Displacing gasoline with a new source of biofuel, as California’s low-carbon fuel standard proposes to do, will reduce the global demand for oil. This will reduce the world oil price, which will cause an increase in oil use outside of California - the global rebound effect. Conventional wisdom...

This paper solves the global cap-and-trade game exactly as the public-goods game is normally solved and finds a problematic outcome. Abatement of greenhouse gas emissions is a global public good, and supplying a public good is a game with strong incentives to free ride. Adding a cap-and-trade...

Developing countries reject meaningful emission targets (recent intensity caps are no exception), while many industrialized countries insist that developing countries accept them. This impasse has prevented the Kyoto Protocol from establishing a global price for greenhouse gas emissions. This...

“Hopes are fading that a strong treaty will emerge from next month’s negotiations in Copenhagen,” according to Nature Geoscience (2009/11). This short book starts from Nature’s critique of the “targets and timetables” approach to international agreement and describes an international...

A Sectoral Crediting Mechanism (SCM) shows promise as a means to encourage the transition from the Clean Development Mechanism to more-efficient climate policies. But as an open ended program, an SCM would discourage financial commitment by developing countries. Hence, a second transition, from...

Evaluations of renewable fuel standards typically compute the reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions based on the amount of fossil fuel “displaced.” However they universally fail to provide any explanation of how displaced fuel stops the production of fossil fuel. In spite of this,...

Cap-and-trade and carbon-tax policies generate streams of tax revenue or of valuable allowances, which represent the value of using the atmosphere for storing carbon emissions. The common ownership of the atmospheric commons suggests equal ownership of the value stream it provides. If equal...

Industrialized countries are demanding that developing countries accept binding emission targets, but developing countries refuse these caps. Developing countries, in turn demand that Industrialized countries accept much tighter caps than any have considered. Industrialized countries refuse such...