In lecture 16 Professor Thomas Sterner discusses Transportation, Energy and Climate. He starts by showing diagrams of who gains and loses what (in terms of time and money) from a congestion tax.
He discusses how much environmentally friendly new cars are comparing to old ones, but there are also a lot of emissions when building cars so how often should one change car? And should congestion taxes vary depending on how old ad dirty your car is?
Sterner goes on and discusses fuel taxes and how hard it is to implement and what a sensible matter it is in some places, as in Nigeria lots of people were killed in riots as the consequence of abolishing fuel subsidies.
Then he discusses climate change, touching upon some of all its complexity, the risks of sea level rise and the uncertainty concerning this. Eventual sea level rise, which will probably affect highly populated areas, especially, in Asia. He also shows how much temperatures are expected to increase and how these increases differ around the world, generally expected to strike already warm places most.
So can we have both growth and care of the environment at the same time? He shows the differences in prices of fuel in some countries and how this affect fuel consumption. How price elastic is fuel consumption in the short run and long run?
