Please see below for events scheduled at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
We also archive information and useful materials on all our past events|.
May
Seminar: The Political Economy of Environmental Policy with Overlapping Generations
Climate Change and Environment Seminar Series: Summer Term
A two-sector OLG model illuminates previously unexamined intergenerational effects of a tax that protects an environmental stock. A traded asset capitalises the economic returns to future tax-induced environmental improvements, benefiting the current asset owners, the old generation. Absent a transfer, the tax harms the young generation by decreasing their real wage. Future generations benefit from the tax-induced improvement in environmental stock. The principal intergenerational conflict arising from public policy is between generations alive at the time society imposes the policy, not between generations alive at different times. A Pareto-improving policy can be implemented under various political economy settings.
Date and time: Thursday 17 May, 12.30 to 2pm
Speaker: Armon Rezai, the Vienna University of Economics and Business
Location: East Building, EAS.E304, LSE (map and directions|)
More information: Paper: 'The political economy of environmental policy with overlapping generations|' by Larry Karp and Armon Rezai (PDF)
Seminar: Climate scepticism - is it primarily found in the English-speaking world, and if so, why?
Climate Change and Environment Seminar Series: Summer Term
The presentation will focus on the prevalence of climate scepticism – in its various forms - in the print media around the world. Most previous academic research on climate scepticism has tended to focus on the way it has been organised, and its impact on policy outputs, rather on the types of scepticism and the individuals who represent them. The paper lays out the different forms of scepticism, and gives examples of the differences between them. It then draws on extensive content analysis of a large database of newspaper articles in Brazil, China, France, India, the UK and the USA, taken from two separate three-month periods in 2007 and 2009/10. It shows the country variations in the quantity, type and professional backgrounds of sceptics quoted in the press. It concludes that climate scepticism is largely an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, found most frequently in the US and British newspapers, and explores some of the reasons why this may be so.
Date and time: Thursday 24 May, 5 to 6.30pm
Speaker: James Painter, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford
Location: St. Clements, STC.S75, LSE (map and directions|)
Seminar: Long Run Trends in Energy and Climate Change
Climate Change and Environment Seminar Series: Summer Term
Abstract to follow
Date and time: Thursday 31 May, 12.30 to 2pm
Speaker: Roger Fouquet, Ikerbasque Research Professor (Basque Centre for Climate Change)
Location: East Building, EAS.E304, LSE (map and directions|)
June
Lecture: Good Derivatives: a story of financial and environmental innovation
Hosted by Grantham Research Institute and Department of Management at LSE
Dr Richard Sandor will give a first-hand account of his experiences as an inventor of new markets in interest rates, air and water. As a young economist at the Chicago Board of Trade, he helped create interest rate futures, a development that revolutionised worldwide finance. Later, he pioneered the use of emissions trading to reduce acid rain in the US, one of the most successful environmental programs ever, and greenhouse gases.
Sandor provides unique insights into the process of creating these new financial products. Covering his successes and failures, including an attempt to start an all-electronic exchange in the late sixties, his talk will cover the efforts to build support for these new inventions in places like Chicago, New York, Paris and how their impact is unfolding today in Mumbai, Shanghai and Beijing.
The talk will also cover events leading up to the creation of the Chicago Climate Exchange and its affiliated exchanges (European Climate Exchange, Chicago Climate Futures Exchange and Tianjin Climate Exchange, in China). The European Climate Exchange quickly became the benchmark exchange for carbon prices and transformed London into the world center of carbon finance. The lessons learned in the creation of these markets can play a critical role in effectively addressing global climate change and other pressing environmental issues.
Date and time: Thursday 7 June, 6.30 to 8pm
Speaker: Dr Richard Sandor, author of 'Good Derivatives: a story of financial and environmental innovation|'
Location: Wolfson Theatre, New Academic Building, LSE (map and directions|)