Читать книгу The Economics of Climate Change: a Primer - The Congressional Budget Office - Страница 7

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Governments may respond to climate change by adopting a "wait-and-see" approach, by pursuing research programs to improve scientific knowledge and develop technological options, by regulating greenhouse gas emissions, or by engaging in a combination of research and regulation. The United States has invested in research and subsidized the development of carbon-removal and alternative energy technologies. Furthermore, some programs that were in tended to achieve other goals, such as pollution reduction, energy independence, and the limitation of soil erosion, also discourage emissions or encourage the removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. However, other programs have opposing effects.

Should a government decide to control emissions, it may choose from a broad menu of regulatory approaches. One option is direct controls, which set emissions standards for equipment and processes, require households and businesses to use specific types of equipment, or prohibit them from using others. A government could also adopt more indirect, incentive-based approaches, either singly or in combination—for example, by restricting overall quantities of emissions through a system of permits or by raising the price of emissions through fees or taxes. Incentive based approaches are generally more cost-effective than direct controls as a means of regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

Uncertainty about the costs and benefits of regulation affects the relative advantages of different incentive-based approaches. Some research indicates that such uncertainty gives a system of emissions pricing economic advantages over a quota system that fixes the quantity of emissions. Those advantages stem from two facts: both the costs and benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions are uncertain; and the incremental costs—the additional costs of reducing an additional ton of emissions—can be expected to rise much faster than the incremental benefits fall. Under those circumstances, the cost of guessing wrong about the appropriate level of taxes—and, perhaps, of failing to reduce emissions enough in any given year—is likely to be fairly low. But the cost of miscalculating the appropriate level of emissions—and perhaps imposing an overly restrictive and hence expensive limit—could be quite high.

A system of emissions pricing has several other advantages over one of emissions quotas. Pricing could raise significant revenues that could be used to finance cuts in distortionary taxes—such as those on income—that discourage work and investment. Moreover, emissions pricing more effectively encourages the development of technologies that reduce or eliminate emissions than direct controls or strict limits on emissions do.

Restricting greenhouse gas emissions would tend to reduce emissions of some conventional pollutants as well, yielding a variety of ancillary benefits, such as improvements in health from better-quality air and water. Those additional benefits would partly offset the costs of greenhouse gas regulations, particularly in developing countries that have significant problems with local pollution.

The distributional effects of emissions regulations would depend on the type and stringency of the regulations and could be very large relative to how much the policy improved people’s well-being. Those potential effects might spur the affected parties to engage in rent-seeking—vying for regulatory provisions that would provide them with tax exemptions, access to permits, and so on. An emissions pricing system (based either on taxes or on auctioned permits) would benefit different groups in different ways, depending on how the government returned the receipts to the economy. Certain ways of using the revenues could offset some—but probably not all—of the costs of regulation. (For example, if the government issued permits free of charge, even permit recipients who were heavily regulated could benefit from the regulation.)