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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 25, 2018
A Critique of Mark Perry on the Trump Energy Policy
My AEI colleague Mark J. Perry has written a short essay arguing that “Trump’s Energy Policy Is Deeply Flawed,” the central themes of which are: These arguments are rather uncharacteristic of Mark, truly a first-rate economist and policy thinker. Let us begin with a first principle: The magnitude or degree of “dependence” on foreign sources of…
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…
June 21, 2018
The Senate Finance Committee Minority on the Trump Tax Cuts and Gasoline Prices
Demand and supply. Supply and demand. That fundamental analytic framework, simple and powerful as a tool with which to examine the sources of shifts in market prices, often is forgotten in the cacophony that characterizes Beltway efforts to score political points. And increases in gasoline prices — visible every day to many millions of Americans…
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,…