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October 1, 2018
Reforming U.S. Environmental Policy
Environmental protection can be an important government function, in particular because private incentives, as reflected in market prices, often do not capture the full social value of environmental quality, or perhaps more precisely, changes in that quality. In the standard analytic framework, private actors cannot capture the value of environmental improvements, or do not bear…
July 23, 2018
The Curbelo Carbon Tax as Wealth Redistribution
Environmental policy as a tool of wealth redistribution is nothing new. The latest example is a proposal for a greenhouse-gas (GHG) tax just introduced by Representative Carlos Curbelo (R., Fla.). Curbelo’s tax would start at $24 per metric ton of GHG emissions, growing 2 percent per year above inflation and an additional $2 per ton…
July 17, 2018
State Attorneys General and the Climate Litigation Game
The central broad objective of the U.S. constitution is the protection of unpopular individuals and political groups from the whims and passions of the political majority of the moment. It is curious therefore that the election of prosecutors, in particular that of state Attorneys General, seemingly is accepted as a norm by many despite the…
May 18, 2018
The Fuel Economy Standards in Beltway Conventional Wisdom
I betray no secret when I report that reverence for the silliness embodied in conventional wisdom is a central characteristic of policy debates in the Beltway. No amount of evidence, no amount of logic, and no amount of proof showing that the earth indeed is round are sufficient to diminish the credibility of arguments that…
May 8, 2018
No-cost Climate Litigation and the Law of Unintended Consequences
Editor’s Note: This post represents AEI Resident Scholar Benjamin Zycher’s original content and does not include edits found on the publishing site, The Hill. To access that version of the text, click here. Several municipalities are suing the major oil companies for causing climate change and for the large asserted costs of preventing and mitigating its…
April 20, 2018
BP and the Earth Day Prayers of the Rent-seeking Corporation
Earth Day is upon us yet again, and it is difficult not to notice its transformation into a vehicle for corporate virtue signaling: Full-page ads in national and local print media, yielding a revenue stream for which the newspapers and magazines are sincerely grateful. Advertisements on broadcast media and heavily trafficked websites. Booths at ubiquitous…
April 4, 2018
Analytics of Wealth Redistribution Through Fuel-economy Regulation
The Environmental Protection Agency announced on Monday that it and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would reinstitute the mid-term evaluation of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards — the fuel-economy rules — for model-year 2022-2025 light-duty vehicles. @3happytails via Twenty20 That mid-term review was truncated by the Obama administration a few days before leaving office. Amid the tiresome manifestations of…
March 6, 2018
Climate Lawsuits: What They Say, and What They Fail to Say
For years Congress has refused to impose limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and now the Trump administration is rolling back the Obama regulations. What are politically-ambitious blue-state politicians to do? The obvious answer: File a lawsuit, claiming that Big Oil has known for decades that increasing GHG concentrations would cause a climate crisis for which it is responsible,…
March 1, 2018
Carbon Taxes and My Friends Aparna Mathur, Adele Morris, and Zilly
Let us now recall the blessed memory of Godzilla, King of the Monsters. I know him as Zilly, as we have grown close over the years and the 30-plus movies that bear his name. Anyway, at the end of that original timeless classic of the silver screen, an “oxygen destroyer” reduced Zilly to a skeleton at the bottom of Tokyo…
February 1, 2018
A Washington State Carbon Tax: All Pain, No Gain
With respect to Washington governor Jay Inslee’s renewed proposal for a “carbon” tax on that state’s greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, a number to keep closely in mind is: 2/1000 of a degree. That would be the global temperature effect in the year 2100 if Washington were to reduce its GHG emissions to zero immediately. That figure comes from the…