The Possible Merits of a Hybrid Sales+Carbon Tax
There's been a lot of discussion of carbon taxes, which economists virtually all love. Proposed carbon taxes would generally be imposed at the level of fossil-fuel sellers or importers, or when producers use carbon. Imposing the carbon tax on consumers would have some significant advantages. This could be done with some fancy VAT-type mechanism, but a garden-variety retail sales tax would also work. The only novelty would be in calculating the amount of the sales tax...
CONTINUE READINGClimate Change Politics: Calling Junior Appropriators!
"Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting over." At least that's the old saying (incorrectly attributed to Twain), and it is true. You can't study water law for more than a moment without seeing conflict. In the west, water law is particularly conflictual due to the system of prior appropriation: rivers are divided into senior and junior appropriators, with the former taking priority in dry times. That means that conflicts do not simply arise between use...
CONTINUE READINGMy 2011 Hamilton Project Paper on U.S Transport Infrastructure Investment
The blogosphere appears to have taken an interest in my 2011 Brookings Institution Hamilton Project paper (joint with David Levinson) focused on improving the rate of return on U.S investment in transportation infrastructure. Here is the Executive Summary: "The roads and bridges that make up our nation’s highway infrastructure are in disrepair as a result of insufficient maintenance — a maintenance deficit that increases travel times, damages vehicles, and can l...
CONTINUE READINGEffective Nudges for Encouraging Kids to Eat Veggies
I am in the airport lounge in Frankfurt, Germany. Having just eaten a tasty jelly doughnut, I thought I should post this NY Times piece which highlights that kids are throwing away the healthy veggies they are being served in school. Are the young environmentalists more likely to eat them? What nudge would Cass Sunstein suggest in this case to encourage kids to eat right? Can schools encourage habits that are not being pursued at home? A good social scienti...
CONTINUE READINGIs Rain a Miracle?
Starting this Sunday evening, with the festival of Shemini Atzeret, observant Jews add a brief passage in the middle of the Amidah, the central prayer of the Jewish liturgy. Addressing God, the line reads: You cause the winds to blow and the rain to fall. It's hardly surprising in one sense: with the beginning of autumn, it stands to reason that a line about stormier weather would be added. But there is a weird aspect to this addition: the ancient Rabbis (Mishnah Be...
CONTINUE READINGConservative versus Ultra-Conservative in the Hoosier State
The Indiana race features Joe Donnelly, a conservative Democrat, against Richard Mourdock, a Tea Party Republican. Both are more conservative than their counterparts in other competitive Senate races. I discussed Mourdock briefly in a post about Tea Party candidates. He stands out for his endorsement of the view that climate change is a hoax. This claim goes well beyond both his party's presidential candidate and Republican Senate candidates in other competitive s...
CONTINUE READINGMitt Romney Hates Green Energy More Than He Hates Big Bird
Mitt Romney hates green energy even more than he hates Big Bird. Or at least government support for it. He disparaged green energy subsidies three times last night, arguing that President Obama had spent $90 billion subsidizing it over the course of his administration, "50 years' worth of what oil and gas get." He also claimed that more than half the money went to fund companies that went bankrupt. It's too bad the President didn't fight back. Let's start w...
CONTINUE READINGAdapting to Increased Fire Risk in the West
The LA Times features two really good opinion pieces today about environmental issues. One is by my colleague Glen MacDonald and the other is by Alyson Kenward. Glen's piece provides new empirical evidence challenging the climate skeptics while Alyson Kenward discusses elevated fire risk in the American West. Kenward's piece isn't long enough to discuss the "human dimension". How do we set up the rules of the game to adapt to this new fire risk? Permit me to sketch ...
CONTINUE READING“I Like Coal” — Romney Doubles Down on Fossil Fuels
Most the post-debate commentary focuses on the "horse race" perspective -- which candidate lost or gained ground? But substance matters, too. Romney made it absolutely clear that he's in favor of pumping as much carbon in the atmosphere as possible. Among other things, he staunchly defended tax loopholes favoring the oil industry and attacked financial aid to renewable energy. Here are some of his key other comments: "And, by the way, I like coal. I'm going to m...
CONTINUE READINGBarry Commoner’s Instructive Errors
The reflections published since the death of Barry Commoner a few days ago – including here by Dan Farber, and in many other places – have appropriately celebrated Commoner’s huge contributions to environmental science, and to raising public and political awareness of the gravity of environmental risks and the need to reduce them. But these reflections have largely overlooked other points of Commoner’s argument and advocacy – about diagnosing the causes of env...
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