Taxing carbon emissions could leave decisions about reducing greenhouse gases to the market.
Back in 2019, an unprecedented group of thousands of economists signed a public letter in favor of a carbon taxA carbon tax is levied on the carbon content of fossil fuels. The term can also refer to taxing other types of greenhouse gas emissions, such as methane. A carbon tax puts a price on those emissions to encourage consumers, businesses, and governments to produce less of them. as the best solution to climate change.
At the same time, the Green New Deal gained popularity among progressives and climate change activists. The Green New Deal put forward a totalizing, top-down public sector approach to climate change. These climate activists downplayed or even dismissed carbon taxes as both regressive and inadequate to achieving their goals.
While the Biden administration did not implement a Green New Deal, its approach was closer to that than it was to carbon pricing. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) relied heavily on subsidies for green technologies, whether zero-emission electricity generation or electric vehicles. The Biden administration also pursued emissions reduction through regulation.
This is a preview of our full op-ed originally published in The Dispatch.
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