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Articles by Peter Dorman

I'm an economist and a professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. My current writing and speaking is focused on three issues: carbon policy, child labor and the global financial crisis. In addition I have published books and articles on worker safety and health, international trade, the precautionary principle, and a number of other topics.

Featured Article

 

But let’s start by accenting the positive.  Krugman’s explanation of mainstream environmental economics is clear and powerful.  He recognizes that there really are a lot of free energy lunches lying around uneaten, in the form of potential efficiency improvements.  He knows that predictions of economic disaster due to carbon policy are without foundation and fail to take into account the potential for innovation.  Above all, he understands that investments in minimizing climate change offer valuable insurance against potentially catastrophic outcomes—the ice-sheet meltoffs and methane megabelches that we have little ability to predict and from which we would have little chance to recover.

 

Why ask for more?  Because three enormous concepts are completely missing.

 

1. Equity.  How the burdens of climate policy, bearable as they may be, are distributed is a very big deal.  First, vast sums of money—hundreds of billions of dollars—are at stake.  Note that these do not reflect costs as economists understand the term.  We are not talking about overall loss ... Read more

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