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carbon tax vs. cap-and-trade

American Voters Prefer Carbon Tax over Cap-and-Trade, 2 to 1

February 3, 2010 by Tim Hurst
with 471 views
4

Survey shows that American voters prefer a straight carbon tax over cap-and-trade as a policy option to address climate change. As the climate policy debate heats up again on the Senate floor, there has been lots of talk about whether a cap-and-trade to control greenhouse gas emissions–one similar to the House’s American Clean Energy... [read more]

Greg Mankiw's Blog: The Sorry State of Cap-and-Trade

February 2, 2010 by John Whitehead
with 109 views
0

As Donald Marron points out, "At a time of unsustainable deficits, deficit neutrality is a remarkably lame vision for climate policy."  He explains: Last year, President Obama proposed to raise $500 billion over ten years through a cap-and-trade system that would limit carbon emissions. This year his climate policy raises nothing... [read more]

Tim Harford on Hahn-Passell and Regulation 2.0

January 25, 2010 by Lynne Kiesling
with 186 views
0

Courtesy of Tim Harford’s blog at the Financial Times (which you should be following, or following via Twitter) is a link to this “Devils and Details” post from Bob Hahn’s and Peter Passell’s new blog, Regulation 2.0. Their comment and the links embedded in the post are worth considering on the topic of carbon policy: In the beginning... [read more]

Marginal Revolution: The "health care betrayal" and Waxman-Markey

January 22, 2010 by John Whitehead
with 168 views
1

If there's one lesson from the health care debacle, it is that Waxman-Markey was and is a dead end.  Many of us objected to the bill on the grounds that it supports a lot of phony offsets for twenty years, imposes lots of costs and regulation in the meantime, and then never really does much to help climate change, given the... [read more]

Would you dump your girlfriend? Further thoughts

December 8, 2009 by John Whitehead
with 131 views
1

[Guest post from Jim Roumasset] Sometimes crass analogies help to focus attention. Before dumping your girl/boyfriend, you might consider 1) whether s/he is better than nobody and 2) the prospects for improving the relationship. From Nordhaus and others, an ideal cap and trade system is better than nothing, but many cap and trade... [read more]

That's not quite right, is it? (part 2)

December 7, 2009 by John Whitehead
with 179 views
1

Hansen in today's NYTimes:Because cap and trade is enforced through the selling and trading of permits, it actually perpetuates the pollution it is supposed to eliminate. If every polluter’s emissions fell below the incrementally lowered cap, then the price of pollution credits would collapse and the economic rationale to keep reducing... [read more]

Would you dump your current girlfriend, because she is not your "ideal hypothetical" girlfriend?*

December 7, 2009 by John Whitehead
with 132 views
0

From Greg Mankiw's Blog:Club Member Ted Gayer makes five points:1. Either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade program will result in substantially lower economic costs than command-and-control regulations that mandate technologies, fuels, or energy efficiency standards. 2. Given the uncertainty of the future costs of climate policy, a... [read more]

Nuclear Energy Plus Tax and Return Could Produce a Workable Climate Bill

October 6, 2009 by Rod Adams
with 126 views
0

Several months ago, I attended a talk by a representative of the Natural Resources Defense Council who demonstrated one of the debating techniques that has always frustrated me - he categorically stated that "no one" wants a carbon tax but that it was "politically possible" to pass a cap and trade bill. The reason such a technique... [read more]

Cap-and-Trade versus the Alternatives for U.S. Climate Policy

October 5, 2009 by Robert Stavins
with 372 views
6

Let’s credit Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) for raising questions in the National Journal about the viability of cap-and-trade versus other approaches for the United States to employ in addressing CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions linked with global climate change.  Senator Murkowski says that only one approach –... [read more]

Did Mankiw miss the point of the double dividend debate?

October 1, 2009 by John Whitehead
with 97 views
0

Stil another guest post this week from Jim Roumasset: I don't see anything wrong either Mankiw's 8/16 NYT piece, wherein he discuss the merits of various carbon policies, nor his follow-up Mankiw's Economic View piece, as far as they go. In particular, he has not missed the point of the double dividend debate. Environmental taxation was... [read more]

Another esteemed economist's views on cap and trade, carbon taxes and the double dividend

September 30, 2009 by Tim Haab
with 69 views
0

Alan Randall, preeminent environmental economist (and my Department Chair--yep I'm sucking up), is in the process of putting together a 3rd edition of his popular graduate text, Resource Economics*--this time co-authored with John Bergstrom.  In response to a hallway conversation over Mankiw's double-dividend argument in favor of a... [read more]

Carbon taxes vs. caps: one more time

September 28, 2009 by John Whitehead
with 110 views
0

Guest post from Jim Roumasset: As Paul Krugman says, bad ideas are like New York cockroaches; you can flush them down, but they keep coming back. This is nowhere more the case than in the debate on carbon taxes vs. tradable permits. Taxes are better we are told because they generate more revenue. In contrast, cap and trade is said to... [read more]

All environmental economists don't strongly favor a carbon tax

July 6, 2009 by John Whitehead
with 93 views
0

From the sent items folder:About a month ago I asked RESECON subscribers to participate in a short survey about cap-and-trade and carbon tax policy. Of the 1133 recipients of the RESECON email there were 203 responses from environmental economists. Thanks!While I haven't yet analyzed the data, I am finally getting around to reporting... [read more]