An article in today’s Houston Chronicle, “Debate Flares over How to Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” compares the relative merits of a carbon tax and cap-and-trade. We will be hearing a lot about these two approaches in the weeks and months ahead.
But the Chronicle article did not consider the other major alternative: neither a tax nor a cap-and-trade program.…
Last week I blogged about the news accounts of ExxonMobil’s coming out in favor of a carbon tax. I was too hasty. I should have read Rex Tillerson’s speech first–and very carefully. Mr. Tillerson did not call for a carbon tax as reported in the Wall Street Journal. Deep in his speech, Tillerson argued that carbon taxation is better than cap-and-trade as a regulatory program.…
From time to time, John Holdren has acknowledged that plentiful, affordable, reliable energy is vital to human well being. Indeed, there is no going back to an energy-poor world. (Remember: caveman energy was 100% renewable.)
When Holdren or Obama advocates policies that risk making energy artificially scarce or less reliable, these words can be used to argue for nonregulatory approaches to energy policy:
“Virtually all of the benefits that now seem necessary to the ‘American way’ have required vast amounts of energy. Energy, in short, has been our ultimate raw material, for our commitment to economic growth has also been a commitment to the use of steadily increasing amounts of energy necessary to the production of goods and services.”
…– John Holdren and Philip Herrera, Energy (San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1971), p.