This is an interview with the authors of Making Climate Policy Work, a book that argues carbon pricing isn't working due to political difficulty, and that industry-specific taxes are a better bet:...
This is an interview with the authors of Making Climate Policy Work, a book that argues carbon pricing isn't working due to political difficulty, and that industry-specific taxes are a better bet:
The last two chapters describe a better approach: more targeted at relatively mature individual sectors, more like a tax. But they are clear that the real carbon reductions happening today — even in places with carbon pricing systems — are being achieved through sector-specific regulations, i.e., good old industrial policy. And that is likely to be true going forward as well. We’re all better off not fooling ourselves about it.
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The enduring allure of carbon pricing
David Victor One reason we wrote the book is that people believe the world is implementing carbon pricing and it is working. They have this goal of a simple instrument with big impacts — least-cost, fluidity across the economy, super elegant — and they believe that all these policymakers are following that advice. But in regimes that have carbon pricing, when you look closely at whether the carbon price is actually doing much work, you realize the story is totally different.
In some settings it works better than others — especially in the electric power industry, especially with high-quality institutions, like in Europe, and especially when you're dealing with mature technologies, using carbon pricing as a way to encourage static optimization. When industry is using choosing the best among known technologies, carbon pricing has a role. But administratively, that's the easy part of deep decarbonization.
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WTF is “political will” in climate politics and why is nobody studying it
Danny Cullenward [...] Well, what about politics? It's this black box. Everybody just invokes “political will.” Nobody has put structured thinking into how these politics operate. Not loose reporting or subjective stories, but real building blocks. We tried to do that, because we think that's missing. Once you do that, you can start to predict outcomes, test the validity of your theory, and compare the politics of different strategies to one another.
Our argument is that carbon pricing is structurally problematic and more difficult than other policy strategies. All climate strategies have political challenges. The problem is, this one requires you to take on the hardest ones every time. That's a structural problem.
Their work seems to be primarily based on cap-and-trade systems, rather than fee-and-dividend systems. Is there any quality research on how the latter performs? I know Canada has passed one that...
Their work seems to be primarily based on cap-and-trade systems, rather than fee-and-dividend systems. Is there any quality research on how the latter performs? I know Canada has passed one that survived several elections and is seeing a fee hike.
This is an interview with the authors of Making Climate Policy Work, a book that argues carbon pricing isn't working due to political difficulty, and that industry-specific taxes are a better bet:
[...]
[...]
Their work seems to be primarily based on cap-and-trade systems, rather than fee-and-dividend systems. Is there any quality research on how the latter performs? I know Canada has passed one that survived several elections and is seeing a fee hike.
I have no idea, but based on a search I'm guessing you meant fee-and-dividend?
Whoops!