More depressing, but far from surprising, news showing the clear political limits in the fight against global warming. A carbon tax would be the simplest, cleanest and most efficient way to start reducing the amount of carbon being pumped into the atmosphere.
Unfortunately, it is simply politically untenable in the US, and probably most other places as well. Thinking about it, I reckon that you could almost use support for a carbon tax as a rough benchmark to measure how seriously a society or a polity is actually willing to combat global warming. And by that measure we have a long way to go.
Irritating. I actually wrote a comment and then managed to delete it.
ReplyDeleteBasically, I think "cap and trade" is marginally superior to a carbon tax. You need less information to implement the optimal level of carbon output, the government has direct control over said level, the cost to firms (for a given level of carbon reduction) will be minimized, and, since energy efficient firms essentially get paid to not pollute, there is an incentive to become an efficient firm. That is, in the long run firms have incentives to become more efficient.
I'm not expert in this field, but that's my understanding, anyway. Probably sounds like gibberish if you don't know the economics.