evaluate historic international emissions distributions and forecast future distributions to assess...

We demonstrate the diffusion in use of Earth observations data in social science research. Our study is motivated by the continuing debate among policymakers over the value of the nation’s investment in Earth observations. We also consider the role of related factors including the spread of...

New Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards were recently passed in the United States with the twin goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and oil use. The new standards represent a dramatic change from recent policy. This paper examines the key features of the new rules, and...

Several recent studies have used simulation models to quantify the potential effects of recent environmental regulations on power plants, including the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), one of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s most expensive regulations. These studies have...

Transferable development rights (TDRs) are a market-based approach to land conservation. They allow the development rights from one property to be transferred to another, with the first “sending” property placed under a development restriction or conservation easement and the “receiving”...

Conservation investments are increasingly evaluated on the basis of their return on investment (ROI). Conservation ROI analysis quantitatively measures the costs, benefits, and risks of investments so conservancies can rank or prioritize them. This paper surveys the existing conservation ROI and...

The Northern Everglades Payment for Environmental Services (NE-PES) program was launched in 2011 by the state of Florida. The NE-PES program was developed through the Florida Ranchlands Environmental Services Project (FRESP), a six-year collaborative effort (2005–2011) that engaged ranchers,...

Commercial and residential buildings are responsible for 42 percent of all U.S. energy consumption and 41 percent of U.S. CO2 emissions. Engineering studies identify several investments in new energy-efficiency equipment or building retrofits that would more than pay for themselves in terms of...

In their recent paper, Efficient Pollution Regulation: Getting the Prices Right (henceforth, EPR), Muller and Mendelsohn describe a broader, more appealing concept of efficiency that incorporates information on damages caused by emissions from specific sources: “The science and economics...

The EPA will issue rules regulating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from existing steam boilers and refineries in 2012. A crucial issue affecting the scope and cost of emissions reductions will be the potential introduction of flexibility in compliance, including averaging across groups of...