Energy Policy, News, Views and Debates 10 May, 2021
The ‘elephant in the room’ on Biden climate agenda
By Josh Siegel
There’s a looming problem with President Joe Biden’s climate agenda.
The administration is considering taxing imports of carbon-intensive goods, fulfilling a Biden campaign promise to punish China and other countries that are “failing to meet their climate and environmental obligations.”
But economists warn such a policy, known as a border carbon adjustment, would be unworkable unless the United States imposed a carbon tax or a similar pricing scheme on its own domestic goods.
Right now, Biden is not planning a carbon tax as part of his new goal to cut U.S. emissions in half by 2030 and has instead proposed for Congress to pass a clean electricity standard mandating utilities use more zero-carbon electricity.
At an event on Thursday hosted by the Niskanen Center, moderator Joseph Majkut, the group’s director of climate policy, referred to the infeasibility of the U.S. proceeding on a border adjustment without a domestic carbon tax as “the elephant in the room” threatening the Biden administration’s climate agenda.
https://co2coalition.org/2021/05/10/the-elephant-in-the-room-on-biden-climate-agenda/
