Category Archives: climate change

I’m a supporter of a cap-and-trade system over a carbon tax. But I have to say that Terry Dinan, of CBO’s Microeconomic Studies Division, has the best argument in favor of a carbon tax over cap-and-trade that I’ve yet seen. … Continue reading →

Will the FTC get involved in auditing carbon-offset providers? Louise Story, in the NYT, hints that it might. The present situation is a mess, and it would be great if someone could come in and clean it up. But I … Continue reading →

Judith Chevalier on Sunday took full advantage of the fact that her Economic View column in the NYT coincided with the end of the Bali climate-change conference. In it, she worries about "leakage" problems from a cap-and-trade system: the idea … Continue reading →

Adam Piore today profiles Tom Arnold of TerraPass, a for-profit company selling carbon offsets to guilty gas-guzzling liberals. TerraPass is very secretive about its "revenue, profits, or even how much it has invested so far in carbon-offset projects", which means … Continue reading →

UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon marked the beginning of the huge climate conference in Bali yesterday with an excellent and upbeat op-ed in the Washington Post. "Largely lost in the debate is the good news," he wrote: "We can do … Continue reading →

Today marks the launch of the Voluntary Carbon Standard. The VCS is meant to be a kind of Good Housekeeping seal of approval for carbon offsets: if you want to offset your jet-set lifestyle or your new SUV, look for … Continue reading →

If the Harvard faculty is remotely representative of anything, then Detroit is doomed. Interestingly, Greg Mankiw’s BMW 330xi gets about 17 MPG, in the city, and emits 9.2 tons of greenhouse-gas emissions per year. Does he not believe that his … Continue reading →

I spent more three hours this morning at a debate hosted by the New York City Bar Association which was narrowly focused on a single issue: whether the US government should implement a carbon tax or whether it should go … Continue reading →

If carbon offsetting is a joke, you might as well make it funny. (Via Tabarrok)

You thought it was cool to be carbon-neutral? Well, Fiji water, one of the most environmentally absurd companies on the planet, has now gone carbon-negative! I’m sure Nigel Tufnel would be proud. Claudia Deutsch reports: The announcement comes after a … Continue reading →

Shai Agassi calculates that "the cost of the average used car in Europe is now cheaper than the cost of gasoline to drive it for a year": An average clunker across Europe, and there should be 100M or so cars … Continue reading →

Mike Bloomberg today has a very important speech advocating a carbon tax; he explicitly prefers it to a cap-and-trade approach. I’m very glad that Bloomberg and other civic leaders are pushing hard on this, even as I disagree with him … Continue reading →

The CBO’s testimony on cap-and-trade is out. Greg Mankiw likes it, because the CBO supports including given-away emissions permits in the national accounts. I don’t like the testimony, becaues the CBO supports the concept of a "safety valve", which defeats … Continue reading →

The strongest argument against a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions (or its cousin, the carbon tax) is that emissions wouldn’t actually fall; they’d just be exported to China. To some extent that’s already happening, but the trend of heavy industry … Continue reading →

Being a leader in green technology is now tantamount to subsidizing your competitors. Call it last-mover advantage.
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If you want to cut carbon emissions, there are some ways of doing so which actually make money, in net present value terms. Some methods, however, cost money – and many of the most promising emissions-reduction schemes cost a lot … Continue reading →

Many companies and projects, like the documentary Jeff mentioned a couple of weeks ago, claim to be "carbon neutral" – which is a worthy thing to be. But obviously it’s a lot easier to say that you’re carbon-neutral than it … Continue reading →

Kevin Maney reckons that environmentalism is a short-lived fad, and that Americans will keep on upping their consumption of bottled water and other environmentally-unfriendly products. I’m more optimistic than he is, however. Kevin sees environmentally-friendly behavior as making a virtue … Continue reading →

It’s great news that the centerpiece of Barack Obama’s energy plan is a 100% auction cap-and-trade mechanism. Ryan Avent and Peter Dorman have some niggles, which are on point, but the big picture – that a cap-and-trade system should be … Continue reading →

Dan Gross gives us the incandescent light bulb’s obituary, mentioning only one problem with its replacement, the compact fluorescent: that CFLs aren’t bright enough to help German chancellor Angela Merkel find things she’s dropped on her carpet. He neglects to … Continue reading →

This is good news, I think. The House Energy and Commerce Committee just issued a white paper on carbon controls, which starts off by saying unambiguously that "The United States should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by between 60 and … Continue reading →

I’m late to this game, I know, but in the wake of links from Mark Thoma, Tyler Cowen, and Megan McArdle, let me be the latest to welcome Econospeak to the blogosphere. Anybody who will join me in defending cap-and-trade … Continue reading →

Remember the ethanol bubble? Looks like it’s burst: The price of ethanol soared earlier this year to record levels of more than $4 a gallon as the Bush Administration vowed to boost production of alternative fuels… Ethanol prices have slumped … Continue reading →