John Quiggin

Now that the World Health Organization has finally endorsed a recommendation for wearing masks in public, it’s time for Australia to do the same. The most important case is that of public transport including air travel. Urban public transport is vital, but until we take the necessary steps on masks, we will be stuck with recommendations to avoid peak hour travel, guaranteeing a return to private cars and congestions The airlines have been the biggest transporters of the...

Michael Shellenberger’s “apology essay” is the last gasp of “ecomodernism” Although ecomodernists make a lot of claims, the only one that is distinctive is that nuclear power is the zero-carbon “baseload” energy source needed to replace coal, and that mainstream environmentalists have wrongly opposed it. Historically, there is something to this. It would have been better to keep on building nuclear plants in the 1980s and 1990s than to switch from oil to coal, and it was silly...

That’s the title of a book I’ve agreed to write for Yale University Press (their editorial director) Seth Ditchik commissioned my previous two books, Zombie Economics and Economics in Two Lessons when he was at Princeton UP. When we first discussed the book, I took the view that most of the writing would have to be done after November, since the outcome of the US presidential election would be crucial to developments in the US and globally. I’m now working on the assumptions that(a)...

Back again with another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. If you would like to receive my (hopefully) regular email news, please sign up using the following link http://eepurl.com/dAv6sX You can also follow me on Twitter @JohnQuiggin, at my Facebook public page   and at my Economics in Two Lessons page Like this:Like Loading...

Predicting election outcomes is always risky (for example, the People’s Action Party could lose the current election in Singapore), but life involves taking some risks. So I’m going to predict that Trump is going to lose in November, and lose badly*. He is far behind in the polls, substantially further than in 2016. More relevantly perhaps, the resurgence of the pandemic in Arizona, Florida and Texas has ended any chance that the economy will be successfully reopened and the pandemic...

Back again with another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. If you would like to receive my (hopefully) regular email news, please sign up using the following link http://eepurl.com/dAv6sX You can also follow me on Twitter @JohnQuiggin, at my Facebook public page   and at my Economics in Two Lessons page Like this:Like Loading...

… , we can exit coal by 2030. Here’s how to do it. That’s the title of my recent article in The Conversation. It’s a summary of a report, titled Getting Off Coal: Orderly, Early Transition to Minimise Impact for Australian Economy which was published recently by The Australia Institute. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

A striking thing about Tehan’s university reform. Conservatives hate science even more than humanities, & feeling is mutual. Every scientist I know loathes them. Polling says my colleagues are a good sample. Only 6 per cent of US scientists are Republicans (huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/only-six…) Rightists like technological goodies, but even there they want to fight culture wars, against renewable energy for example. In this context, is there a non-racist version of the “cargo...

Following up this CT post on health living,, everyone has their own story and their own health. That’s true, but we are all subject to the same physical laws. So, here’s my story and some thoughts on the physics. I managed to lose about 12 Kg over a couple of years, almost entirely through exercise. The basic physics is simple(1) weight loss = (kilojoules burnt – kilojoules consumed)*k,(2) kilojoules burnt = base metabolism + work done where k ≃ 0.025 is a constant reflecting...

Back again with another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. If you would like to receive my (hopefully) regular email news, please sign up using the following link http://eepurl.com/dAv6sX You can also follow me on Twitter @JohnQuiggin, at my Facebook public page   and at my Economics in Two Lessons page Like this:Like Loading...