59 research outputs found
Ep. #114 - The Shale Dilemma (feat. Shanti Gamper-Rabindran)
No full textThis recording and transcript form part of a collection of podcasts conducted by the Cultures of Energy at Rice University. Cultures of Energy brings writers, artists and scholars together to talk, think and feel their way into the Anthropocene. We cover serious issues like climate change, species extinction and energy transition. But we also try to confront seemingly huge and insurmountable problems with insight, creativity and laughter.The kids are all kinds of all right on this week’s episode of the Cultures of Energy podcast. Then (12:55) we welcome our guest, environmental economist Shanti Gamper-Rabindran from the University of Pittsburgh to discuss her remarkable new volume, The Shale Dilemma: A Global Perspective on Fracking and State Development (U Pittsburgh Press, 2018) that gives us a comparative snapshot of where shale oil and gas development is at across the world today. Following the lead of the U.S. where hydraulic fracturing, despite its many environmental consequences, has led an enormous rise in fuel productivity, some countries are actively developing shale resources while others have banned fracking and still others wait and see. Shanti explains the arguments governments make in favor of developing shale resources and why the energy security argument seems to dominate all other concerns. We talk about the dangers of shale development and how the risks and benefits of fracking are very often unevenly distributed. She explains what she’s learned about the frontlines of shale development in China and explains the differences between the outcomes of shale development vs conventional oil and gas extraction. We talk about “carbon leakage,” why inadequate carbon credit schemes have not impacted greenhouse gas emissions and, finally, whether it is truly possible to estimate the “social cost of carbon” when the impacts of climate change appear to be accelerating
Essays in empirical environmental economics : GIS-econometric analysis of Indonesia's fires, Bolivia's deforestation and Mexico's trade with the U.S.
No full textThesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2001.Includes bibliographical references (p. 114-116).This thesis examines three environmental issues in developing countries. The first essay examines land fires in Indonesia that inflict severe air pollution-related damage on Southeast Asia annually. Conservative estimates of losses in 1997 alone were US12 million for Singapore. Fire incidence on various landholdings is examined using a new author-compiled database on satellite-based fire and rainfall data, land use maps, socioeconomic and geographical information. The essay finds that estates, large-scale industrial plantations that are rapidly expanding in the tropics, raise fire incidence beyond the 'natural' level (the fire incidence on conservation areas serves as a benchmark). In contrast, it finds no evidence that small landholdings, which are often blamed for fires, raise fire incidence. The government's ban on the use of clearance fires, as a result of weak enforcement, did not reduce fire incidence on estates. Alternative policy-levers that could potentially reduce these fires, such as lengthening the estates' leases to improve their property security, are found to be ineffective. The second essay examines whether education can potentially reduce households' agricultural-related forest clearance by increasing the returns to wage labor. It analyzes a unique survey of 649 indigenous households in protected areas in Bolivia's lowland forests. It finds that an additional year of education among household heads is associated with a reduction of 0.05 hectares or 4.3% of the annual mean household forest clearance, increased returns of 2.6% in wage labor and a 21 % increase in days worked in wage labor. Thus the 3-year average increase in education among the youngest cohorts is associated with potentially significant reduction in forest clearance in the study site, though further work is needed to establish causality. The third essay examines the pollution intensity of the NAFTA-related expansion in USMexican trade using new detailed measures of air, water, metal and toxic pollution intensities and injury rates at the 4-digit Standard Industrial Classification level. Based on pollution measures at this resolution, it does not find strong evidence of greater growth in the share of US net imports from Mexico in the more polluting or injurious industries.by Shanti Rabindran Gamper.Ph.D
Information Collection, Access, and Dissemination to Support Evidence‐Based Shale Gas Policies
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Did the EPA's voluntary industrial toxics program reduce emissions? A GIS analysis of distributional impacts and by-media analysis of substitution
No full textDoes industry self-regulation reduce accidents? Responsible care in the chemical sector
No full textThis is the first study to evaluate the impact of self-regulation on industrial accidents. We examine Responsible Care in the US chemical manufacturing sector using our author-constructed database of 1,867 firms that own 2,963 plants between 1988 and 2001. Firms’ self-selection into RC is instrumented using pollution-related regulatory pressure on firms that influences their probability of joining RC, but not plant-level accidents. The average treatment effect on the treated indicates that RC reduces the likelihood of accidents by 2.99 accidents per\ud
100 plants in a given year. This 69.3% reduction in the likelihood of accidents, accounting for the plants that participate in RC, translates to back-of-the-envelope avoided losses of 3.8 billion per year. RC also reduces the likelihood of more narrowly-defined accidents, i.e., process safety accidents and accidents related to violations of RC codes, by 5.75 accidents per 100 plants in a given year or by 85.9%
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