Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
I return to regulatory and other alternatives below. But the interest-
ing point is that carbon pricing actually simplifi es life. Decisions about
emissions reductions are complicated, diverse, and pervasive. One of
the beautiful aspects of using carbon prices rather than other mecha-
nisms is that it simplifi es the complex carbon-related decisions. It does
this by reducing the amount of information that is required to under-
take the different tasks.
Suppose you take environmental ethics seriously. You desire to re-
duce your carbon footprint—the amount of carbon emissions your
activities produce. How might you go about adapting your daily life to
include carbon-related decisions?
Here is a story that describes the way carbon prices simplify deci-
sions. Perhaps you and your brother live in Denver and want to visit
your father in Albuquerque. Should you drive or fl y? You consult an
online carbon calculator and fi nd that fl ying produces 350 kilograms of
CO
2
while driving your Toyota produces 400 kilograms. So fl ying is
better from a pure carbon footprint viewpoint.
But then you remember that you have to get to and from the air-
port, so you need to calculate the carbon emissions for those activities.
You also wonder whether the calculator takes into account whether
the fl ight is full or not. You further consider whether these calculators
include only the carbon in the gasoline and jet fuel but have excluded
the CO
2
released in the production of the tires, aluminum, steel, cush-
ions, and everything else that goes into making the air travel possible,
not to mention the carbon costs of fl ying the crew in from Los Angeles.
Maybe you should just forget the trip and stay home. You would
save carbon, but you would then have an unhappy father to deal with.
You might well decide that all these carbon calculations are too compli-
cated and try to fi nd some other way to be a responsible citizen of the
world.
2
This is where the advantages of a carbon price as an aid to decision
making become so clear. If a price were charged on all carbon emis-
sions, the costs would already be included in the price of the gasoline for
the car trip, in the ticket and taxi fares for the air travel, and in the costs
of all the alternative activities. Once the carbon price is universally
