An increase in severe weather events could lead to bank failures as property prices rapidly adjust, stoke uncertainty and harm economic growth. That makes global warming and its fallout relevant to the Fed, which is responsible for both financial regulation and for guiding the nation’s economy toward full employment and stable prices. New York Times
A surge of oil production is coming, whether the world needs it or not. The flood of crude will arrive even as concerns about climate change are growing and worldwide oil demand is slowing. And it is not coming from the usual producers, but from Brazil, Canada, Norway and Guyana — countries that are either not known for oil or whose production has been lackluster in recent years. New York Times
Denmark gave permission on Wednesday for a natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany to pass through waters in its exclusive economic zone, meaning that the project, Nord Stream 2, can be completed despite sharp criticism from the United States, Ukraine and Poland. With nearly all of its 2,400 kilometers of pipe already laid, Nord Stream 2, wholly owned by Russia’s Gazprom, should be completed roughly on schedule early next year. It is actually a pair of pipelines, complementing a previous pair, Nord Stream 1, and will double capacity to 110 billion cubic meters, or about 3.9 trillion cubic feet.
A rollickingly well-written book, filled with fascinating, exciting and alarming stories about the impact of the oil and gas industry on the world today. While she is clearly animated by a concern about climate change, Maddow mostly describes the political consequences of an industry that has empowered some of the strangest people in the United States and the most unsavory ones abroad. New York Times
Sidewalk Labs, a sister company of Google, had proposed rebuilding a chunk of land east of downtown in exchange for using Toronto as a beta test. In pushing back against that plan, Toronto reached a compromise that lets Sidewalk go ahead, but firmly under public control — setting a precedent for how governments around the world can harness the potential for “smart cities” without letting Big Tech dictate the terms. New York Times
Few people in the West think about the ethics of buying fossil fuels from Vladimir Putin’s Russia Climate Home News
‘Most of the people in the world are poor, so if we knew the economics of being poor, we would know much of the economics that really matters.” (Schultz 1980) VOXEU
Raj Chetty has an idea for introducing students to econ that could transform the field — and society. Vox
A growing number of EU member states are planning to use accounting tricks, including changes in fuel taxes introduced in the past, to claim “additional” energy savings as part of their EU climate obligations. EURACTIV
It is cities, not national governments, that are most aggressively fighting the climate crisis – and in 30 years they could look radically different. The Guardian
© Stefan P. Schleicher 2019
