Steering the Climate System: Using Inertia to Lower the Cost of Policy
- (pp. 2947-57)
Abstract
Common views hold that the efficient way to limit warming to a chosen level is to price carbon emissions at a rate that increases exponentially. We show that this Hotelling tax on carbon emissions is actually inefficient. The least-cost policy path takes advantage of the climate system's inertia to delay reducing emissions and allow greater cumulative emissions. The efficient carbon tax follows an inverse-U-shaped path and grows more slowly than the Hotelling tax. Economic models that assume exponentially increasing carbon taxes are overestimating the cost of limiting warming, overestimating the efficient near-term carbon tax, and overvaluing technologies that mature sooner.Citation
Lemoine, Derek, and Ivan Rudik. 2017. "Steering the Climate System: Using Inertia to Lower the Cost of Policy." American Economic Review, 107 (10): 2947-57. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20150986Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- H23 Taxation and Subsidies: Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
- Q54 Climate; Natural Disasters and Their Management; Global Warming
- Q58 Environmental Economics: Government Policy