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LIVE COVERAGE of July 7th Senate testimony on clean energy and climate legislation

2009-07-02T16:56:50Z

NRDC's David Hawkins is among the experts -- along with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Agriculture Department Secretary Tom Vilsack -- scheduled to testify on Tuesday, July 7 before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The committee, chaired by Barbara Boxer of California, will begin considering the issue of clean energy and climate legislation following last month's historic passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act by the U.S. House of Representatives. NRDC supported the bill, which would cap global warming pollution and create clean energy jobs, and has urged the Senate to strengthen and pass similar legislation.

Follow live coverage of the Senate testimony here on Switchboard.

&lt;a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&amp;task=viewaltcast&amp;altcast_code=e87951c2c9" mce_href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&amp;amp;task=viewaltcast&amp;amp;altcast_code=e87951c2c9" &gt;NRDC's David Hawkins Testifies to Senate Committee on Clean Energy and Climate Legislation&lt;/a&gt;

I love it when you talk carbon taxes!

2009-02-18T23:11:15Z

In the Odyssey, Odysseus had to be tied to the mast to resist the call of the Sirens, who tried to lure his ship onto the rocks. These days the siren song of a carbon tax fills the ear of many commentators who urge us to recognize its beauty and steer our ship in its direction. A Washington Post editorial is a recent example.

The premise of the Post editorial is that cap and trade regimes are complex, vulnerable to special pleading, and do not guarantee success in reducing emissions, while a tax is simple and sure in its effects. But this is grass-is-greener thinking. The Post compares a flawed version of one approach (cap and trade) to an idealized version of the other (tax) and not surprisingly, the idealized approach wins.

The fallacy in this argument is that the same political body (our Congress) that, we are assured, will insist on putting special interest features into a cap and trade bill, when presented with a tax approach, will vote only for the purest proposal, firmly rejecting all lobbyists' pleas.

Those who argue that a tax approach is less likely to be designed for special interests than a cap approach simply are ignoring the tax code. We have decades of empirical evidence in the U.S. that when Congress designs tax policies it rarely resists the entreaties of special interests.

It is worth reading the history of recent (Nixon onward) energy tax proposals done by the group Tax Analysts. It is hard to see anything in that history that suggests a carbon tax would be successful (or if something called a carbon tax were enacted that it would actually accomplish anything).

The fate of the 1993 BTU tax proposal by Bill Clinton is instructive. It had its origins with then Vice President Gore's support for a carbon tax. That idea never got out of the Administration because of the impact it would have had on coal. Instead the Administration proposed a tax based on BTUs so that the tax on coal was the same as on natural gas per unit of delivered energy even though coal's carbon emissions were twice as high. Before the Administration bill was introduced, further concessions to coal were made. The BTU tax just squeaked through the House, thanks to the addition of lots of exemptions required to get the votes.

The Washington Post summarized the exemption feeding frenzy in David Hilzenrath's May 28, 1993 piece (purchase required):

"Some opponents of the energy tax have already been accommodated with exemptions proposed by the administration itself or the House Ways and Means Committee.

"For example, Clinton proposed exempting grain alcohol used as fuel, a concession to grain growers, and the House tax-writing committee proposed exempting much of the electricity consumed in the production of aluminum. But such concessions seem to have fueled the demand for even more changes in the tax.

"Both Boren and Breaux come from states with considerable oil and natural gas production. For Breaux, however, the greater concern may be Louisiana's energy-intense industrial base, including chemical, glass and plastics makers that export products."

But the BTU tax was stripped completely in the Senate, being replaced by a small gasoline tax that had only modest revenue raising benefits and almost no carbon or energy security benefits. More on this cautionary tale can be found in this New York Times news analysis and this paper from the Center for a New American Security.

A major public policy problem with the tax approach is that the debate quickly becomes all about money. A proposal that is initially designed to achieve another purpose like energy efficiency or greenhouse gas reduction is analyzed over and over again by every interest group and member of Congress based almost entirely on its economic impact on constituents. Economic impacts will be an important topic in a cap approach to be sure but the supporters of a cap proposal have something that tax advocates do not have: the ability to keep the focus on the direct and intended effect of the legislation - how much does it cut pollution? In a tax bill, the effects on pollution are indirect and run a much larger risk of being submerged in the more easily calculated impacts of the tax provisions on various fuels, consumer energy expenses, and different regions of the country.

