sustainable consumption
Chanukah: The Ultimate Environmental Festival
“To see what is in front of one’s nose is a constant struggle.” — George Orwell. Every now and then, something hits you right between the eyes, and you wonder why you didn’t see it before. Thus it is that I realized this morning that Chanukah, which begins this Saturday evening, is the paradigmatic environmental …
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CONTINUE READINGThe 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 …
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CONTINUE READINGThe Ryan Consumption Tax and the Environment
One of the interesting elements of Paul Ryan’s budget plan is the proposal for an 8.5% consumption tax to replace the corporate income tax. Consumption taxes, like the European VAT, have well-known pluses and minuses, described in a Brookings discussion. They are appealing to economists because they encourage saving. As the European example shows, they …
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CONTINUE READINGChanging Course on Consumption
We need to begin rethinking how much and what we consume, as well as how we produce the goods, services, and energy used by consumers.
CONTINUE READINGA Roadmap for Sustainable Consumption
Individual consumption – including household heating and cooling as well as non-business transportation – creates roughly one-third of U.S. energy use and carbon emissions. It would feasible to reduce these emissions by twenty percent in a decade: there is a lot of low-hanging fruit yet to be picked. A range of individual actions, while seemingly …
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CONTINUE READINGBlack Friday Reflections on Happiness, Consumption, and Sustainability
As discussed in a fascinating new book by Derek Bok, psychologists have been busily researching a new set of issues relating to happiness. As a result of this research, psychologists are beginning to develop a deeper understanding of the factors that control well-being. Well-being is a multi-dimensional concept that includes objective factors such as health, …
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CONTINUE READINGTo the left is the famous cardigan worn by Jimmy Carter in the oval office, when he urged Americans to turn down their thermostats to save energy. In reality, the most important ways of saving energy (such as cogeneration by industry, better insulation, etc.) don’t involve any discomfort. It turned out that the American people …
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