The hubris of using taxes and regulations to shoot for a “global temperature target” should be apparent to anyone but the most overconfident technocrat
An intriguing recent post at the Energy Institute Blog explains the “cushion in coal markets” that will make them “harder to kill.” As the language suggests, the author (Severin Borenstein) is not a fan of coal. Even so, the analysis is interesting because it shows just how crude much of the climate change policy debate has been. The post concludes that a carbon tax of a particular size, for example, might not reduce US coal production as much as enthusiasts initially believed.
The blog post summarizes academic research by a doctoral student, Louis Preonas. Here is the opening of the post, which sets the context and distills the findings: