Tag Archives: global climate change

Advice for the New Administration: Spend Green Today, Tax Green in the Future

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Politicians are often tempted to think that a policy to help one goal, say air quality, must also help lots of other goals, say economic growth.  Economists are more likely to presume tradeoffs, and to use the principle of targets and instruments.  That principle says that you cannot expect to hit more than one bird with one stone, except by coincidence.

At the American Economic Association meetings in San Francisco, January 3, I was on a panel titled “Energy and the Environment: Policy Advice for the New Administration” (along with some real energy experts; I am a relative latecomer to the area).  Within the framework of targets and instruments, I proposed a matrix such as the one that appears below. 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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