Ok, so I am back …. not sure why I left….
Below is a unedited version of a Letter to the Globe I submitted (see Here).
Standing in Wal-Mart, looking around at the Halloween mayhem, I realized just how bad it is. No, it is not consumer confidence, because the lineups were 15 deep, with [...]
There is a good article (here) on CCS. It is essentaially a rebuttal to the CBC article blogged below. What I like about this article is the observation that the climate debate is now one that wrongly equates climate change to oil sands. Clearly, other emissions are important and other emission [...]
Design matters. Just take a look at Manitoba. The government’s April 09, 2008 budget introduced a carbon tax on coal of $10/tonne starting in 2011. The casual observer, depending on their particular bias would say either: it is not enough; it is a good start; or why introduce another punitive tax? So, [...]
Forget Stern, forget Canada wide studies on the cost of inaction, forget debate over mitigation affordability, the real cost of inaction is …less beer,
The price of beer is likely to rise in coming decades because climate change will hamper the production of a key grain needed for the brew — especially in Australia, a scientist [...]
Carolyn Fischer sent me a news story that went on something like this,
“Cap and trade is a charade to continue business as usual,” said Angela Johnson Meszaros, director of the California Environmental Rights Alliance.
Environmental justice groups instead favor carbon fees on polluting industries, a strategy endorsed by many economists as simpler and more transparent, although [...]
The argument that carbon taxes are nothing but a tax grab is disingenuous (see here). No government seriously considering carbon pricing can afford, politically, to say anything but a carbon pricing package will be revenue neutral, at least mostly anyway. Reductions in other taxes, notably income, and subsidies to the “little” guy, like [...]
There is a good interview here with Gregory Mankiw, an economist and former chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors. What I like about this short interview is the focus on tax shifting and revenue recycling — they are presented as integral to carbon tax design. This definition of a carbon tax [...]
While most of us usually ignore the footnotes, for the “Bali Roadmap”, one footnote is worth closer examination. This footnote emerged when consensus on “binding targets” was not reached and there was a need to compromise. What then emerged was an implication that industrializated nations would consider making reductions of -20% to [...]
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