Climate Policy Blog

Dilemma: Past and Future of Science in Society

Dilemma: I like those old Greek words. They suggest hope, or perhaps, hopelessness. It is pretty clear from, say, Aristotle’s Treatise on Rhetoric, that the types of political arguments and of political behavior we see today have been around a long time. That includes attacks on reason, logic, and science. Hope, perhaps, is represented in that this is something that we have seen before. Hopelessness, because there is seemingly nothing that can be settled by knowledge as long as knowledge is in conflict with want, belief, and emotion.

Since my transition to the chaos of Trump, I have been trying to find a foundation for analysis. We often search for such a foundation in past behavior and past experience. This leads to what I will call the past-future dilemma, which is, should we try what we have done with success in the past, or does the future require something different? (more…)

The fee and dividend put forward by conservative thought leaders recently would cause a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and provide us with a more stable climate system. It would also help most low-income families and take the sting out of any increase in energy and transportation prices, if they happen. We know all of that from basic economics and from decades of intensive research on the climate system (and also my posts here and here).

One of the key obstacles the idea will face is that an emission fee without the dividend would provide a new revenue stream. That revenue stream is highly alluring to those who want to create new federal programs, particularly if they can’t win a more direct argument to obtain the federal funding they need to finance those programs. (more…)