The 20th annual Symposium will be held on Thursday, April 23, 2009.

Why, What, and How: Philosophical, Empirical, and Political Approaches to CO2 Reduction
Norris 102, 3:30 PM

Nathan  De Winkle,   '09 56
   Major: Economics and Management
   Hometown: Grand Rapids, MI

Sponsor(s): Jahn Hakes, Gene Cline
Support:  

Abstract: 
Whether it is a business deciding to go ‘green’ or governments debating the ‘Climate Crisis,’ the environment has come to the forefront of almost every discussion. It is the goal of this project to add to the discussion in three areas: addressing what obligations humans have to the environment, analyzing the trends in Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) emissions, and searching for economic and political avenues of addressing the issue. This presentation focuses on the empirical side of the discussion. It seeks to test the hypothesis of an environmental Kuznet’s Curve for CO₂. This theory states that there exist an ‘inverted u’ relationship between emission levels and income levels for a country. Other papers have already found that this relationship exist for other pollutants and CO₂, they do not address causality, that is, just because a correlation exists between the variables does not mean that wealth directly triggers emission reduction. My econometric model will create a comparison between 6 countries: the US, China, India, UK, Germany, and Brazil. These were chosen because they are a cross section of the developed and the developing world and have had very different approaches to address CO₂ emissions. To address this issue of causality this paper adds dummy variables for significant events which effect emission (e.g. the reunification of Germany, or Brazil’s use of ethanol.) By including these variables, or at least acknowledging them, this paper seeks to show what drives emission reduction. The implications of this analysis are discussed.

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