The Australians have come a long way since 2007 when climate change was a big factor in the change of government from Tory to Labor. A few years later, in part because the new Labor PM, Kevin Rudd, wasn’t effecting legislation fast enough to put a price on carbon, he was replaced in his party […]
That’s what people call California. If you’re thinking about the glitter and the shine of that precious metal and how California reflects it in its forward-thinking, economically smart and environmentally sound approach to climate and energy, then you see what I see. The clean tech vision and environmental ethic are embraced all along the political […]
(Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid with Senator John Kerry and Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy Carol Browner during a media conference in Washington. Photo: AP) If you follow the climate and energy story, I’m not telling you something you don’t know – or couldn’t have predicted: the US […]
For the moment, please refer to my comment on Joe Romm’s tirade about President Obama’s “failed presidency” in light of the decision by the Senate Democratic leadership’s to punt on climate change and energy. If Obama had tried harder, Romm opines, we’d have cap-and-trade. I have enormous respect for Romm’s perspectives and his energy, but […]
David Leonhardt, an economics columnist and blogger for the “NY Times,” has just taken a good swing at the compelling arguments for a cap-and-trade bill. See Saving Energy, and Its Cost. (For a recent post from me on this and an exchange with an opponent, see The Facts of Cap and Trade.) Leonhardt has about […]
I was interviewing a world-class expert on energy and the environment yesterday for a project I’m on, and the discussion came around to many environmentalists’ distrust of cap-and-trade and other modes of “market-friendly” environmental activity. I was reminded of the video from Nathaniel Keohane, Environmental Defense Fund’s Director of Economic Policy and Analysis. (It is […]
John Kerry gave a speech this past week in which he said that he is “on a short track” to introducing climate and energy legislation that can be passed. Kerry said he’d been working with key administration officials and Senators to create a package. In a Reuters article on this, Carol Browner is quoted as […]
The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece by one Bjorn Lomborg, who occupies the role of Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a Danish think tank. Dr. Lomborg is interested in prescribing some hard to swallow medicine to all those environmentalists who claim that capping carbon emissions is the magic pill that will solve […]
Here’s a very good little video from SmartPlanet.com, a CBS Interactive website. For more, see my posts here on Carbon Markets.
Paul Krugman had a couple of columns, today and Friday, with some complementary posts at his blog, “The Conscience of a Liberal,” on the economics of cap-and-trade as well as the dire situation in which we find ourselves relative to warming and its impacts. To refute some of the nonsensical – and false – claims […]
I had the good fortune to be involved with some very smart activists back in the 1980s who were working on acid rain. One of these was the Environmental Defense Fund’s senior scientist Michael Oppenheimer. Michael’s been at Princeton for a number of years and among his many projects, he co-curated the compelling climate change […]
The consulting and market research company Point Carbon predicts that “Phase 3 of the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme [from 2013] (EU ETS) could see the price of an EU Allowance rise from €30/ton in 2013 to €40/t in 2016.” ETS allowances fell to nearly €8/t this year and have recovered slightly since. Firms sold […]
That’s how I’d paraphrase the old Bill Clinton internal campaign motto in the context of the present-day campaign to get an American law into place to combat GHGs. I’ve written about cap-and-trade and the Carbon Markets dozens of times here, including on the cap-and-trade vs. carbon tax debate. For an interesting look at the history […]
I just wanted to flag what I thought were some pretty good items out and about in the media lately. China and Climate Change – One of the go-to guys for progressive economics, Paul Krugman, has a column today, Empire of Carbon, that is both pessimistic and optimistic. (Boy, do I know that feeling when […]
The Chinese government is considering imposing a pro rata carbon tax on coal and fossil fuels such as gasoline, jet fuel, and natural gas, Finance Ministry official Su Ming has told the country’s state-run media. For the past year, 20 experts from seven different government agencies have been investigating the development and implementation of a […]