We apply four alternative decision criteria, two old ones and two new, to the question of the appropriate level of greenhouse gas emission reduction. In all cases, we consider a uniform carbon tax that is applied to all emissions from all sectors and all countries; and that increases over time...

Uncertainty plays a significant role in evaluating climate policy, and fattailed uncertainty may dominate policy advice. Should we make our utmost effort to prevent the arbitrarily large impacts of climate change under deep uncertainty? In order to answer to this question we propose an new way...

This paper considers the question under what conditions domestic markets of emission permits would and should merge to become an international market. Emission permits are licenses, and so governments would need to recognize other countries’ permits. In a two-county model, we find that it is...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has a monopoly on the provision of climate policy advice at the international level and a strong market position in national policy advice. This may have been the intention of the founders of the IPCC. I argue that the IPCC has a natural monopoly, as...

Climate change is an important problem. It would be desirable to have legislation that would put Ireland on a low-cost and equitable trajectory to a zero-carbon economy. The draft Climate Change Response Bill 2010 will not achieve that. The exact emission reduction targets for 2020 are...