GEOG203 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Greenhouse Gas, Carbon Tax, Market Failure

• School: University of Waterloo
• Department: Geography and Environmental Management
• Course: GEOG203
• Professor: Daniel Scott

Document Summary

All things that have value can also have a price. This means paying what something is actually worth. One party has better information than the other (movie: merchants of doubt, based on 2010 book) Public goods: we share a resource, and if one person over-uses it we all share the cost. Someone receives more benefits than they paid for, or someone suffers without. Power (socio-economic, cultural) affects who wins and who loses. Market e(cid:454)ter(cid:374)alities = a (cid:272)ost or a (cid:271)e(cid:374)efit i(cid:374)(cid:272)urred (cid:271)(cid:455) so(cid:373)eo(cid:374)e (cid:449)ho did(cid:374)(cid:859)t (cid:272)hoose to incur it. Voluntary strategies: provide education and demonstrate logic behind changing behavior. One-tonne challenge, approved 45 million dollars to fund program over 3-year period. Aim is to align private costs with social costs to create economic incentive for reducing. Limit is placed, and exceeding it is penalized. Greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting climate change, are an example of a market failure arising from: information asymmetry, a public good, externalities.