Robert H Socolow
Biographic Data
| ID | 5722004 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert H Socolow |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert H |
| FAMILY NAME | Socolow |
| SIGNATURE | SOCOLOW R H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Princeton University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Contending with climate change
Any successful effort to address climate change over the next 25 years will involve a “credible swap” that greatly reduces greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, provides energy in entirely different ways, and also reduces demand for energy. On the demand side, the next quarter century offers abundant high-leverage opportunities to reduce future emissions via intelligent urban design, building construction (notably in the giga…
Witnessing for the Middle to Depolarize the Climate Change Conversation
Witnessing for the middle seeks to depolarize contentious public issues and to create effective coalitions. It reveals neglected facets of a problem, clarifies the stakes, reduces hype, and facilitates the engagement of people largely on the sidelines. Regarding climate change, many forms of middle-building are under way, notably including the scenario-making that reveals alternative pathways to some specific goal. This essay explores two additio…
The Social Cost of Carbon
We analyze the role of ethical values in the determination of the social cost of carbon, arguing that the familiar debate about discounting is too narrow. Other ethical issues are equally important to computing the social cost of carbon, and we highlight inequality, risk, and population ethics. Although the usual approach, in the economics of costbenefit analysis for climate policy, is confined to a utilitarian axiology, the methodology of the so…
Inequality, climate impacts on the future poor, and carbon prices
Significance Hundreds of published papers produce “optimal” trajectories of global emissions of carbon dioxide, and corresponding carbon prices, over this century, taking into account future damages inflicted by climate change. To our knowledge, in all instances the models ignore inequalities in economic variables beyond regional differences. Here, we introduce heterogeneous subregional populations (distributed by income) and explore how the opti…
Commitment accounting of CO 2 emissions
The world not only continues to build new coal-fired power plants, but built more new coal plants in the past decade than in any previous decade. Worldwide, an average of 89 gigawatts per year (GW yr ^–1 ) of new coal generating capacity was added between 2010 and 2012, 23 GW yr ^–1 more than in the 2000–2009 time period and 56 GW yr ^–1 more than in the 1990–1999 time period. Natural gas plants show a similar pattern. Assuming these plants opera…
Yr phase-out for conventional coal? If only
Myhrvold and Caldeira worked out the climate consequences of various ways in which the world's current fleet of coal power plants could evolve into something different [1]. They imagined one-fortieth of the world's coal plants being closed down each year for 40 years. Two limiting cases are (1) nothing is built to take the place of this power, because efficiency gains have made them unnecessary, and (2) coal plants exactly like those now running …
Sharing global CO 2 emission reductions among one billion high emitters
We present a framework for allocating a global carbon reduction target among nations, in which the concept of “common but differentiated responsibilities” refers to the emissions of individuals instead of nations. We use the income distribution of a country to estimate how its fossil fuel CO 2 emissions are distributed among its citizens, from which we build up a global CO 2 distribution. We then propose a simple rule to derive a universal cap on…
Beneficial Biofuels—The Food, Energy, and Environment Trilemma
Exploiting multiple feedstocks, under new policies and accounting rules, to balance biofuel production, food security, and greenhouse-gas reduction.
