Global Warming (Finish)

The losses from failing to address global warming if it does occur are truly enormous. Even more serious, the effects are also irreversible. In contrast, the losses from addressing global warming, if it does not occur or if it is not very serious, are not enormous and the losses from addressing the problem are only very large. In addition, it seems that the likelihood of global warming with serious impacts on large segments of the planet seems now to be very high.

Economic theory gives a simple natural way to fight global warming, which is to have escalating taxes on carbon emissions. There is a simple reason why this is the ideal remedy : carbon emissions into the atmosphere constitute a nuisance to everybody on the planet.
People should be taxed to pay a penalty equal to the value of the nuisance that they cause. In this way people who value their emissions more than the nuisance they cause will make those emissions and they will pay the tax. People whose emissions are not valued as much as the nuisance they cause will curb them and will not pay the tax. Thus with such a tax, emissions will be curbed insofar as the nuisance they create exceeds their benefits.

The Congress-people were not willing to vote for this because they felt that the costs of supporting Kyoto were too high relative to the benefits. In a nutshell they were afraid that their constituents would rebel against the increases in the prices that would accompany reductions in carbon emissions called for in the Kyoto Accords.