The Post editorial also cites results from the European Union emission trading system (EU ETS) to argue that cap approaches do not work. What about that? Well, phase one of the EU ETS was intentionally a pilot program: it was short-term, lasting only a few years, and it was put in place quickly, before either the government or industry had a good idea of what actual emissions were. Since it was a pilot, governments decided to err on the side of being generous with allocations and spent no time seriously considering longer-term allocation policies. Allowances were not allowed to be carried forward from the pilot phase to the later phases, making them almost worthless as the end of the pilot phase approached. None of these flaws is inherent to a cap system and none of them is being ignored as real cap programs are being designed.

Politicians certainly can design a flawed version of a cap, though the one example of a national cap enacted by Congress (the 1990 acid rain program) fully achieved its emission reduction objectives. It was flawed in giving away all allowances for free but because reduction requirements were substantial, continuous emission monitors were required on all sources, and most power companies were still operating in regulated markets, the windfalls and market distortions that occurred in the pilot phase of the EU emission trading system did not happen here.

There are some issues that are unavoidable with either a cap or a tax approach that is designed by real-world politicians. One of them is an awareness of regional and interest-based impacts.

There is nothing magic about a tax frame that makes these issues of distributional politics disappear. A cap program will be not be immune to these considerations, to be sure. But there is no evidence that a tax approach has a greater potential to avoid special interest deals.

Meanwhile, the now solid awareness of the importance of allowance allocation design is causing special interests to retrench in major ways from their earlier positions seeking free allocations of allowances. For example, while just a year ago, many firms in the coal power sector were arguing for free allowances for all coal generators based on the "model" of the acid rain law, they have abandoned that and are now proposing allocations to electric distribution companies with a stipulation that all of the value of those allowances be passed through to customers. This is the approach proposed in the USCAP Blueprint. An exception for unregulated coal plants is proposed only for the portion of compliance expenses that cannot be passed through to customers. Even the Edison Electric Institute has proposed that nearly all allowances for the power sector be provided to distribution companies with the same requirement of pass-through of benefits to customers. Similarly, the USCAP Blueprint (joined in by three major oil companies) does not call for any free allowances to oil and gas fuel providers to cover the emissions from the fuel they sell, a departure from what the oil industry has proposed in the past.

Cap proposals are criticized for allowing offsets and there are real problems with many offsets proposals. But offsets are in cap proposals to deal with claims that the cost of a reduction program will otherwise be "too high" for certain interests. Those same interests are not going to say "never mind" just because the cost is imposed in the form of a tax rather than an allowance price. No serious observer thinks a tax bill that moves through Congress would forbid offsets. The carbon tax bill introduced by Rep. John Larson (D-CT), H.R. 3416, includes a wide open offset provision, creating a tax rebate for firms that implement offset projects. The bill also provides for tax proceeds to be dedicated for purposes similar or identical to those found in cap and trade bills ("clean" energy investments; negatively affected industries). These provisions reflect the political realities that are recognized by the drafters of such bills but are typically ignored by commentators who laud the apparent simplicity and certainty of hypothetical tax approaches.

What about the claim that a tax will enjoy broader political support? It's a statement of historical fact, not a partisan comment, that Republicans in Congress, particularly when a Democratic President has been in the White House, have overwhelmingly opposed taxes put forward for energy or environmental policy purposes. In 1993 not a single Republican voted for the Clinton BTU tax bill in the House, nor in the morphed gas tax version in the Senate. These materials on the RNC website from the 2006 and 2008 campaigns make for interesting reading by those forecasting a post-partisan embrace of a carbon tax. The unfortunate fact is that such tax policies are red meat for demagogues. It is very likely that a decision to actually attempt a tax approach to climate protection would be walking into a political trap. That is too big a risk to take when so much rides on enacting climate legislation without further delay.

It is perfectly possible for Congress to craft a good climate bill that relies on a cap and includes complementary policies to drive carbon intensity improvements in the key sectors of electric power, vehicles, fuels, and buildings. The fact that it is possible does not guarantee it will happen. But rather than dismiss a cap as an inherently flawed approach, is it too much to hope that commentators would resist the calls of the tax sirens and recognize that both approaches can be implemented well or poorly? Then we could focus on the real issues that we need to address to achieve a good policy result in time to protect the climate.

