Ethanol, which seems to reduce greenhouse gases 12 percent compared with gasoline, actually increases greenhouse gases by 14 percent when the effects of the world oil market are accounted for.
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Unconventional fuels, that is gas or oil from coal, shale and tar sands are a bit helpful for security of supply but about the worst thing going for the environement.
Coal-fired power generation is the largest, fastest growing contributor to global warming.
If you want to know what strategy would work against OPEC, listen to OPEC.
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Over 2,600 economists, including nine recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, signed a statement that concludes, “The most efficient approach to slowing climate change is through … market mechanisms, such as carbon taxes or the auction of emissions permits.”
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The carbon untax is the silver bullet of energy policies, and the central policy recommendation of James E. Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientist and Al Gore’s science adviser. Here’s how I recommend implementing it. Continue reading »
The objection that everyone will ignore a carbon tax because they are addicted to fossil fuel—that the tax is too small to matter—is based on a view of people that lumps them into a few types, sometimes even just two types.
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For twenty-five years I bought the standard economic analysis that using the carbon-tax revenues in place of other tax revenues is a great idea. But here’s why it’s better to just refund a carbon tax on an equal-per-person basis.
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Can taxing oil really make us richer? It can, and the untax makes it easier to see how this works.
Imagine a foot race in which there is no prize for the winner, but instead, the race committee, after holding extensive hearings, sets a minimum time for the slowest runner. At the hearing, the runners are expert witnesses. They are mad about the cost of the race and have influential friends. For 22 years, the runners have said the minimum time was fast enough, and the race committee has accepted it. That’s a poor design for a race. But it’s a pretty accurate description of the US standard setting process of car gasoline consumption, in which the runners—the auto companies—haven’t improved for 22 years.