Saturday, January 23, 2010

Green With Envy

This article, published in the November 2009 issue of The Economist magazine, grapples with the quintessential issues surrounding the rising interests among Washington bureaucrats to pass a carbon-reduction cap-and-trade policy. Despite the urgency to resolve climate change, cap-and-trade carbon-reduction policies have been met with widespread resistance. Economists have pointed to the fundamental tensions between the effectiveness of such environmental policies and a countries allegiance to globalize open trade as the underlying issue. Is what’s good for the environment good for the global market?

1 comment:

Lindsey said...

I took Environmental Economics last semester and we learned that what is good for the environment is not the same as what is good for the global market. There are many policies that are proposed to decrease carbon emissions and in my opinion, putting a tax on emissions is not the most effective way to do it. Companies will still continue to emit even with a tax and it does not limit their emissions either. It would be more efficient to have a policy such as a tradeable permit system because this would limit emissions in total. It becomes a problem when deciding which countries can emit different amounts and who should be the one to decide this?