US Congress Embraces Necessity of Reducing Carbon Emissions

This is good news, I think. The House Energy and Commerce Committee just issued a white paper on carbon controls, which starts off by saying unambiguously that "The United States should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by between 60 and 80 percent by 2050 to contribute to global efforts to address climate change". Now 2050 is a long way off, and it would be nice to have some nearer-term targets, but it seems as though the US legislature, which has historically not been very amenable to such thinking (remember Kyoto?) is finally coming around to the side of the angels.

The white paper seems smart to me. It says, reasonably enough, that a cap-and-trade scheme will be front-and-center in achieving carbon emissions, but does add that "tax policy could play an important role" as well in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Peter Dorman complains that the paper "speaks vaguely of “distributing” permits without even raising the possibility that they should be auctioned" – but my reading is slightly different, that the paper is deliberately fudging the issue and leaving the door to an auction mechanism pretty wide open. In any case, even if permits aren't auctioned in the first year of operation, there's no reason why a future legislature can't slowly reduce the amount of permitts allocated and increase the number of permits auctioned.

The whole paper seems sensible to me, and aware of the practical difficulties of a cap-and-trade system as well as the areas where a carbon tax might be able to fill in some of the gaps. I look forward to the next occupant of the White House actually enacting this kind of thinking.