Tim Curtin

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Quadrant

Quadrant

Carbon dioxide is NOT a Pollutant

  • Without CO2 we would not be here. If it is a pollutant, then so is water (H2O), which is the other main effluent from fossil fuel combustion
  • We do not any of us breathe out black smoke, pace SBS and ABC.
  • The increase in atmospheric concentration from 280 ppm in 1750 to 384 ppm at end 2007 is trivial (growth rate is c0.2% p.a.)
  • CO2 is a fertilizer, without which we would starve.
  • Minister Wong spoke about the “ethics” of dealing with climate change at LSE 2 weeks ago. Her Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is based on a falsehood.

Download here (Powerpoint File)

"The next recession we have to have" - Tim's 4th Submission to the Garnaut Review.

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Garnaut, the Greens, and the browning of Australia and the World

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Climate Change Mitigation - and mass starvation by 2050?

Presentation to the Emeritus Faculty, Australian National University, 20 February 2008 (Power Point File)

Tim Curtin's contribution to the Conference of the African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific at the ANU on 31st January 2008, "The Economic History of Land Tenure in Zimbabwe".

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Tim Curtin's Submission to the Garnaut Review

The new Australian Government led by Kevin Rudd has commissioned Ross Garnaut of the Australian National University to undertake a Review of what Australia should do to reduce so-called Greenhouse Gas Emissions. He has already indicated that he will propose some form of an Emissions Trading Scheme. Prof. Garnaut encouraged me to make a Submission to his Review. It is available on the Review's website, at www.garnautreview.org.au.

Here is a slightly updated version of my Submission.

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An Overdue Letter to President Bush from Albert Einstein
October 2007

Royal Economic Society Newsletter

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Old Growth Eucalypts are not Rembrandts - and Papua New Guineans are not to be treated as if they were old growth eucalypts
August 2007

Letter in the Canberra Times.

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The Great 'Illegal' Logging Swindle
July 2007

CFA Newsletter June 2007

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(Newsletter of the Commonwealth Forestry Association, London, UK available at www.cfa-inetrnational.org )

The Da Vinci Code of Climate Change Economics
July 2007

The Da Vinci Code of Climate Change Economics

OR

What are the real benefits of avoiding predicted climate change, and what are the costs?

Lavoisier Group Workshop: Rehabilitating carbon dioxide. Melbourne, 30th June 2007

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Economics of Climate Change
March 2007

I have been working on the economics of climate change for some time now. First there is an exchange of views prompted by my letter to the Royal Economic Society Newsletter in July 2006 - "Nicholas Stern's Immaculate Conception", leading to a comment by Jeremy Berkhoff and my response (October 2006), and a further comment by Alan Kirman (January 2007). These are followed by my letter to the Financial Times, 7 January 2007.

Nicholas Stern's Immaculate Conception (PDF File)

Jeremy Berkhoff - Stern on Climate Change (PDF File)

Tim Curtin - Response (PDF File)

Alan Kirman (PDF FIle)

FT Letter - Business as Usual (PDF FIle)

Economics of Forestry in Australia and Papua New Guinea
March 2007

I am also doing more work on so-called illegal logging in Papua New Guinea, see (1) my Submission to the Australian Government's Discussion Paper, Bringing down the Axe on Illegal Logging, January 2007, published in Pacific Economic Bulletin and (2) a short piece on Yale University's evaluation of PNG's forestry (The National, June 2007)

Sustainable and legal logging (PDF File)

Bringing down the axe in illegal logging (PDF File)

The Greenpeace attack on Forestry Development in Papua New Guinea
Sept 2006

IPA Review, vol.58 no.3, October 2006.

[The text here is a longer version of the article as published and includes graphs and footnotes]

Full Story (PDF File)



LETTER TO THE EDITOR -
Net change in emissions after 'successful' trade: zero.
16 June 2006

Sir, Stavros Dimas, the European commissioner for the environment, was, as to be expected, unctuously bland when he claimed that trading volume in the European Union's emissions trading scheme in 2005, at Euros 5bn, demonstrates "success" ("Europe's emissions trading is a model for the world", June 8). But apparently a full column of the Financial Times left him no space to inform us of how large a reduction in CO emissions this produced.

Anyone with knowledge of stock exchange trading knows that for every buyer there has to be a seller, and that therefore Mr Dimas' statistic means no more than that Euros 2.5bn of emissions were saved and sold, and that an extra Euros 2.5bn of emissions were allowed from that saving, for a net change in emissions of precisely zero.

Tim Curtin,

Emeritus Faculty,

Australian National University,

Nicholas Stern's Immaculate Conception
July 2006

It was good to see David Henderson's comment in the April 2006 Newsletter (Economics, climate change, and governments) but I feel that both he and his eight co-authors in their submission to the Stern Review have been too kind to Nicholas Stern's keynote paper "What is the economics of climate change?" For the most extraordinary feature of that paper was not just its blind acceptance of the Kyoto consensus but also its disregard for all previous work on the economics of climate change. The only economists cited by Stern are those he probably cut his teeth on as an undergraduate, Pigou and Coase, but while they still have much to teach us (and Stern) there have been more recent contributions.

