The US Treasury commissioned a report from the National Academy of Sciences to study various proposed changes to the tax code in light of the effects on greenhouse gas emissions. The committee formed for this task just released its study, edited by William Nordhaus, Stephen Merrill, and Paul Beaton. Not surprisingly, the study found that a federal tax on greenhouse gas emissions would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Yet the study also concluded that many of the allegedly “green” provisions in the current tax code do very little to help on this front, and may even be counterproductive. In this post I’ll walk through some of the key findings.
