Tag Archives: competitiveness

Border Measures Could Make Climate Policy Better or — More Likely — Worse

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The international press reports, “At Climate Talks, Danger to Free Trade Mounts.”

The Copenhagen negotiations have essentially failed to include, among the many topics covered, one that will be critical in the coming years:   the question of import tariffs or other trade penalties that individual countries apply against the products of other countries that they deem too carbon-intensive.    Such border measures are already in EU and US legislation (the Waxman-Markey bill, not yet passed by the Senate).    Properly designed, they could turn out to be the missing instrument needed to get each country to cut emissions without fear of others taking unfair advantage, via leakage.   More likely, national politics will turn them into protectionist barriers. read more

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Anti-Shirking Import Penalties in US Climate Change Bills Could Backfire

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 So both the Democratic and Republican parties have officially nominated their candidates.  Remarkably — from the vantage point of just a few years ago – both Senators McCain and Obama are on record as supporting strong action for aggressive cuts in US emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs).   In June 2008, the floor manager’s version of the Lieberman-Warner bill  — S. 2192: America’s Climate Security Act of 2007, which would cut emissions more than 50% by 2050 — came close to passing the Senate.   Some think that with the likely Democratic gain in Senate seats in November, and a more supportive White House, a form of the bill may well pass next year.    

(Incidentally, the July Snowmass presentations regarding Integrated Assessment models of the effects of such emission-reduction policy plans, which I plugged in my preceding blog post, are now accessible to the public.)

 

But issues of competitiveness and how to address it have risen to the top in the climate change policy debate among politicians.      The Lieberman-Warner bill – would have required the president to determine what countries have taken comparable action to limit GHG emissions;  for imports of covered goods from covered countries, the importer would then have had to buy international reserve allowances – equivalent to a tariff.  (The same with some of the bill’s competitors such as the Bingaman-Specter “Low Carbon Economy Act” of 2007.)  read more

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