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Begin New Search Political Geography United States Publishing Institution Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University

11. Policies for Funding a Response to Climate Change

Author:
Brian Roach
Publication Date:
07-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
This paper asserts that a significant increase in public funding for climate change research and development (R) is needed in the United States. While additional public R funding alone is unlikely to provide a sufficient policy response to climate change, it is a critical policy component in an effective long-run strategy. Different possibilities for generating additional public revenues for R funding are considered. The analysis demonstrates that quite modest taxes on carbon emissions or gasoline could fund a significant increase in public R funding for clean energy. As an alternative to tax instruments, the paper also considers a program of voluntary retirement contributions to a clean energy fund. These clean energy retirement accounts (CERAs) would allow individuals to directly contribute to a fund that would be used exclusively to support climate change-related R Specifically, the paper suggests that CERA funds be used to offer low-interest loans to private firms and to form private-public partnerships pursuing the long-term development of clean energy technologies. Loan repayment and the eventual profitability of some partnerships will at least partially fund payments to CERA holders when they retire. Using reasonable assumptions, a simulation analysis demonstrates the financial feasibility of the program and the conditions in which the program would be fully self-funding.
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States

12. Living High on the Hog: Factory Farms, Federal Policy, and the Structural Transformation of Swine Production

Author:
Elanor Starmer and Timothy A. Wise
Publication Date:
12-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
U.S. farm policy reforms in 1996 produced significant overproduction of supported crops, with prices falling to levels that were often below average farm production costs. Among the beneficiaries of the policy shift were the largest corporate purchasers of supported crops, as they saw a steady supply of low-priced inputs. Industrial livestock firms were among the most significant buyers of U.S. corn and soybeans, the main components of livestock feed. Filling an important gap in the literature, this paper estimates the savings to industrial hog operations between 1997 and 2005 from feed components priced at levels below their production costs. The savings are found to be significant. We also find that industrial hog companies benefited from weak federal regulation of environmental pollution from livestock operations. We estimate the costs to industrial hog firms of compliance with new environmental regulations regarding mitigation of surface-water contamination from excess manure concentrations. This cost is also found to be significant. We assess the implications of these findings for the continued consolidation and industrialization of the industry. We find that mid-sized diversified farms that grow their own feed may well be able to compete on cost with large-scale industrial operations if the latter pay full cost for their feed and have to pay for just one part of their externalized pollution costs.
Topic:
Agriculture, Environment, and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
United States

13. European Chemical Policy and the United States: The Impacts of REACH

Author:
Rachel Massey, Frank Ackerman, and Liz Stanton
Publication Date:
09-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
The European Union is moving toward adoption of its new Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH) policy, an innovative system of chemicals regulation that will provide crucial information on the safety profile of chemicals used in industry. Chemicals produced elsewhere, such as in the United States, and exported to Europe will have to meet the same standards as chemicals produced within the European Union. What is at stake for the U.S. is substantial: we estimate that chemical exports to Europe that are subject to REACH amount to about $14 billion per year, and are directly and indirectly responsible for 54,000 jobs. Revenues and employment of this magnitude dwarf the costs of compliance with REACH, which will amount to no more than $14 million per year. Even if, as the U.S. chemicals industry has argued, REACH is a needless mistake, it will be far more profitable to pay the modest compliance costs than to lose access to the enormous European market.
Topic:
Government, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

14. Feeding the Factory Farm: Implicit Subsidies to the Broiler Chicken Industry

Author:
Elanor Starmer, Timothy A. Wise, and Aimee Witteman
Publication Date:
06-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
Since the passage of the 1996 Farm Bill, the U.S. market prices of soybeans and corn have dropped 21% and 32%, respectively. These commodities are sold on the market at a price below what they cost to produce. If U.S. agricultural policies contribute to this trend, then they do so to the benefit of commodity purchasers, particularly the industrial operations that use the commodities as raw material inputs. Corporate-owned livestock operations are a case in point. This paper focuses on the broiler chicken industry, which, in the United States, is fully industrialized and vertically integrated. We compare the average costs of production for broiler feed components—corn and soybean meal—with market prices, and then use these cost-price margins to estimate the amount broiler companies save by being able to purchase feed at a price below production costs. We find that the broiler industry gained monetary benefits averaging $1.25 billion per year between 1997 and 2005 when, following the passage of the 1996 Farm Bill, market prices dropped far below production costs. In contrast, broiler industry gains from low market prices averaged a much smaller $377 million per year between 1986 and 1996. We conclude that the corporate broiler industry is a major winner from changes to U.S. agriculture policy that have allowed feed prices to fall. This finding is not significantly altered when we adjust our calculations to account for the overvaluation of agricultural land, nor does it appear to reverse under future cost/price scenarios. As policymakers turn their attention to the 2007 Farm Bill, they would do well to examine the ways in which agribusiness firms in general, and industrial livestock operations in particular, benefit from policies ostensibly designed to support family farmers. Current U.S. farm policies may be driving industrialization in the livestock production system if they give factory operations the appearance of being more cost efficient than diversified, independent operations that grow their own feed.
Topic:
Agriculture, Government, and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
United States

15. The Unbearable Lightness of Regulatory Costs

Author:
Frank Ackerman
Publication Date:
02-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
Abstract:
Will unbearable regulatory costs ruin the US economy? This specter haunts official Washington, just as fears of communism once did. Once again, the prevailing rhetoric suggests, an implacable enemy of free enterprise puts our prosperity at risk. Like anti-communism in its heyday, anti-command-and-control-ism serves to narrow debate, promoting the unregulated laissez-faire economy as the sole acceptable goal and standard for public policy. Fears of the purported costs of regulation have been used to justify a sweeping reorganization of regulatory practice, in which the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is empowered to, and often enough does, reject regulations from other agencies on the basis of intricate, conjectural, economic calculations.
Topic:
Energy Policy, Environment, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States and North America