Monday, December 14, 2015

Climate change agreement, on Bloomberg Surveillance this morning

I discussed this weekend's climate change agreement on Bloomberg Surveillance from minute 33 to 41, which you can listen to hereDownload
or here: http://media.bloomberg.com/bb/avfile/News/Surveillance/vDuJ6SlgV5gs.mp3

More or less I said that the Paris deal, which may be all that was politically available, is complex and aspirational—it will be hard for each country to devise ways to cut emissions, it will be hard to measure what was cut, it will be hard to decide what it cost (and so to determine rich to poor country subsidies).

A simpler plan, but not politically feasible (not in the US and not in the world at large) would have been to agree to, say, double the price of carbon over the next few years, by taxing it, and giving back the money to individuals (by reducing other taxes, or by lump sum tax deductions), so that they would still have reason to economize on how much they drive, how they heat their houses, etc.  This would also give a boost to companies that want to produce clean energy and energy saving tech

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