PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • February 22, 2022
Efficient allocation of products in a market economy requires that their prices reflect their full costs of production. Regrettably, that’s not true for those intensive in carbon. The atmosphere is an unpriced resource, free to pollute. So, carbon-intensive products are too cheap, consumption is too high and environmental damage is too great. To correct this, more than 3,500 economists favor a carbon tax to raise the price of goods intensive in carbon. The choice of climate policy is properly political, but estimating the cost of carbon, on which any wise policy must necessarily be based, is not. It is a matter to be based on science! There is no role for politics and no role for the courts. ~ Henry Landis Gabel, Portland