Cleaner Cars are on the Way!

2009-01-26T02:07:58Z

Less than a week into office President Obama is acting to show the country and the world that the U.S. is back as a leader in the fight to protect the climate by taking on global warming pollution. The Washington Post and the New York Times are reporting that on Monday the President will direct EPA to approve the right of California and at least 13 other states to set global warming pollution standards for new cars and direct the Department of Transportation to set higher national fuel efficiency standards.

With these actions our new President is not just stepping up to the threat of climate chaos. The cleaner cars he will help put on the road will show us the way to reduce our dangerous dependence on oil and will push automakers to make the cars that the world will want and need in the 21st Century.

We at NRDC are thrilled that the President is acting quickly to follow-up on his campaign promise to stop the pattern of global warming denial and delay that we have lived through in the past eight years. In 2002 California enacted the world's first law to cut global warming pollution from automobiles. The response of the automakers was to hire lawyers instead of turning their engineers loose to make cleaner cars. Court after court shot down the auto company lawyers' claims but the Bush Administration threw yet another roadblock in the path of the cleaner cars that California and at least 13 other states were trying to put in the hands of their citizens. Overruling the advice of career agency staff, the Bush Administration EPA for the first time since EPA was founded 38 years ago, denied the right of the states to set tougher vehicle pollution standards under the Clean Air Act.

By directing his EPA to reverse this unlawful obstructionism and approve the states' efforts, President Obama is preventing years of additional delay in getting these cleaner cars on the road. If the automakers would take their eyes off the rear view mirror in developing their business plans, they too would be applauding the President's action for it is the kick they need to turn out a better product-better for the planet, better for consumers, better for ailing auto companies, and better for the American economy.

I've been watching Presidents come and go in Washington since 1970 and this is the best and fastest environmental start of any Presidency I've seen. Bravo to the President and bravo to the American voter for bringing all of us this breath of fresh air!

Climate, Congress, and USCAP

2009-01-18T17:30:00Z

Joe Romm posted a pretty scathing comment about the USCAP Blueprint on his Climate Progress blog a couple of days ago. Here is my response.

Joe,

You are and will remain a respected friend. As an author and blogger, you call it as you see it on what needs to happen to emissions and our energy system if we are to avoid a climate catastrophe. And you do a great job at it.

We at NRDC have another job. We must do what has to be done to move this Congress to enact climate protection legislation that will change overnight the kinds of energy and other investments that are made, start the innovation engine spinning, bend our emissions down without further delay, and show the world that the U.S. has emerged from its cave of inaction.

We are buoyed by President-elect Obama's commitment to act but we will need action from Congress as well. The new Congress contains a growing number of climate protection champions but it also contains a core of obstructionists bent on using every tactic to block any action, other members who think global warming is not enough of a problem to warrant any real change, and members who are inclined to be helpful but not if it involves spending much political capital as they see it. We don't have time to change who the members of Congress are; we need to change the way current members think about this issue.

There are a number of ways to move Congress to act and NRDC is pursuing all that we believe will help. One important way is to engage deeper and broader support for action from the U.S. business community-a community that until recently was dominated by outspoken opponents of any action to cut global warming pollution. The USCAP Blueprint you attack is an effort to get major American business leaders, joined with a number of U.S. NGOs, firmly committed to working to get this Congress to pass climate protection legislation. It is part of a process designed to make good legislation possible.

This past Thursday the business members of USCAP testified to Congress that action by Congress is urgent, not only to protect the climate but to provide a foundation for economic recovery. Their testimony powerfully challenged those members of Congress whose mindset is still that we cannot afford to act now because they think climate protection means economic sacrifice. The business leaders' testimony was "yes we can" take action to protect the climate and it will help the economy, not hurt it. The members of USCAP will be a strong force and voice for action in the weeks and months ahead. Without those voices NRDC believes action in Congress would be slower and less effective than it has to be to protect the climate.

Your comment that the Blueprint amounts to "unilateral disarmament" by the NGO members is telling. The political equivalent of mutual assured destruction threats will not protect the climate; it will protect only the status quo. To make change happen we need to realign the players, not just attack them. You seem to think that in the political process only the position of the NGOs matter and the positions of the "bunch of companies" in USCAP don't matter. If that were true we would have enacted strong climate protection laws in the Clinton Administration.

