Harry Clarke

I provided these remarks at the 54th Annual Conference of AARES (Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society) that I am now attending in Adelaide. It is in the main a simple argument for using adaptive management techniques for managing highly uncertain and complex environmental systems. Very provisional. Revised, comments welcome.

Following the Obama reforms, Australian states and commonwealth governments are today considering introducing compulsory fuel standards on Australian cars to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  

The bypass around Frankston will be toll free and will cost taxpayers $750 million. It will go ahead as a public-private partnership even if the Commonwealth Government gives not a cent towards its funding.  To Premier John Brumby it is another instance of Kevin Rudd’s ‘nation-building’.  Quote: ‘..quite frankly, the economy and the construction industry (need it)’. [...]

In many Australian cities an attempt has been made to regulate levels of parking by controlling levels of on- and off-street parking.  The dominant trend has been to heavily restrict on-street parking but to keep that which is available priced at relatively low levels. The resulting excess demands are rationed primarily by restrictions on the [...]

Road use congestion costs arise because travellers do not consider the impact of their travel decisions on the travel times of other road users. This creates what is the most significant externality associated with road travel. For the UK congestion is estimated by Samsom et al. (2001) to provide between 75-84 per cent of total [...]

Background. Traffic accident costs are a significant component of total road transport costs.
I have been examining proposals for introducing distance-based car insurance charges as a way of addressing traffic accident issues as well as environmental externalities associated with road use. There are arguments for utilising per kilometre (km) insurance charges rather than lump-sum annual [...]

More of the same here. It’s my first post on my new WordPress site.
I am still working on the design of this site. Readers will have to live with the poor aesthetics for a while.  But great things will happen.

A post over at Catallaxy suggests that policies of preventing the exploitation of oil and gas reserves near national parks in the US harm the poor (mainly blacks) and are therefore unacceptable – there is even the suggestion in the original news story* that such policies are racist . It is at best a partial story and [...]

The imminent destruction of the freshwater ecology of the lower lakes of the Murray River on the grounds that upstream freshwater supplies are insufficient to flush them out and that stored water suppliesin the river system must be safeguarded for human consumption might well be justified on triage grounds but it is nevertheless an alarming [...]

I don’t have strong views on the proposed use of the particular park in Kensington for Sir Ron Eddington’s proposed tunnel to connect the eastern freeway with the western suburbs in Melbourne*. Public protests are being organised on this use of the park. However I am concerned at the propensity of governments at all levels [...]

Honey bees around the globe are disappearing and nobody knows why – maybe it is due to bloodsucking mite called varroa – pictured above. One-third of US honey bees were wiped out last year. Bees are crucial for the pollination of 90 major crops. Albert Einstein is claimed to have said that if honey bees [...]

In many wetlands along the Murray and Darling Rivers, sediments flooded for decades by locks and weirs, are being exposed to air as drought-affected water levels fall. Inland sulfidic sediments have been found in NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. Waterlogged soils often contain sulphides produced by bacteria decomposing organic matter, but [...]

I have long been interested in the phenomenon of hormesis and teach this topic to environmental economics students. This idea – developed by toxicologists – suggests that low concentrations of certain apparently dangerous substances (gamma rays, dioxins, even pesticides), may be good for your health. The health damage function is therefore J or U-shaped in [...]

I posted recently on the water buybacks about to occur in the Murray-Darling Basin to provide increased environmental water flows. John Quiggin also made an post based on an AFR article he wrote. At the time I scouted around for a brief of the current state of play. This article by Asa Wahlquist in The [...]

This oil industry spokesman, Mr Nansen G. Saleri, argues the world has plenty of oil to the end of the century and that $100 barrel prices will stimulate the types of innovations that will bring new supplies on board.
I don’t have enough oil industry knowledge to evaluate these claims – they seem to depend on [...]

The Rudd Government’s decision to purchase by tender $50 million worth of water rights from irrigators in the Murray Darling Basin is sensible policy. The Howard government agreed only to purchase water that resulted from technology-induced water savings, a policy that was never going to get far. According to much of the press the current [...]

One of the interesting things about revisiting a place you did know very well is that the developmental changes stand out clearly. I have not visited my former home in Thailand for just over 10 years and the changes are massive throughout the Bangkok area. Evidence of strong economic growth is everywhere. Rice paddies and [...]

I head back to work today after nearly 4 weeks off. I finished my holidays with a week of golf and bird-watching- yesterday playing at the magnificent, links-style, Growling Frog Golf Course (it is named after this). Then in the evening I went with zoologist Dr. Bob Anderson and his friend Jan to Puckapunyal [...]

Mr Rudd’s foolish mutterings during the election campaign to manage petrol prices may come back to haunt him. He didn’t say ‘control’ but he did suggest that something needed to be done about them – the impression was unmistakeable. Mr Rudd’s concern was to win a few votes from disgruntled consumers but this message [...]

Mark Perry’s blog (Hat Tip Greg Mankiw) graphs gasoline prices compared to average US household net worth 1947-2007. As a percentage of net worth, consuming 1000 gallons of gasoline in the US these days costs less than at any time prior to 1985. I assume, the same story for Australians. Rising wealth is insulating us [...]