Full Title: History, Ideology, and U.S. Climate Policy: Beyond the Orthodoxies of Left and Right
Author(s): Lee Lane
Publisher(s): Hudson Institute
Publication Date: December 1, 2011
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
As this paper is being written, the United States is almost certainly incurring higher costs from its climate policies than it is from climate change. Confused nostrums dominate the public debate about how best to reduce the threat of climate change. The president asserts that subsidies to more costly sources of energy are the key to “clean” growth. The Keystone XL Pipeline has been halted by shrill claims that the project will spell global doom—even though it can have little impact on either the total supply of oil or the demand for it. Farm state legislators tout the climate savings of subsidizing the use of corn for fuel and underpric- ing water to irrigate the corn. The secretary of energy scolds consumers for wanting to use light bulbs that he thinks waste money; meanwhile, he is investing large sums of public funds trying to push unwanted tech- nologies into a market that resists them. Yet all of these costly policies will do little or nothing to lessen the harm from climate change. Some of them might even worsen it.