Your critique of the substance of the Blueprint focuses on emission targets, offsets and allowance distribution (I have already responded -- here and here -- to your incorrect description of the coal provisions), so let me say a few words on those topics.

Emission Targets

On emission targets, you point out that the science justifies a target tighter than a 20% reduction from today's levels by 2020. Of course it does. The science justifies having kept emissions well below today's levels starting 20 years ago!

But just saying what the science justifies does not ignite the engine of policy change unless it is coupled with a serious political strategy for overcoming the claims and anxieties about the costs of doing what the science justifies. The targets during the first decade of a climate protection program are among the most important and most challenging of a bill's design features. Since the U.S. is late in cutting emissions, we need to make up for lost time and that argues for faster, not slower, reduction schedules. But too many actors in the political debate are still concerned about the cost and feasibility of meeting deep emission reduction targets, particularly in the early years. Changing these views is the challenge we face.

As a blogger you have the responsibility of stating what the science justifies without needing to be concerned about formulating a strategy to overcome the political obstacles to effecting change. Keep at it but don't ignore the fact that we will need more than the truth as you see it to make change happen.

You know that since the election President-elect Obama talked of returning emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and was silent about targets for the crucial years between then and the long-term 2050 target. The Blueprint targets that NRDC supports will require reducing emissions to 7% below 1990 levels by 2020 and all of the USCAP members, including the 26 major business members, support reductions at least as strong as those mentioned by President-elect Obama for 2020 and all support reductions of 42% by 2030 as well as 80% reductions by 2050. Yet you say that the Blueprint, which commits these business leaders to support nothing weaker in the near-term than what the President-elect mentioned and contains a call for even stronger reductions supported by NRDC and others, will move "the center to the right and vitiate the results of the election." That is a strange interpretation!

And focusing only on the near-term targets for the cap component of the climate protection program, while ignoring the power of additional policies to drive reductions further, is a mistake. The Blueprint contains a sweeping set of additional polices that I'll say more about in a moment.

Offsets

On offsets, you argue that today's offsets markets are rife with fraud and if compliance with the cap were achieved only with the offsets potentially allowed under the Blueprint's maximum limits, that we would not see the reductions in industrial and energy sector emissions we must have if we are to protect the climate. NRDC has no argument with you that if fraud is not prevented and if offsets are the dominant means for compliance, the outcome would be unacceptable.

But the Blueprint calls for sweeping complementary measures in addition to the cap to drive emission reductions and those measures operate independently of whatever offsets are authorized. The Blueprint calls for specific programs that will drive emission reductions in all of the major sources of industrial, transportation, commercial, and residential sources of global warming pollution:

CO2 emission standards for new coal-fired powerplants and financial incentives to speed commercial use of carbon capture and storage;
GHG performance standards for the entire transportation fuel pool, replacing the piecemeal renewable fuels standard of current law that ignores emissions from fossil-based transportation fuels;
A structured process to improve GHG performance standards for vehicles;
A suite of requirements and financial incentives to improve transportation system efficiency that will reduce VMT growth, reward smart growth policies, and provide more and lower-polluting alternatives to meet transportation needs for people and goods;
Codes, standards and financial incentives to reduce global warming pollution resulting from running our buildings and appliances-the source of about half of America's CO2 emissions.

Since the recommended emission targets in the Blueprint are for both capped sectors and the U.S. economy as a whole, a combination of the cap, the complementary measures mentioned above, and other policies designed to achieve additional reductions outside the cap will be needed to achieve both of those objectives. The Blueprint also calls for a reserve price for the auction of allowances "set at a level that helps to avoid prices that are too low to encourage long-term capital investments in low- and no-carbon technologies." These provisions are designed to prevent a scenario of an "offsets-only" pathway that you and we agree is not acceptable.

It's also important to reflect on why offsets are included in many climate protection proposals, often in amounts that concern many of us. The most powerful driver of this appetite for access to large amounts of offsets is, in NRDC's opinion, the continuing anxiety among many policymakers that the transition to a low-GHG economy will be "too costly" unless such offsets are available. Many of us believe these anxieties are unwarranted and that deployment of cleaner energy alternatives can be achieved at much lower overall costs (indeed with net cost savings when all impacts are considered) than conventional economic models suggest. But we need to be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that we have not yet persuaded enough actors in the policy process that our assessment is correct.

