Regulation to reduce emissions is a sham and a shame

I favor a smartly-conceived carbon tax over regulation of energy consumption. The costs of regulating consumption directly usually far exceed the benefits. For example, the Paris Climate Accord would yield on $0.11 in benefits in climate change for every $1 spent even if every country meets its promise.  A well-conceived carbon tax, on the other hand, could yield up to $2 in climate benefits for every $1 spent. 

For more information, I encourage you to read https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/thinking-smartly-about-climate-change/.

My preferred proposal is the Carbon Dividend Plan. This plan uses the tax to pay administrative costs and then return the remainder to Americans on a per capita basis. The result is to increase the price of carbon-intensive goods and services, reduce the production and consumption of carbon-intensive goods and services, increase the incentive for finding new and better ways to capture emissions and to produce energy. Moreover, since the vast majority of the tax revenues return to people on a per capita basis and rich people tend to consume more carbon-intensive goods and services than poor people, the Plan reduces income inequality and rich people bear the brunt of the cost of reducing emissions. The Plan could easily be expanded to address methane and other emissions that contribute to global warming.

Reducing emissions efficiently requires answers to many questions. What is the best way to produce energy? Is producing energy differently better than using technology to capture carbon as or after it is emitted? Is geo-engineering or painting all roofs with reflective white paint the best solution to climate change?

No one person or group knows the answers to these questions. I trust the decisions of millions of people making billions of decisions with good incentives more than the decisions of less than 1000 politicians in Washington DC. The Carbon Dividend Plan is a good start to creating good incentives.