Korea may have an opportunity to exercise historic leadership, when it chairs the G-20 meeting in Seoul, November 11-12. This will be the first time that a non-G-7 country has hosted the G-20 since the larger, more inclusive, group supplanted the smaller rich-country group in April of last year as the premier steering committee for the world economy. With large emerging market and developing countries playing such expanded economic roles, the G-7 had lost legitimacy. It was high time to make the membership more representative. But there is also a danger that the G-20 will now prove too unwieldy, in which case decision-making might then revert to the smaller group.
Category Archives: oil
Gulfs in our Energy Security, and the Louisiana Oil Blowout
In the wake of the April oil well blowout off the coast of Louisiana, policy-makers are rethinking the issue of off-shore drilling. Clearly the last decade’s neglect of safety rules by federal regulators needs to come to an end. But what larger implications should we draw for domestic oil drilling?
The tension has long been between those who give primacy to the environment, on the one hand, and those who give primacy to business on the other. Probably some of the first group oppose all oil drilling and some of the latter support all oil drilling (even when the government unconscionably offers oil leases on federal lands at below-market rates, as it often has historically). As so often, the right answer lies in between.
Slipping Out of the Political Handcuffs on Energy Taxes
I was recently asked by the National Journal to comment on what I thought was a desirable path for tax reform, if one could wish away political constraints that normally handcuff politicians. My answer was, of course, to tax energy, particularly carbon emissions, and use the revenue to reduce other taxes. As I and many others have noted often in the past, taxes on oil or gasoline hit many birds with one stone.
Discussion of energy taxes has always been political suicide. But here are several twists that could potentially increase the ability of the electorate to swallow them politically: