Climate Change Information
The White House announced that it is collaborating with Google to gather and publish data on climate change, with the goal of helping communities prepare for changes in temperatures and water levels “as easily as they use Google maps to get driving directions.” The joint effort will also feature a high-resolution mapping initiative to track climate-related changes to sea levels.
RFF’s Molly Macauley notes that “the quantity and quality of our information will play a critical role in determining the effectiveness of public and private responses [to climate change].” However, in this Resources article, she writes that such information comes at a price, and outlines four principles for deciding if the information “delivers sufficient bang for the buck.”
Effects of Fuel Efficiency Standards
According to Bloomberg researchers, policy initiatives and alternative vehicles may keep Californians from using nearly a billion gallons of transportation fuel per year by 2020. Federal fuel efficiency regulations will become the main source of reductions in gasoline use, causing the state to experience a “significant shift in the make-up” of both transportation fuel demand and the types of vehicles driven.
But in a review of federal fuel economy standards, RFF’s Joshua Linn cautions that “the effectiveness of the standards at reducing fuel consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions depends, in large part, on the extent to which consumers increase vehicle miles traveled because of the lower driving costs—that is, the magnitude of the rebound effect for passenger vehicles.” In a blog post with RFF’s Clayton Munnings, they note that despite the rebound effect, the benefits seem to outweigh the costs of such policies.
