Climate Change Solutions: Examining Science, Economics, and Governance

1. HONR 229L: Climate Change: Science, Economics, and Governance Possible Solutions Your name here 8 November 2017

2. As always, I suggest working the admission ticket questions into the presentation. While this not essential, it does provide a common point of reference for everyone.

3. Parts a) & b) are straightfoward According to the reading: a) what two countries rank third and fourth, behind China and the US, in greenhouse gas emissions and why do these countries rank so high? b) what type of carbon credit trading has been proposed to address the reason GHG emission is so high, from the countries that rank third and fourth in GHG emission? c) would the cost of emitting a ton of carbon under the present RGGI program, which is $4.35 per ton of CO2, have an impact on the resource that is the subject of this question. Part c) could invoke some serious discussion. The clearing price of the most recent RGGI auction is given at https://www.rggi.org/market/co2_auctions/results/auction-37 Also, might want to consider the other URL given in this AT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reducing_emissions_from_deforestation_and_forest_degradation

4. If you’d like to spend more time on global efforts to avoid deforestation, you are more than welcome to browse these websites: https://adpartners.org https://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2015L00347/Explanatory%20Statement/Text http://www.carboncredit2012.com/site/index.php/avoided-deforestation or of course whatever other resources you’d like, to provide additional info on this topic. Australia had been the world leader in this topic, until recent political change … perhaps some discussion of this country’s past efforts would be of interest to the class. --- Deforestation is a rich topic … feel free to take in whatever direction seems best

5. Your call if you’d like to do this, but I think this is a fascinating array of entrepreneurial efforts: The reading discusses numerous companies, as is the style of the KH book. For better or worse, the book is written in a manner highly focused on events that occurred around 2007. Here is a list of companies (or division) that, as far as I can tell, are still intact and functioning quite well: IBM Big Green Innovations, Interface, Nextek Power Systems, PAX, URLs to the companies are: http://www.ibm.com/ibm/green http://www.nextekpower.com/#smart-power-smart-light http://www.interfaceglobal.com/sustainability.aspx http://paxscientific.com/fansblowers Please pick one of these companies and write a short essay that summarizes what the company is now doing. I realize this is a fair amount of work, but you could prepare a slide for each company summarizing in bullet form, and using images from the websites, what the company does and what has happened since 2007. If you’d like to do this and need help, please let Ross & Walt know. Rationale for this chapter and these AT questions is that, in my heart of hearts, I think it will be essential for the business community to be engaged in the “solutions”. I think exploring these companies, together with the last AT, will be a wonderful way to explore this topic. Also, I placed on the Auxiliary reading an Article about CalStar. You could read this article, then build a slide into the presentation asking students: who read about CalStar? What happened?

6. While the next AT question is simple: KH are advocates of cap and trade, due to the successful implementation of cap and trade to solve what had been vexing air quality issues in the US. They also highlight two “more localized market failures” that need to be addressed, regardless (my words) of whether the driving market force is a carbon tax or cap and trade. Name and briefly explain these two local market forces? You could lead an extended discussion of both factors, asking folks to relate their personal experiences. Indeed, should you want (you can call on me!), I’ll gladly relate my deep frustrations with lack of campus action due to “principal-agent problems” Also, since the ‘tragedy of the commons” is used in the reading, welcome to work this into the material should you so desire. We had encountered this term earlier in the semester, in a reading of the book by Jared Diamond.

7. Given the amount of space in the reading devoted to automobiles, could spend some time to this AT question: b) A significant part of the chapter is devoted to automobiles. Of course, addressing transportation is a vexing component of limiting global warming. Write a few sentences summarizing why KH favor electric vehicles as well as the V2G system. If you want to pursue the e-vehicle theme, with a little research you can learn of the benefits our Univ provides for those who bring e-vehicles onto campus. OK, I know e-cars are out of the price range of most students, and also that most students in the class do not have cars on campus. Still we are all part of the Univ of Md community, so relating campus policies on e-cars to the reading is perfectly fine! I’ve place the only figure in the chapter on the next page, should you want to use.

8. Here is the figure:

9. It is my sincere hope we’ll get some great answers for this last AT question of the semester. As noted above, the KH book is written in a manner highly focused on events around year 2007, the time the book was written. Even though the book is a bit dated, I chose it for class because it is optimistic, provocative, and invokes the entrepreneurial spirit (over and over!) that IMHO will be needed for society to significantly reduced combustion of fossil fuels. For this last AT question, provide a few words of some type of entrepreneurial enterprise that you believe can be important to reducing society’s reliance on fossil fuels. In other words, if KH were to write a new addition, what new effort should they include in an update to Chapter 9. You could prepare a single slide with your own suggestion, but first, literally call on anyone who would like to share their suggestion. If everyone took a minute to speak, we’d fill 20 mins time. Am sure this won’t happen, but hopefully we’ll get half the class to participate. So, should leave at least 10 minutes for this discussion, maybe more

10. As I write to all of the students: • your call on how to use the ~45 mins • I like using some AT questions, to facilitate discussion, but I can tell from the feedback sheets that some students think this has been over done  • Bringing in material outside of the book related to the topic has gone over very well so far this semester • Feel free use extra material and steer in whatever direction you’d like. • Good luck!