Balancing risks
Stabilization Wedges
Humanity already possesses the fundamental scientific, technical, and industrial know-how to solve the carbon and climate problem for the next half-century. A portfolio of technologies now exists to meet the world's energy needs over the next 50 years and limit atmospheric CO 2 to a trajectory that avoids a doubling of the preindustrial concentration. Every element in this portfolio has passed beyond the laboratory bench and demonstration project…
Reactive Nitrogen
Reactive Nitrogen
Rejoinder to Lave, Hendrickson, and McMichael
The Industrial Ecology of Lead and Electric Vehicles
The lead battery has the potential to become one of the first examples of a hazardous product managed in an environmentally acceptable fashion. The tools of industrial ecology are helpful in identifying the key criteria that an ideal lead‐battery recycling system must meet maximal recovery of batteries after use, minimal export of used batteries to countries where environmental controls are weak, minimal impact on the health of communities near l…
Balancing risks
Reactive Nitrogen
Witnessing for the Middle to Depolarize the Climate Change Conversation
Witnessing for the middle seeks to depolarize contentious public issues and to create effective coalitions. It reveals neglected facets of a problem, clarifies the stakes, reduces hype, and facilitates the engagement of people largely on the sidelines. Regarding climate change, many forms of middle-building are under way, notably including the scenario-making that reveals alternative pathways to some specific goal. This essay explores two additio…
Rejoinder to Lave, Hendrickson, and McMichael
The Industrial Ecology of Lead and Electric Vehicles
The lead battery has the potential to become one of the first examples of a hazardous product managed in an environmentally acceptable fashion. The tools of industrial ecology are helpful in identifying the key criteria that an ideal lead‐battery recycling system must meet maximal recovery of batteries after use, minimal export of used batteries to countries where environmental controls are weak, minimal impact on the health of communities near l…
Reactive Nitrogen
Reactive Nitrogen
Stabilization Wedges
Humanity already possesses the fundamental scientific, technical, and industrial know-how to solve the carbon and climate problem for the next half-century. A portfolio of technologies now exists to meet the world's energy needs over the next 50 years and limit atmospheric CO 2 to a trajectory that avoids a doubling of the preindustrial concentration. Every element in this portfolio has passed beyond the laboratory bench and demonstration project…
Sharing global CO 2 emission reductions among one billion high emitters
We present a framework for allocating a global carbon reduction target among nations, in which the concept of “common but differentiated responsibilities” refers to the emissions of individuals instead of nations. We use the income distribution of a country to estimate how its fossil fuel CO 2 emissions are distributed among its citizens, from which we build up a global CO 2 distribution. We then propose a simple rule to derive a universal cap on…
Beneficial Biofuels—The Food, Energy, and Environment Trilemma
Exploiting multiple feedstocks, under new policies and accounting rules, to balance biofuel production, food security, and greenhouse-gas reduction.
Balancing risks
Yr phase-out for conventional coal? If only
Myhrvold and Caldeira worked out the climate consequences of various ways in which the world's current fleet of coal power plants could evolve into something different [1]. They imagined one-fortieth of the world's coal plants being closed down each year for 40 years. Two limiting cases are (1) nothing is built to take the place of this power, because efficiency gains have made them unnecessary, and (2) coal plants exactly like those now running …
Commitment accounting of CO 2 emissions
The world not only continues to build new coal-fired power plants, but built more new coal plants in the past decade than in any previous decade. Worldwide, an average of 89 gigawatts per year (GW yr ^–1 ) of new coal generating capacity was added between 2010 and 2012, 23 GW yr ^–1 more than in the 2000–2009 time period and 56 GW yr ^–1 more than in the 1990–1999 time period. Natural gas plants show a similar pattern. Assuming these plants opera…
Inequality, climate impacts on the future poor, and carbon prices
Significance Hundreds of published papers produce “optimal” trajectories of global emissions of carbon dioxide, and corresponding carbon prices, over this century, taking into account future damages inflicted by climate change. To our knowledge, in all instances the models ignore inequalities in economic variables beyond regional differences. Here, we introduce heterogeneous subregional populations (distributed by income) and explore how the opti…
The Social Cost of Carbon
We analyze the role of ethical values in the determination of the social cost of carbon, arguing that the familiar debate about discounting is too narrow. Other ethical issues are equally important to computing the social cost of carbon, and we highlight inequality, risk, and population ethics. Although the usual approach, in the economics of costbenefit analysis for climate policy, is confined to a utilitarian axiology, the methodology of the so…
Contending with climate change
Any successful effort to address climate change over the next 25 years will involve a “credible swap” that greatly reduces greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, provides energy in entirely different ways, and also reduces demand for energy. On the demand side, the next quarter century offers abundant high-leverage opportunities to reduce future emissions via intelligent urban design, building construction (notably in the giga…
Witnessing for the Middle to Depolarize the Climate Change Conversation
Witnessing for the middle seeks to depolarize contentious public issues and to create effective coalitions. It reveals neglected facets of a problem, clarifies the stakes, reduces hype, and facilitates the engagement of people largely on the sidelines. Regarding climate change, many forms of middle-building are under way, notably including the scenario-making that reveals alternative pathways to some specific goal. This essay explores two additio…
Economics (9 works) · Environmental Science (9 works) · Natural resource economics (7 works) · Business (6 works) · Climate change (5 works) · Climate Change Policy and Economics (5 works) · Engineering (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Chemistry (4 works) · Computer Science (4 works)