Special Event: In the past, innovation has been able to address natural resource limits. However, RFF’s Center for the Management of Ecological Wealth asks “Are there substitutes for wilderness, wildness, and natural beauty? Can we substitute our way out of ecological problems? Are there limits to ingenuity?” Register online to attend “The Promise and Limits of Ingenuity” on May 6 from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. EDT at RFF.
Carbon Tax Effects
Last week the Senate Finance Committee introduced the idea of a carbon tax in a list of “prominent tax reform options.” Many have noted that such a tax could negatively impact the poor, and the Committee has said that it would be a challenge to maintain the progressivity of the tax.
RFF’s Daniel Morris and Clayton Munnings analyzed over 20 years of economic research to explain the distributional consequences of a carbon tax. They note that lower-income households could be compensated for increases in electricity and gas prices resulting from a carbon tax through direct rebates or targeted tax swaps, and maintain that “when accounting for how households anticipate spending over time . . . a carbon tax begins to appear more progressive than previously suggested.”
The History of Shale Gas
Driven by the US natural gas boom, many countries are beginning to develop their own shale gas reserves and are facing challenges in balancing environmental protection with cheaper energy and economic growth.
“The key question for policymakers in countries attempting to develop shale gas resources is how to generate a policy and market environment in which firms have the incentive to make investments and would eventually find it profitable to produce shale gas,” writes RFF Fellow Zhongmin Wang and Senior Fellow Alan Krupnick in new research about the history of shale gas development in the United States.
