Why Warner-Lieberman Failed and How to Get America’s Working Families behind the Next Cap-and-Trade Bill

David Wheeler ()

No 149, Working Papers from Center for Global Development

Abstract: Among partisans of greenhouse gas emissions regulation, the Senate’s failure to pass the Warner-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill is often attributed to rampant denial, fueled by diehard political conservatism, energy-company propaganda, and government suppression of evidence on global warming. If so, the solution to the problem is electoral change, exposure of the propaganda, and public education. However, public concern is already so widespread that even leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention have acknowledged the need for action. In this paper, I consider two additional forces that have stymied carbon emissions regulation in developing countries. The first is the perception that costly carbon regulation promoted by the rich will inflict an unjust burden on the poor. The second is hostility to taxation of critical fossil-fuel resources that were developed long before climate risk was identified. My econometric analysis suggests that these same forces have significantly affected senators’ votes on Warner-Lieberman. By implication, Congress is not likely to approve cap-and-trade legislation unless Americans with below-median incomes are compensated for expected losses. My analysis supports recent proposals for direct distribution of emissions permit auction revenues to American families on an equal per-capita basis.

Keywords: climate change; global warming; economic development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2008-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-pol
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/16387
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden (http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/16387 [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/16387)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cgd:wpaper:149

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Center for Global Development Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Publications Manager ().