Author Archives: HannahLombardo

Friday Cat Blogging – 17 February 2017

by HannahLombardo Posted on February 17, 2017

Mother Jones

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We have exciting news this week: Yale University has decided to rename one of its colleges after Hopper. It’s a well-deserved honor for her contributions to this blog, and she will be replacing the odious John Calhoun, who spent the second half of his life defending states rights and slavery in uncompromising terms.

You will note, by the way, that Yale plans to keep up a pretense in public that Hopper College is actually named after an admiral who earned degrees from Yale in the 30s and went on to do some kind of computer stuff. But we all know better, don’t we?

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Friday Cat Blogging – 17 February 2017

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It Looks Like We’re Stuck With Low Inflation

by HannahLombardo Posted on October 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Back in August I agreed with Brad DeLong that 4 percent inflation would be a good thing right now, but I was skeptical that the Fed could engineer this given current conditions. So I asked him what it would take. Today, I apparently made it to the top of the question pile:

I think the answer is: We don’t know whether it is in fact possible for a central bank today to hit a 4%/year average inflation target via conventional ordinary quantitative easing. It might well require other tools. For example:

  1. Miles Kimball’s negative interest rates.
  2. Helicopter drops–that is, allowing everyone with a Social Security number to incorporate as a bank, join the Federal Reserve system, and borrow at the discount window, with the loan discharged by the individual’s death.
  3. The Federal Reserve as infrastructure bank–an extra $500 billion/year of quantitative easing buying not government or mortgage bonds but directly-financing public investments.
  4. Extraordinary quantitative easing–buying not the close substitutes for money that are government bonds but rather the not-so-close substitutes that are equities.

I say: If we could win the argument about what the goal is, we could then begin the discussion about what policies would be needed to get us there.

That’s pretty discouraging. Of these, #2 and #3 are almost certainly illegal, and undesirable in any case. I may not like what Congress is doing, but disbursing money is certainly under their purview—and should be. I don’t want the Fed mailing out checks or contracting for new roads and bridges.

I don’t know if #4 is illegal. Probably not. But I’m not crazy about this either. The Fed shouldn’t be in the business of directly propping up the stock market, and certainly shouldn’t be in the business of directly propping up specific stocks.

So that leaves only #1. This one is perfectly OK, and a few European countries have adopted negative rates recently. But there’s probably a limit to how negative these rates can be. Individuals could avoid negative rates by deciding to hold physical cash, which pays zero percent, but banks and corporations almost certainly couldn’t. I’m not sure how long it’s sustainable to essentially have two different interest rates like that.

This is why DeLong mentions “Miles Kimball’s” negative interest rates. Kimball’s version depends on making the e-dollar into the unit of account, and this would allow negative rates of any level for any period of time. However, it would also require many years to make this transition. It’s not an option in the short term.

So if I’m reading DeLong right, it’s not clear that the Fed could engineer 4 percent inflation at all right now. Maybe Scott Sumner has a bright idea about how we could do this.

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It Looks Like We’re Stuck With Low Inflation

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The pork industry is full of this drug you’ve never heard of

by HannahLombardo Posted on August 14, 2015

Pork Roids

The pork industry is full of this drug you’ve never heard of

By on 14 Aug 2015commentsShare

Like little kids trying to show you their karate moves, food labels will do anything to get your attention. They’ll scream “organic,” “all-natural,” “grass-fed,” “hormone-free,” “antibiotic-free,” “free-range,” “farm-raised,” “fresh,” “pasture-raised,” or whatever else marketers think will elicit happy thoughts of animals frolicking on sunlit farms. And now, thanks to one Virginia farmer, there’s “no ractopamine.”

What’s ractopamine, you ask? According to NPR, it’s basically FDA-approved pork roids, and conventional pig farmers use it all the time to pork up their chops. It’s not a hormone (those are illegal in pig farming), but it does help ole’ Wilber and Babe pack on the pounds. Here’s more from NPR:

Most pigs in America get this drug, because it’s extremely effective. It’s a “beta agonist” and has effects that are similar to adrenaline. It gets a pig to put on more muscle, instead of fat, and also put on weight more quickly. That’s money in the farmer’s pocket: According to some experts, it adds two or three dollars of income per pig.

