In October of 2015, President Obama issued a memorandum directing all Federal agencies to factor the value of ecosystem services into Federal planning and decision-making. That necessarily begs the question: what are ecosystem services, and how are they relevant to the economy in Maine?
Last week I was a guest in my colleague’s Renewable Energy Law class. One of the questions I was asked had to do with Maine’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). Maine’s RPS seems, at first glance, to be an ambitious goal (40 percent of Maine’s electricity is to come from renewable sources by 2017). However, at …
Last week Maine Biz [a business focused newspaper in Maine] published a short piece asking five prominent Maine economists about challenges and opportunities facing Maine in the upcoming year. For the most part I agree with them: the demographic ”winter,” the decline in manufacturing, the restructuring of our labor market. But one issue stood out …
Well, it’s been a while since my last blog post. September, to be exact. I taught a class last semester on “Community Economic Development,” and between that and trying to get a new business off the ground it’s been a bit challenging. But the class is over, January looks pretty quiet so far, and so …
Like seemingly everyone else in the entire state of Maine, I found it difficult to get much work done during the summer. So, although I said in my most recent post that I would write more about the proposed Clean Power Plan, it’s taken a bit longer than I thought. I know you’re all waiting …
On July 17, the Portland Press Herald ran an Op Ed advocating for the Clean Power Plan (the name that has been given to President Obama’s Climate Action Plan). The Op Ed reads, “the goal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed Clean Power Plan is to cut U.S. carbon pollution 30 percent from 2005 levels …
What’s in a view? Recently, a controversy has arisen in Portland over the proposed development at the site of the former Portland Company. The controversy has arisen because the proposed development may block the view of some neighbors (and the general public) of Casco Bay. As always, the story is more complicated than it first …
“So what is a resource economist (or an environmental economist) anyway?” Many people ask me this. They may know what an economist is (or think they do, anyway – an economist is a social scientist, not an accountant or a financial analyst), but they may be flummoxed when I say I was trained an environmental …
Since I was away on vacation, there have been many things going on that have implications for both the economy and the environment in Maine. As it turns out, the very area where I and my family were camping is actually Ground Zero for one of the most potentially important invasions in Maine’s local history: …
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, pronounced “Reggie” for short) holds its next auction on March 11th. I’m going to devote this post (and possibly the next one) to what RGGI is, the economic theory behind it, and what it means for the state of Maine. (A little caveat is in order here: like all …