Dr. Shi-Ling Hsu PhD JD - The Case for a Carbon Tax: Getting Past Our Hang-ups to Effective Climate Policy

There have been many scientists deeply involved with the development of global climate change theory, but perhaps none as influential as the late climatologist Stephen H. Schneider, who wrote The Genesis Strategy: Climate and Global Survival in 1976 and Global Warming in 1989.

Traditional economic modeling would predict that the world will, as it has for centuries, continue to grow richer. This is an assumption as well as an explicit part of economic modeling, including the three dozen or so integrated assessment models, combined climate and economy models that have played a prominent role in climate debate and policy. They include the PAGE2002 model that was heavily relied upon by Nicholas Stern and his modeling team in producing the The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change (Cambridge Press, 2007), as well as models that call for much more modest action, such as the RICE and DICE models created by economist William Nordhaus and his associates. On the other hand, some economists warn that future generations will not necessarily be richer, either because natural and environmental capital will be depleted, undermining economic growth (Cameron Hepburn and Nicholas Stern, The Global Deal on Climate Change Ch. 3 in The Economics and Politics of Climate Change [D. Helm and C. Hepburn, eds., Oxford Press, 2009]), or because traditional economic models do not accurately model large changes in marginal values of environmental goods, which will become much more scarce in a climate-changed future (Thomas Sterner and U. Martin Persson, An Even Sterner Review: Introducing Relative Prices into the Discounting Debate, 2 Review of Environmental Law and Policy, 61, 63 [2008]).

World Resources Institute, Climate Analysis Indicators Tool, Yearly Emissions, online at http://cait.wri.org/cait.php?p . (accessed March 18, 2010, on file with author). Carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas, but it is by far the most abundant.

World Resources Institute, Climate Analysis Indicators Tool, Yearly Emissions, online at http://cait.wri.org/cait.php?p . (accessed March 18, 2010, on file with author).

National Development and Reform Commission, Peoples Republic of China, Chinas National Climate Change Program (2007), online at http://en.ndrc.gov.cn/newsrelease/P020070604561191006823.pdf .

World Resources Institute, Climate Analysis Indicators Tool, Yearly Emissions, online at http://cait.wri.org/cait.php?p . (accessed March 18, 2010, on file with author).

World Resources Institute, Climate Analysis Indicators Tool, Yearly Emissions, online at http://cait.wri.org/cait.php?p . (accessed March 18, 2010, on file with author).

See, e.g., Evan Lehman, Eight House Republicans, after Carrying Climate Effort Last Year, Fend off Attacks ClimateWire, August 5, 2010 (I would not vote for it again in its current form because of the lack of progress in Copenhagen, [Representative Leonard] Lance of New Jersey said of the cap-and-trade bill. I dont think we can do this alone. China and India have to come aboard.); GOP: US Should Reject Climate Pact, Seattle Times, December 12, 2009, online at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2010488118_apclimaterepublicans.html (accessed August 10, 2010).

US Department of Defense (2008) National Defense Strategy, at 45.

Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report, February 2010.

This argument was first and most eloquently made by Nobel Laureate economist Thomas Schelling, in Intergenerational Discounting, 23 Energy Policy 395 (1995).

Nicholas Stern, The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change (2007).

Shi-Ling Hsu, A Game-theoretic Model of International Climate Negotiations. 19 NYU. Environmental Law Journal, in publication.

Carolyn Kousky, Olga Rostapshova, Michael Toman, and Richard Zeckhauser, Responding to Threats of Climate Change Mega-Catastrophes, Resources for the Future Discussion Paper 09-45 (November 2009).

US Environmental Protection Agency, 2010. US Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report, available online: www.epa.gov/climatechange/emissions/downloads10/US-GHG-Inventory-2010_Report.pdf (accessed February 10, 2011).