But David Meren of Tendergrass Farms just got approval from the USDA to stick this label on his pasture-raised pork: “no ractopamine — a beta-agonist growth promotant.”

The FDA approved ractopamine back in 1999, but there have been some reports of animals suffering under the drug, according to NPR. And other countries, including Russia, China, and those in the European Union, have yet to deem the drug safe for consumption. China has even demanded that all pork imported from the U.S. be ractopamine-free — a problem for conventional pig farmers like David Hardin, who spoke with NPR about the issue:

Hardin says that farmers are divided about how to respond to China’s demands. Some farmers don’t want to abandon ractopamine as a matter of principle. Using it, they point out, means cheaper pork for consumers and less stress on the environment (because pigs on ractopamine don’t need as much feed, and don’t produce as much manure.)

Other farmers, he says, are ready to follow the signals of the market. If consumers are willing to pay more for pork labeled “ractopamine-free,” that’s how they’ll raise their pigs.

Grist just spent a whole month talking about the ethics and sustainability of meat-eating. Needless to say, we didn’t solve the myriad problems of today’s meat industry, but one thing’s for sure: Food labels shouldn’t have to try so hard to show us their karate moves. And they wouldn’t have to if we just acted like responsible adults who… damn — I don’t know how to tie off this metaphor.

Source:
A Muscle Drug For Pigs Comes Out Of The Shadows

, NPR.

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The pork industry is full of this drug you’ve never heard of

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The "Umbrella Revolution" Just Scored a Major Victory in Hong Kong

by HannahLombardo Posted on June 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last fall, the streets of Hong Kong filled with protestors demonstrating for greater autonomy after China proposed an election system that would undermine their right to vote for the city’s highest official. Students and concerned citizens camped outside of government buildings and blocked major thoroughfares for weeks on end wielding umbrellas to protect against police tear gas (leading to the name “Umbrella Revolution”). Eventually the demonstrations lost steam and protestors acquiesced to government demands to evacuate the streets. Many feared that the end of the protests meant a win for China and a blow to democracy in Hong Kong.

However early Thursday, Hong Kong’s legislature voted down the Chinese proposal that instigated the massive demonstrations. Pro-democracy supporters are calling it a major legislative victory. In order to understand why, we have to back up a bit.

Hong Kong becomes part of China…sort of: In 1997, the United Kingdom handed over control of Hong Kong to China. Under an agreement known as “one country, two systems,” however, China promised that Hong Kong would maintain political autonomy and many civil liberties that are not afforded to mainland Chinese (Vox does a good job laying out this confusing transition). One right citizens of Hong Kong did not get was the ability to directly vote for the city’s executive chancellor. Instead, a mostly pro-Beijing 1,200-member election committee has chosen the leader through simple majority every 5 years. In 2007, though, China told Hong Kong it would be allowed to elect its leader by popular vote in 2017.

Fall 2014, protests begin: But then, in August of 2014, the Chinese Communist Party released a proposed election plan outlining their version of a popular vote. In it, a special committee controlled by the Chinese Communist Party would choose up to three candidates for whom Hong Kong’s 5 million eligible voters could cast a ballot. Hong Kong’s current chief executive, Leung Chun-Ying, supported the proposal but thousands of Hong Kong citizens viewed this system as a “sham democracy” that would allow China to continue exercising control over Hong Kong. They took to the streets flooding the area surrounding Hong’s Kong’s government buildings for weeks before finally going home.

Okay, so what just happened: Hong Kong’s Legislative Council voted today on whether or not it would enact the the election system proposed by China. It was struck down with only 8 lawmakers out of 70 voting for the proposal, a big hit to the Chinese Communist Party and victory for the pro-democracy camp.

