Foolish for anyone to believe that a carbon tax will be a "market solution" that will humbly keep allocation decisions out of the hands of political officials
New Study on "Unburnable" Energy Reserves Belies Carbon Tax Rhetoric
A new study in the journal Nature uses a computer model to tell us not only how much oil, natural gas, and coal be used over the next forty years, but also from which countries this energy can be harvested, in order to limit global warming by the year 2100 to 2 degrees Celsius. Beyond showcasing the utter hubris involved in today's climate change policy debate, the study blows two holes in the standard case for a carbon tax: First, the 2°C target will probably cause more economic damages than environmental benefits, according to the latest IPCC report. Second, proponents of a carbon tax have been lecturing us for years that it is a "market solution" in contrast to top-down central planning. That's why it's so very revealing to see people grab hold of the new Nature study to justify bans on the Keystone Pipeline and development of unconventional oil and gas resources.