It is not sufficient as a political strategy to simply point out the perils of an excessive reliance on offsets. To create a comfort level that lower levels of authorized offsets will provide an effective cost-containment mechanism requires doing a better job of persuasion that the conventional estimates of costs are not correct and that there are superior approaches to hedging against the possibility that costs could be higher than estimated.

Fortunately, persuasion is a renewable resource and it has not been tapped out with the release of the Blueprint. I would urge you to devote more of your considerable analytic and communications skills to making the case in a persuasive fashion that not only are excessive offsets bad for the health of a climate protection program but that there are reliable and robust alternative approaches to address the anxieties of those who believe large offset supplies are needed.

Distributing Allowance Value

Finally, a few words on distribution of allowance value. Note the term "allowance value." It is the term used throughout the Blueprint's discussion of this issue and it does not specify whether the method of distributing such value is by auction or statutory allocation of allowances. While much public discourse has employed the shorthand of "auction" versus "free" distribution of allowances, the real policy debate is over the purposes of allowance value distribution rather than the method of distributing that value.

The Blueprint recommends these priority purposes for allocating allowances in the first decades of the program:

transform our economy;
modernize our nation's energy infrastructure;
smooth the transition for consumers to a low-carbon economy; and
adapt to the impacts of global warming.

If you think these purposes are off-base or missing something major, share your views. If you think the Blueprint does a flawed job in implementing these purposes, point out the flaws.

You quote another group's claim that the Blueprint "would reward corporate polluters with hundreds of billions of dollars of giveaways." That's wrong. The entire emphasis of the Blueprint is on distributing allowance value to protect consumers and achieve the other purposes listed above. The largest and most specific recommendation for use of allowance value calls for distribution, not to pollution sources, but to local electric and gas distribution companies with the explicit requirement that all of the value be passed through to end-use consumers both directly and through energy efficiency programs. Other recommendations call for distribution of allowance value to protect low-income consumers, for worker transition and training, to drive the technologies we need to operate a low-carbon economy, and to provide resources to assist managers of vulnerable resources and vulnerable communities here and abroad to respond to and reduce the damage resulting from climate change that is unavoidable.

The Blueprint's recommendations for allowance value distribution to pollution sources are the exception, not the rule, and are temporary. Thus, there is a recommendation for some allowance value to be directed for transitional purposes to energy-intensive industries with trade-exposed commodity products. If U.S. firms that make trade-exposed commodity products shift that production overseas we will not achieve the emission reductions we need. Providing some allowance value to prevent this is not "rewarding polluters;" it is aimed at protecting the emission reduction objectives of the program. The Blueprint explicitly calls for eliminating this distribution as the competitive imbalance disappears. Another exception is the recommendation for a temporary distribution of some allowance value to competitive power generating sources for the portion of compliance costs that cannot readily be passed through to customers. This recommendation calls for phasing out this distribution in a manner that will provide strong incentives for timely investment in low carbon alternatives.

There is room for debate on the specifics of these exceptions but it is important to recognize that the Blueprint represents support by 26 major U.S. businesses for principles and specifics on allowance value distribution that are miles away from those who are calling for allowances to be given primarily to emission sources. Bank that progress, don't ignore it.

The business members of USCAP have come a long way in just a bit over two years and the positions they have committed to advocate have evolved strongly in the right direction. The Blueprint represents the state of that evolutionary process as of the start of the new Administration and Congress. The Blueprint's signers say "we want to be clear that this is not the only possible path forward and we stand ready to work with the Administration, Congress, and other stakeholders to develop environmentally protective, economically sustainable, and fair climate change legislation."

Joe, you are a brilliant analyst of what has to happen in the real world to protect the climate. But you need a new yardstick to evaluate policy proposals--not just how they match up to what you and I would like to happen but what they do to increase the chances of enacting serious legislation by this Congress this year. I and NRDC's leadership believe that engaging a large number of major firms in a committed effort to enact climate legislation now poses far fewer risks for the planet than demanding an outcome that is not supported by a serious strategy to overcome the real obstacles that we still face in Congress.

