"I'm not a scientist"

That has been the response from some politicians averse to any kind of climate policy, including my own Governor, Rick Scott, but also Mitch McConnell, and John Boehner. Michael McKenna, a prominent Republican energy lobbyist, says: "It's got to be the dumbest answer I've ever heard... .Using that logic would disqualify politicians from voting on anything. Most politicians aren't scientists, but they vote on science policy. They have opinions on Ebola, but they're not epidemiologists. They shape highway and infrastructure laws, but they're not engineers."

Society for Environmental Law and Economics, Groningen, the Netherlands -- Call for Papers

Society for Environmental Law and Economics (SELE) 2015 Conference

Call for Papers

The seventh annual meeting of the Society for Environmental Law and Economics (SELE) will be held on 21-22 May 2015, at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands.

We hope to build upon the great success of past SELE meetings, and continue to build a community of scholars interested in working at the intersection of law, economics and environmental issues. We welcome both theoretical and empirical papers, ranging from local to international themes. While all topics are welcomed, this year we in particular invite scholars to submit papers on how to balance sustainability and competition: should competition authorities allow for restrictions of competition that benefit the environment?

In a spirit of collegiality, the meeting will take place in a workshop format in which all sessions will be plenary. We strongly encourage all attendees to attend all presentations. Our goal is to create a program that includes a variety of disciplinary perspectives, ideally consisting of about 20 papers over the two-day period.

As in past years, no funding will be available for travel or lodging expenses, but food and drink will be provided during the workshop for the participants and a dinner will be hosted on the first day of the conference.

Further information regarding accommodation, the conference program and other logistic matters will be posted on www.envlawecon.wordpress.com. Inquiries can also be sent to (this year’s local organizer) Edwin Woerdman (e.woerdman@rug.nl).

To submit a paper, please email a Word or PDF file to Edwin Woerdman ate.woerdman@rug.nl with the subject line “SELE SUBMISSION”, by November 17, 2014. We will review all the papers and get back to you by December 15.

Hope to see you in Groningen!

Edwin Woerdman, Associate Professor, University of Groningen

Daniel H. Cole, Professor, Maurer School of Law and SPEA, Indiana University

Shi-Ling Hsu, Professor, Florida State University College of Law

Jonathan R. Nash, Professor, Emory University School of Law

Josephine van Zeben, Fellow, Worcester College, University of Oxford

University of Chicago Professor Saul Levmore on Thomas Piketty

Saul Levmore has posted on SSRN his review of Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-first Century. In it, he raises a question that others have raised: is there a problem with inequality, per se? We exchanged emails, and I raised this point: severe enough inequality creates a sitution in which the poor have a comparative advantage in violence. Even if the rich are able, with their resources, able to buy enough security to obtain a sizable absolute advantage in violence, the poor may have such low opportunity costs of violence that they may freely engage in it. Professor Levmore replied that if we are afraid of violent revolution, then we are in a pretty dark place and we are not quite there yet. Agreed. But we may not need to be at a point of violent revolution in order for the threat of inequality-induced violence to impose costs. Is our American gun fetishism part of that? If so, that is pretty costly. Everybody talks about Ferguson as if it were about race, only. Is it? Maybe. But is some of it a fear of the other, that other being quite possibly poor enough to entertain rational thoughts of violence? I dunno. But possibly.