The editors of the Washington Post present their preferred plan for dealing with carbon emissions:
The best answer is to price greenhouse emissions, which is most efficiently done through a carbon tax. Put a high-enough price on polluting, and massive cuts in emissions would be guaranteed, regardless of whether the federal government’s chosen investments succeeded. In fact, it would render all sorts of expensive provisions in the proposal, such as extensions of wind and solar tax credits, unnecessary. It would raise revenue to pay for clean energy research, and it would easily clear the bar for reconciliation, the parliamentary maneuver that overcomes Senate filibusters.
The Biden plan’s clean electricity standard is a decent second-best approach to ensure the electricity sector slashes emissions, but that industry is just one part of the emissions picture. If this Congress refuses to put a price on carbon, future Congresses likely will have a lot more work to do, and less time and fiscal capacity with which to do it.
which differs fairly dramatically from the plan advanced by the Biden Administration. I think that the administration’s support for carbon capture and sequestration is welcome. If the “pioneer facilities” prove effective, it will be a major step forward at a relatively nominal cost, particularly in a world in which the increasing emissions from other countries outweigh our ability to reduce emissions. I’m not as enthusiastic about the centerpiece of the administration’s plan:
Though White House officials don’t dwell on this point, the centerpiece of the president’s plan is a mandate: an energy-efficiency and clean-electricity standard. This would require utilities to derive increasing percentages of their electricity from non-emitting sources such as renewables and nuclear power, or to meet ever-lower targets for the greenhouse gases they emit.
That’s one of the key realities. I’m skeptical that much productive can be accomplished without a rededication to nuclear power and too many of the president’s supporters are reflexively anti-nuke.
