Environment

Is Monopoly a Barrier to Hawai’i’s Ascent?

March 6, 2014

By Michael Roberts In 2012 Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winning economist and Columbia University Business School Professor visited Hawaii to give the Stephen and Marylyn Pauley Seminar in Sustainability. Stiglitz discussed sustainability within the context of our depressed national economy and ongoing struggles with debt and unemployment. For our economy to fully recover, we […]

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Why are Hawai’i’s Electricity Prices So High?

By Michael Roberts Excluding rooftop solar, Hawai’i residential consumers pay an average of about 37 cents for a kilowatt-hour of electricity. Taking refrigerators, water heaters, stoves, air conditioning and other uses into account, the average Hawai’i household uses about 18.5 kWh each day, for a monthly bill of about $205. That’s a lot, between three […]

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Optimal groundwater management when recharge is declining: a method for valuing the recharge benefits of watershed conservation

February 27, 2014

Demand for water will continue to increase as per capita income rises and the population grows, and natural hazard resilience can exacerbate the problem through changes in precipitation patterns and quantities, evapotranspiration, and land cover—all of which directly or indirectly affect the amount of water that ultimately infiltrates back into groundwater aquifers. We develop a […]

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Changing climate conditions threaten groundwater recharge. The potential benefits of conserving it are substantial.

February 25, 2014

By Kim Burnett and Christopher Wada Results from a recent statistical exercise suggest that by the end of the 21st century, Hawaii will likely see a 5-10% reduction in precipitation during the wet season and a 5% increase during the dry season (Timm and Diaz 2009). Given that approximately 70% of normal precipitation falls during […]

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Publication: Optimal groundwater management when recharge is declining: a method for valuing the recharge benefits of watershed conservation

February 21, 2014

Demand for water will continue to increase as per capita income rises and the population grows, and climate change can exacerbate the problem through changes in precipitation patterns and quantities, evapotranspiration, and land cover—all of which directly or indirectly affect the amount of water that ultimately infiltrates back into groundwater aquifers. We develop a dynamic […]

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Catch Shares and Implications for Hawai’i’s Fishing Industry

November 26, 2013

By John Lynham and Chaning Jang* In light of declining global fish stocks, an immediate and important concern becomes the management of our fishery resources, both to protect the delicate ecosystems that they are a part of, and to ensure their viability as an economic and food resource for generations. A controversial new method to […]

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Ordering Extraction from Multiple Aquifers

Optimal groundwater extraction satisfies the condition that the marginal benefits of water consumption equal the full marginal cost of extraction in each period, including the opportunity cost of future benefits foregone. But how should this well-known condition be generalized when there are multiple aquifers available? We provide an extension of the “Pearce equation” to guide […]

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Integrating Demand-Management with Development of Supply-Side Substitutes

Sustaining water availability at current prices in the face of growing demand and declining resources is not possible, and scarcity is further exacerbated by falling recharge levels due to natural hazard resilience, urbanization, and watershed depreciation. We discuss an integrated approach to water-resource development based on principles of sustainability science. In addition to demand management […]

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The Role of Impatience in Sustainable Growth

November 4, 2013

By Lee Endress, James Roumasset, and Christopher Wada Sustaining economic growth requires appropriate husbandry of our natural capital resources (e.g. fish, trees, freshwater, and coral).  But how much conservation is optimal? According to proponents of “strong sustainability,” natural capital should never be depleted. This is inconsistent with maximizing economic welfare however. In less developed economies, […]

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