Mark Jaccard, Professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University, VancouverAbstractThere are obvious reasons why for three decades most jurisdictions have failPublic surveys and observation of real-world GHG reduction successes suggest that explicit carbon pricing (carbon tax and perhaps cap-and-trade) can be substantially more politically difficult than certain regulatory policies for shifting the energy system on to a deep decarbonization trajectory. Nonetheless, some people have argued that carbon pricing is an essential GHG reduction policy, suggesting that sincere politicians must do carbon pricing no matter how politically difficult. But the claim that carbon pricing is essential is factually incorrect. Deep decarbonization can be achieved entirely with regulations. Regulatory policies are unlikely to be as economically efficient as carbon pricing. But not all regulations perform identically when it comes to the economic-efficiency criterion. Flexible regulations have some attributes that make them low cost relative to regulations that require adoption of specific technologies.This talk provides evidence that assesses both the relative economic efficiency of policies and their relative political acceptability. The findings reported here suggest that some kinds of flexible regulations can perform significantly better than explicit carbon pricing in terms of relative political cost per tonne reduced while performing only marginally worse in terms of economic cost per tonne reduced. Presumably, this type of trade-off information could be of value to politicians who sincerely want deep decarbonization but would also like to be rewarded with re-election so that they and competing politicians see the value in ambitious and sustained GHG reduction efforts.

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2018, 15(1), 156; doi:10.3390/ijerph15010156 Abstract This study addressed school-contextual features of social disorder in relation to sixth-grade students’ experienc

in: Journal of Youth and Adolescence  AbstractEquitable access to high-quality schools is important for student achievement. However, the increasing attention placed on adolescent mental health promotio

Elements in Decision Theory and Philosophy, red. Martin Peterson. Cambridge University Press Abstract Suppose that you prefer A to B, B to C, and C to A. Your preferences violate Expected Utility Theory

Oxford University Press Today's global economy was largely established by political events and decisions in the 1980s and 90s, when scores of nations opened up their economies to the forces of globaliz

in: The Dimensions of Poverty: Measurement, Epistemic Injustice, Activism (ed. V. Beck, H. Hahn & R. Lepenies), New York: Springer. 2020. AbstractMultidimensional poverty measures require implicit,

Selling pictures. Pictorial Economy and Commoditization 1820–2020

This project will place the current discussions concerning AI-generated images in a historical context, comparing it to two previous technological breakthroughs that have affected the use of pictures for commercial purposes. 

Synthese 199 Abstract This article is about the role of factual uncertainty for moral decision-making as it concerns the ethics of machine decision-making (i.e., decisions by AI systems, such as autonomo

Institute for Futures Studies Working Paper Series 2020:12 Abstract The response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the public discourse about the pandemic, can be used to illustrate three common mistakes in

Economics & Philosophy Abstract Suppose that a decision-maker’s aim, under certainty, is to maximize some continuous value, such as lifetime income or continuous social welfare. Can such a decision-