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Congestion tolls in Sydney

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 of day....

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Oikos returning soon...

Stay tuned!

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What I've been up to...

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 environment...

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Idle thoughts

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 greenhouse...

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The oppostion's rival carbon plan: greener, cheaper, smarter?

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 report by...

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Making cycling safer: The Idaho Stop Law

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 encourage...

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Wind power: plus ca change

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 and...

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Game theory and Kyoto negotiations

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 being an...

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Sustainable House Day - 13 September

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

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Renewable energy target expected to pass today

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 (MRET), and...

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Tax cigarettes, aclohol and junk food til no-one buys them?

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 getting...

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Carbon offsets: Oils ain't oils

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...

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The great give-away: Allocating permits under an emissions trading scheme

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 will be...

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Nitpick of the day

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 Switkowski...

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Clean Coal on Four Corners

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 coal and...

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Stimulus payments can kill you

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 consumption after the receipt...

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Dealing with uncertainties in carbon price

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 of...

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Economics and supermarket checkout lines

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?), then there should be a...

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Red sky in the morning...

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...

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Emissions trading: Auctioning permits vs giving them away

As I've talked about before (The great permit give-away), one of the big debates in emissions trading is whether to auction most of the permits or give them away free to industry. Under the Australian...

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