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Independent Study
7 Comments | Posted by gimme-five in Environment, gimme-five news, School
Well, my Labor Market Economics class got entirely canceled for the semester, due to the professor having an illness. So I got placed in an independent study in the economics department at William and Mary. I’m actually pretty excited about it, because I can basically study anything I want.
If you read this blog regularly, you probably know that I’m interested in doing something related to environmental economics. I’ve come up with a few ideas of topics to focus on, but I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to decide. So I thought I’d post some of the topic ideas I had on here and see if any readers think they’d be interesting for me to study. Of course I will post what I learn on gimme-five.
1. Economics of Climate Change in General, in particular, in relation to the discount rate. (a large discount rate means environmental damage in the future doesn’t matter so much today in terms of present value, for example)
2. Comparison of Environmental incentives used to reduce CO2 emissions or improve ecosystems (i.e. Gas Tax v. Permit Trading)
3. Feasibility of international enforcement of climate regulations from an economic context.
4. What are the costs and benefits of accounting for nature’s services in our accounting practices? For instance, count trees as more than just lumber; they also count for ecosystem services like protecting species and sequestering CO2.
5. Economics of plug-in hybrids.
These are just a few options, I’m not really sure what I want to do at this point. But if anyone on gimme-five thinks one of these topics looks really interesting and something where a lot of information and data exists out there, please leave me your suggestions.
7 Comments for Independent Study
Doug | February 20, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Seth Cohen | February 22, 2007 at 7:34 pm
A different type of topic that is not so abstract that you might consider is how bike/running trails close to homes adds value to property values. You can tie in US obesity, global warming, and dependence on oil all in one topic.
In my area, all the newer home developments include a bike trail system near the homes. How much will this add to value of the homes?
From one article -
According to the National Association of Homebuilders, the most desired amenity of prospective buyers is walking and jogging trails – over swimming pools and exercise rooms. The group surveyed people nationwide and found that trails were preferred 57 percent of the time.
“Trails were No. 1 in every ethnic group,” said Gopal Ahluwalia, the group’s vice president of research. “It will continue to increase.”
Here is a website with general info
http://americantrails.org/resources/benefits/BellDevel07.html
Author comment by George | February 23, 2007 at 8:23 am
That’s intriguing, Seth. Personally, I would love to have a trail near my residence, or anything that makes bike transportation easier.
I have already decided to focus on the economic effects of transportation, while focusing on environmental economic effects, so I can definitely tie this into my studies. I’ll save the source you gave me. Thanks!
George
Anonymous | February 23, 2007 at 5:58 pm
The economic effects of transportation is a huge topic. What are you going to cover?
Train vs truck for transport, the cost of fuel for airplanes for transportion of goods for something like FedEx, total costs of transport in terms of time for people to get to work sites due to traffic and variances in gas prices? The costs of building new roads vs mass transit?
Author comment by George | February 23, 2007 at 8:55 pm
My independent study will most likely be a very broad overview of a number of topics regarding transportation, which will narrow down over time. Right now I am looking at:
- Public transit
- Hybrid Electric and Alternative Fueled Cars
- Bicycle transportation
- Gas taxes / methods to reduce transportation costs and environmental degradation from transport.
In the end I’ll probably develop some sort of policy proposal, but I haven’t quite narrowed it down yet since the entire study itself just began. I’m under the guidance of a professor so it will also depend which direction she guides me in. I’m going to have some degree of focus on hybrid-electric and alternatively fueled cars though.
Thanks for the comment.
Peter the Anteater | February 27, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Hybrid electric or hydrogen fuel cell or both? What will be the way our cars are powered in the future?
UCI celebrates grand opening of hydrogen fueling station
First of its kind in Orange County, the facility is acclaimed as a foothold to future
Irvine, Calif., February 27, 2007
UC Irvine today celebrated the grand opening of its automobile hydrogen fueling station – the first of its kind in Orange County, and the first in California capable of dispensing hydrogen at 700 bar, or 10,000 pounds per square inch, which in some cases can nearly double a vehicle’s driving range.
Automakers Toyota, Nissan, Honda, General Motors and DaimlerChrysler are expected to use the station to fuel demonstration vehicles that are not yet commercially available. The station provides the newest in fueling technology to meet the demands of the vehicle development programs.
The facility looks like a gas station, with stand-alone dispensers that deliver pure gaseous hydrogen at discrete pressures through noninterchangeable nozzles.
When used to deliver energy, hydrogen produces zero or very low emissions. The emissions from a hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicle contain only water vapor. Hydrogen today is produced efficiently from natural gas and also can be produced from non-petroleum sources, thereby potentially reducing the country and state’s dependence on petroleum. The ultimate goal is for hydrogen to be produced through a variety of clean and renewable energy sources.
Author comment by George | February 27, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Hydrogen has a myriad of problems as well. The two primary ones are that it requires much more energy to produce hydrogen fuel cells than they yield. Secondly, containing hydrogen is incredibly difficult, so very strong, heavy, expensive tanks must be built to hold it. Because of this, I have a difficult time believing hydrogen is the fuel of the future for automobiles.
I’ll keep my fingers crossed anyways, because the concept is pretty cool.
You should probably study why the hell it’s so damn cold outside now… F- Global Warming! What a fake.