As the year groans to an end, some little snippets of interesting activity:
- Ken Arrow confronts climate change ‘do nothingners.’
- Nick Gruen highlights the case for emission trading in an international context.
- Paul Krugman does economics!
- Andrew Leigh wants school report cards.
- The ACCC’s petrol report is out with unsurprising results except that price transparency could get us as much as 1.9 cents per litre off. Seems to me that this is a good opportunity to get people use to higher petrol taxes in a straight transfer from corporations to the public purse.
And I set a record for Facebook friends — now adding someone I went to kindergarten with but had lost track of since then (that is ‘they new each other from ages 3 to 4’!). My previous record had been primary school.
Core Economics 
I’ve always argued that the only way to get CO2 emissions under control is with a global cap-and-trade system. The cap is set to what the planet can handle, and divided up among nations on a per-capita basis. And calculated using population data from a fixed date, to penalize population growth.
Poor countries would be rewarded for their low emissions, and rich countries could live their current lifestyle, but pay for the privelege.
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