Taxing Carbon is Bad Economics
07 Nov 2018 2 Comments
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At Institute of Economic Affairs, IEA’s Director of Research Dr Jamie Whyte explains (here) why taxing carbon is a bad economic idea. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
The emission of greenhouse gases – CO2 from burning fossil fuels and methane from flatulent livestock – is warming the global climate. Let’s not quibble about this scientific consensus, even if there are grounds for scepticism. The question for economists is the proper policy response.
The standard view is that greenhouse emissions are a classic negative externality, and that a Pigouvian tax should be applied. For example, farmers should pay a “fart tax” for each cow they own. This would internalise the external cost of the farts, and cows would be farmed only when the total benefits of doing so exceeded the total cost.
This is preferable to a cap-and-trade system, because the cap is arbitrary. If the…
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Kid’s Climate Lawsuit Update Nov. 5
07 Nov 2018 Leave a comment
Suit wants a court to order Congress to pass a carbon tax and the president to not veto the bill.
As predicted in the previous post (reprinted below), US lawyers are following the Supreme’s lead by again asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss the case. At the same time, one motion filed at the Oregon District Court asks for a stay of proceedings there pending a ruling by the Appeals Court. Another motion asks the Oregon court to again consider narrowing the scope of the lawsuit. The documents can be accessed at Columbia’s climate litigation website for Juliana vs. United States Some excerpts in italics with my bolds, followed by the Nov. 2 post.
From Petition to Court of Appeals:
If the district court grants certification and stays all proceedings, as the Supreme Court has signaled that it should, it will obviate the need for this Court’s intervention by way of mandamus. If, however, the district court declines to grant certification (despite the Supreme Court’s clear guidance to…
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The binary nature of sex: a column by Deborah Soh
07 Nov 2018 Leave a comment
I’ve maintained in several posts that biological sex is not an arbitrary social construct, but an objective phenomenon into which the vast majority of humans (and most animal species) fall into the clearly delineated categories of “male” and “female”. The frequency of exceptions for sex is about 1%, or less if you omit transgender individuals who are “male” and “female” defined by chromosome constitution, genitalia, and form of gametes. Sex is largely bimodal, with most individuals falling into the two sharp “male” and “female” peaks and a deep valley of exceptional individuals between the peaks. For most purposes, we can regard sex in humans as a biological binary.
Gender, on the hand, doesn’t divide so nearly if you see it as an individual’s self-identification. Much of gender is, of course, biologically based, as when someone in a purely female body has a strong psychological (and hence biological) predilection to…
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