Joseph S. Shapiro | Research UC Berkeley

In the News

Clean Air Act Dramatically Cut Vehicle Air Pollution, but Equity a Concern

The 1972 Clean Air Act has driven spectacular decreases in pollution from U.S. passenger vehicles but poses a challenge for pollution policy in poor communities, according to the first comprehensive study of air pollution exhaust standards.

the trees behind homes in Kingston, Tenn.

50 years in, the Clean Air Act’s societal benefits still outweigh costs 10 to 1, research finds

The landmark Clean Air Act (CAA) turns 50 this month, and its impact has been dramatic: Ambient measures of pollutants have fallen more than 90% in some areas, and improvements in air quality are credited with preventing hundreds of thousands of premature deaths.

A photo of a port with barges and large shipping containers

Forget carbon tariffs: Existing trade policies give dirty industries a boost

In the United States and around the globe, products produced by “dirty” or high-carbon-emitting industries are facing significantly lower import taxes than their cleaner counterparts, finds a new paperfrom the University of California, Berkeley.

Featured in the Media

Please note: The views and opinions expressed in these articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or positions of UC Berkeley.

May 5, 2020

The climate imbalance of trade barriers

Axios

Ben Geman

A new study by associate agricultural and resource economics professor Joseph Shapiro finds that tariffs and other global trade barriers are lower for carbon-intensive products than greener ones, and that creates an "implicit subsidy to CO2 emissions" that amounts to $550 billion to $800 billion a year. This makes it harder to fight climate change, Professor Shapiro says. "The resulting change in global CO2 emissions has similar magnitude to the estimated effects of some of the world's largest actual or proposed climate change policies," he writes in the report. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News.

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May 4, 2020

How Global Trade Pacts Award 'Subsidies' for Climate Pollution

Bloomberg

Eric Roston

Tariffs and other features of the global trade system are interfering with climate goals and indirectly subsidizing fossil fuels, according to a new study by associate agricultural and resource economics professor Joseph Shapiro. He calls the interference an "environmental bias." He says it hasn't been measured in the trade system previously, but it's worth between $550 billion and $800 billion a year, amounting to more than direct subsidies that governments paid in the form of tax incentives to big greenhouse gas emitters in 2007. "This research is pointing out that different sets of policies that seem completely separate -- trade policy and climate change -- are connected quite closely in ways people might not have noticed," he says. For more on this, see our press release at Berkeley News.