What‘s next: Pro-democracy activists are praising the legislature’s move, but also point out there is a long way to go before real democracy is achieved. Because China’s election plan was voted down, the current system will stay in place until at least 2022. Some believe a more productive short-term approach to reforming Hong Kong’s election system would be pushing the current election committee to better represent the people of Hong Kong instead of Chinese interests.

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The "Umbrella Revolution" Just Scored a Major Victory in Hong Kong

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Court battle could force New Jersey to resume carbon trading

by HannahLombardo Posted on January 8, 2014

Court battle could force New Jersey to resume carbon trading

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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie doesn’t want carbon trading in his state, but he might not have a choice.

Last year was a good one for the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a carbon-trading program in nine Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states. And on Wednesday, environmentalists will push forward with a bid to make 2014 an even better year — by dragging New Jersey back into the program.

RGGI, the first mandatory carbon-trading program in the U.S., caps the amount of CO2 that can be released by power plants and allows those facilities to buy and exchange the rights to release the pollution. RGGI revenue, which could hit $2 billion by 2020, is poured back into clean energy programs – mostly into renewable energy and energy efficiency.

New Jersey was a participant in RGGI when it launched, but in 2011 Gov. Chris Christie (R) directed his administration to withdraw the state from the program – and it did so without calling for any kind of public comment or debate. Christie and other conservatives at the time lamented the costs to electricity ratepayers and said RGGI wasn’t performing as expected. “This program is not effective in reducing greenhouse gases and is unlikely to be in the future,” Christie said. “It’s a failure.” The majority of state lawmakers today want New Jersey to rejoin RGGI, but they don’t have enough votes to overcome an inevitable Christie veto.

So attorneys with the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environment New Jersey are rolling up their lawyerly sleeves and heading into an appellate court on Wednesday to battle it out against the state’s legal team. Here is NRDC’s Dale Bryk with an explanation of the groups’ lawsuit:

In court this week, we will be arguing that the state did not follow proper administrative procedure when, in 2011, it simply posted a statement on the Department of Environmental Protection’s website declaring an end to the rules requiring pollution reductions from power plants. Rather, according to New Jersey’s Administrative Procedure Act, the agency must give the public a chance to comment before taking such action. Had it done so, the state would have heard from the many businesses and residents who benefited from RGGI when the program was still in effect in New Jersey, and who see the program as a boon to the state’s burgeoning clean-energy economy.

The department, for its part, is arguing that it followed the proper procedures when it posted information about the state’s withdrawal on its website.

Environmentalists point out that the litigation could be avoided if Christie would wake up to the growing benefits of the carbon-trading market and agree to rejoin. Again from Bryk:

As part of President Obama’s important climate plan, the Environmental Protection Agency will issue carbon pollution standards for existing power plants this June, and states will be required to develop proposals to meet those standards by 2016. If they don’t, the EPA will develop a plan for them. In all likelihood the EPA will consider RGGI to be an appropriate compliance mechanism.

That means that if New Jersey rejoins RGGI, it can meet the forthcoming federal regulatory requirements, while reaping all of RGGI’s benefits: consumer energy savings; new and much-needed jobs for the Garden State; and a reduction in the kind of pollution that turbocharges our weather, making extreme events like like Hurricane Sandy more common. Not a bad bargain, if you ask me.

The 2014 cap for CO2 pollution under RGGI was lowered from from 165 million to 91 million tons, a reduction of 45 percent, which will help the region keep shrinking its carbon footprint. The move also “spurred a recovery after years of undersubscribed auctions clearing at the price floor and illiquid secondary market trading,” wrote Thomson Reuters Point Carbon in a recent analysis of worldwide carbon markets. This is one reason why carbon markets are flourishing in North America while more established programs flounder elsewhere.

RGGIThe shaded states are members of RGGI. Click to embiggen.

See also: Chris Christie is no moderate on the environment


Source
As Court Reviews NJ’s Repeal of Power Plant Rules, State Should Rejoin Regional Climate Change Program, NRDC
Court to re-consider New Jersey’s exit from U.S. carbon market, Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Court battle could force New Jersey to resume carbon trading

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