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One of the hottest topics in policy wonk circles is the “Green New Deal,” spearheaded by the rising star of the progressive Left, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In  my previous post , I explained that the entire premise of a current New Deal—whether green, red, or blue—was flawed. Even on standard Keynesian terms, it makes no sense to embark on a $1

We live in strange times indeed when an environmental reporter for The New York Times writes that  we should stop pushing for a carbon tax , just a few weeks before dozens of distinguished  economists sign a letter to the Wall Street Journal  calling for a carbon tax. Yet despite the prestige behind the impressive list of signers, the economists

Both fans and foes of the so-called Green New Deal (GND) agree that it is a wildly ambitious set of proposals, which—by design—will involve the federal government spending boatloads of money. In fact, the GND is  so  expensive that  Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has cited the inflationary doctrine of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)  to deflect the issue; we

The Fraser Institute in Canada recently  released my study  critiquing the province of Alberta’s approach to carbon pricing. My analysis for Fraser confirms what I’ve been arguing on the  pages of IER for years : in the United States, conservatives and libertarians should run from any “carbon tax deal” that promises to shrink the size of

In the old Soviet Union, the Communists allegedly used the term  “useful idiot”  to describe Westerners whose naïve political views furthered the Soviet agenda, even though these Westerners didn’t realize that they were being exploited in such fashion. It is in this context that I confidently declare that American economists have been  useful

Two years ago,  President Trump announced  he would begin the formal process of withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. At the time, the media and climate alarmists went ballistic—for example, famed physicist  Stephen Hawking said  Trump’s action would push Earth “over the brink.” And yet, as I’ll show in this article, the

I recently gave a talk to a student group at Connecticut College on the economics of climate change. (The video is broken up into three parts on my YouTube channel:  one ,  two , and  three .) In this post I’ll summarize three of my main points: (1) There is a huge disconnect between what the published economics research actually says about

Due to Jeff Bezos’ public accusations against the National Enquirer , the topic of blackmail is in the news. Tyler Cowen wrote an article for Bloomberg in which he largely took it for granted that blackmail was a bad practice, but he at least linked to a 1985 law review article by Walter Block and David Gordon arguing that the practice should be

One of the most interesting aspects of the “Green New Deal” is that its progressive proponents hardly mention  taxes  at all—even as  some Republican economists  continue to champion a carbon tax. Faced with the political defeat of the  Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” bill , as well as the  failed  carbon tax  initiatives in Washington State , it

Wise alecks on social media noted with amusement how Beto O’Rourke recently claimed humans  had only  ten  years  to act on climate change, thus one-upping Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who had previously gone out on a limb by putting the  deadline at  twelve  years . Snark aside, it’s important to point out that the “consensus science” as codified,