Full Story (PDF File)

Expert: Bank robs PNG of more logging revenue
April 29th, 2006

A RESPECTED Australian economist has argued that World Bank intervention in PNG’s logging industry has stifled exports that could be worth K13 billion compared with only K416 million in 2003.

Economist Tim Curtin compared Papua New Guinea with Sweden and suggested that PNG’s logging exports could be worth K13 billion or nearly double the country’s total exports in 2003.

Full story (HTML)

‘Old’ forestry law best bet for forest exploitation
April 29th, 2006

PAPUA New Guinea would need to amend the Forestry Act 1991 and revert largely to previous legislation if the government wants to exploit the full potential of forestry resources, an Australian economist suggests.

Mr Tim Curtin said “the Forestry Act was largely a response to what in retrospect seems the half-baked Barnett Report, with its exhaustive exposure of alleged ‘depredations’ through the claimed transfer pricing of foreign logging companies”.

Full story (HTML)

Economics of Land Titling in Papua New Guinea
February 16th, 2006

The paper appraises some of the arguments and counter-arguments in the Hughes-Fingleton debate on whether or not customary land tenure is conducive to raising living standards in Papua New Guinea. The paper shows that both the extent and the productivity of customary individual usufruct tile in PNG have been greatly exaggerated, and collates recent empirical evidence on relative productivity of customary and alternative titling modes in Zambia and Zimbabwe showing superior outcomes of documented individual land title. Implications for equity and legal/administrative issues conclude the paper.

Full story (PDF File) | Full story (Powerpoint File)

Letter on HIV/Aids
December 9th-16th, 2005 - published in The Guardian Weekly

Your World Aids Day supplement failed to mention that 'male circumcision' is by far the best path to prevention of the spread of Aids. The feature's map showing the African epicentres of the disease proved the validity of my contention, since none of the countries highlighted is in north Africa, with its majority Muslim population which routinely practises male circumcision. Your map did show Nigeria as a severely affected country, but singled out Lagos in the south, with its non-Islamic majority. A similar map of the former Soviet Union would also show Aids is concentrated in the non-Islamic north rather than in the southern republics.

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Forestry and economic development in Papua New Guinea
June 6th, 2005 - published in South Pacific Journal of Philosophy and Culture (University of Papua New Guinea), Vol.8, 2004-05

This paper suggests that Papua New Guinea's national income would grow much more rapidly if its largest natural resource, its forests, were developed to their full potential subject to both sustainability and reasonable conservation of biodiversity. Data will be provided showing that plantation forestry could deliver exports worth more than the country’s total mineral exports in 2003 from an area of only a seventh of the total under forests. Suggestions for necessary legal and institutional changes for this to occur conclude the paper.

Full story

Kyoto and All That
May 14th, 2005

I am bound to say I was very disappointed by your article in today's Australian Financial Review, devoid as it is of even one correct factual statement whilst replete with unfounded innuendo and defamatory statements against all who disagree with the Kyoto mantras.

Full story

A Contrarian View on Aid Effectiveness
Octover 12th, 2004

It is only to be expected that a seminar attended mostly by those with a direct interest in continuation of economic aid to developing countries would be more concerned with how to deliver aid efficiently than with whether it should be provided at all. Yet there is some evidence that the developing countries that have done best are those that have not relied on aid so much as on their own efforts. Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore are cases in point, whereas despite the huge volume of aid provided to a country like Tanzania its real income per head is less now than it was when the British awarded independence in 1963, and Papua New Guinea has little more to show for all the aid it has received. However this Note will not go so far as to rule out any value of aid, but will rather emphasise preference first for project over programme aid, where the latter consists only of transfers of funds unrelated to specific projects, and second, for project aid that is based more on wealth creation than on poverty reduction.

Full story

Here are some more of Tim's recent papers:

How Poor is Papua New Guinea? How Rich could it be? (Powerpoint File)

How Poor is Papua New Guinea? How Rich could it be? (PDF File)

Rethinking the model - Campus Review vol.14 no.26, July 7th, 2004

What's fair? university graduates pay their way with a tax double whammy - Campus Review, vol.14, no.24, June 23, 2004

Equitable financing of higher education: taxes versus fees - Emeritus Faculty, Australian National University, June 17th, 2004

A new model for financing higher education (Powerpoint File)

Financing of higher education - letter published in Newsletter of Royal Economic Society, July 2003

Land registration in Papua New Guinea: competing perspectives

Past papers include:

All taxes are graduate taxes - The Round Table, 356 (2000), 479-491.

Economic and Health Efficiency of Education Funding Policy - (with E.A.S. Nelson), Social Science and Medicine 48 (1999), 1599-1611. (PDF File - 536 KB)

 
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