"A Manifesto for a New Environmentalism" Misses the Mark

2007-09-27T22:41:09Z

Two passionate but confused individuals, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger lead the current issue of The New Republic with "A Manifesto for a New Environmentalism". They lambaste "environmentalists" for being fixated with a "pollution paradigm" that operates by "limiting human power" and by "increasing the cost of dirty energy." This approach, they argue, will not solve global warming and what is really needed is a five to ten-fold increase in government expenditures on "breakthrough" energy technologies.

While their opinions are strong, their grasp of the facts is not. Unquestionably, we need to shift from dirty energy to clean in order to solve global warming. Groups like NRDC and others most active in the fight to prevent global warming are supporting legislation that will speed this shift. We call for a rapid embrace of already developed clean energy resources, spurred by a smart program that guarantees reductions in U.S. global warming pollution. What Nordhaus and Shellenberger fail to grasp is that such technologies exist but are hobbled by the fact that businesses today still make more profits by supplying dirty energy than clean.

The authors are wrong in their claim that we have to wait for new "breakthrough" technologies before we can move away from dirty resources. And they are wrong in claiming that a big government funded program is the critical missing piece to make the shift to clean energy happen.

Their claim that a "consensus" exists that we cannot cut global warming pollution substantially with clean energy solutions that are ready today, is refuted by Socolow and Pacala’s seminal 2004 "wedges" paper in Science. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s reports released earlier this year also document the very large potential of existing energy technologies to meet growing energy needs without increasing global warming pollution.

Between now and 2030 over $20 trillion will be invested globally to meet the growing demand for energy services. Nearly all of this will be spent on fuels and conversion methods selected by private sector actors chasing profitability. The challenge is to focus the incredible power of these private sector actors on energy investments that minimize carbon emissions. To move at the pace and scale required to prevent the worst impacts of global warming we need policies that make clean energy products and services a superior business proposition.

Policies that require a clear and steady reduction in emissions will make the market that will move the private sector in the right direction faster than any government funded program by itself. With a schedule of declining caps on emissions as the law of the land, entrepreneurs in firms large and small will know there is a growing market for clean energy innovations. They will help the nation meet targeted emissions reduction at the lowest possible cost.

Nordhaus and Shellenberger ignore the reality of the energy marketplace when they argue that the most important policy to drive new technology is a large government funded program. While incentive funding measures can be an important complementary strategy for clean energy deployment, by themselves they will not move the private sector at the required pace.

In arguing for "breakthrough" technologies rather than deployment of today’s clean energy solutions, Nordhaus and Shellenberger are peddling a false choice of the kind that the Bush administration has used to justify its retrograde policies for the past seven years. The convenient truth is that with intelligent policies to make clean energy more profitable we can get started today and we can set in motion the forces that will also deliver the additional breakthroughs we will need in the coming decades.

This is not an "environmentalist" pipe dream. It is the judgment of the leaders of 27 of the largest American businesses who have joined with NRDC and others in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), calling for a mandatory declining cap on U.S. global warming emissions. Its members include large energy producers and consumers such as Shell, Rio Tinto, and Duke Energy and Alcoa. These Fortune 500 companies recognize that their future business model depends upon the shift to low carbon technologies and efficiencies made possible through a national program of required emission reductions.

While necessary, it is also true that an emissions cap on carbon isn’t sufficient to drive the more profound technology changes we need to harmonize economic growth and climate protection. That is why USCAP has called for a program that combines emissions caps with complementary policies and measures to speed the deployment of big change technologies in critical areas like power generation, vehicle design and new fuels. Such complimentary policies that NRDC supports include setting standards for renewable energy, high mileage vehicles, low carbon fuels and energy efficiency.

As a closing example of the sloppiness of the Nordhaus and Shellenberger polemic, consider this sentence that appears near the end of their essay: "To be sure, the effort to reduce and stabilize global greenhouse gas emissions will require a major regulatory effort to make sure that everyone is playing by the same rules, provide a stable investment environment for nations and businesses, and increase the cost of fossil fuels relative to cleaner energy sources." A "major regulatory effort"? Is this the same effort earlier dismissed as not the most important priority? "Increase the cost of fossil fuels relative to cleaner energy sources"? Is this the agenda the authors earlier claimed (incorrectly) that environmentalists were misguidedly pursuing?

Nordhaus and Shellenberger have had some useful thoughts to contribute to the topic of how to best align human goals for economic well being with the reality that all economies depend on a healthy and well-functioning set of complex ecosystems. But this latest broadside misses the mark by a mile.