The Green Paradox
A Supply-Side Approach to Global Warming
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- $35.99
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- $35.99
Publisher Description
A leading economist develops a supply-side approach to fighting climate change that encourages resource owners to leave more of their fossil carbon underground.
The Earth is getting warmer. Yet, as Hans-Werner Sinn points out in this provocative book, the dominant policy approach—which aims to curb consumption of fossil energy—has been ineffective. Despite policy makers' efforts to promote alternative energy, impose emission controls on cars, and enforce tough energy-efficiency standards for buildings, the relentlessly rising curve of CO2 output does not show the slightest downward turn. Some proposed solutions are downright harmful: cultivating crops to make biofuels not only contributes to global warming but also uses resources that should be devoted to feeding the world's hungry. In The Green Paradox, Sinn proposes a new, more pragmatic approach based not on regulating the demand for fossil fuels but on controlling the supply.
The owners of carbon resources, Sinn explains, are pre-empting future regulation by accelerating the production of fossil energy while they can. This is the “Green Paradox”: expected future reduction in carbon consumption has the effect of accelerating climate change. Sinn suggests a supply-side solution: inducing the owners of carbon resources to leave more of their wealth underground. He proposes the swift introduction of a “Super-Kyoto” system—gathering all consumer countries into a cartel by means of a worldwide, coordinated cap-and-trade system supported by the levying of source taxes on capital income—to spoil the resource owners' appetite for financial assets.
Only if we can shift our focus from local demand to worldwide supply policies for reducing carbon emissions, Sinn argues, will we have a chance of staving off climate disaster.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
University of Munich professor Sinn (Can Germany Be Saved?: The Malaise of the World's First Welfare State) claims that the current nation-by-nation approach to curbing climate change is counterproductive, resulting in increased use of fossil fuels rather than diminished carbon emissions. This doggedly careful and logical analysis begins by offering proof of the reality of climate change and why we should act to slow it now. Incorporating extensive charts and formulas, Sinn details the emerging global energy mix, notably demonstrating how biofuels the most direct substitute for fossil fuels create global starvation as they compete with food production. In addition, he shows how limiting carbon emissions creates the "green paradox": fossil fuel producers, concerned about anticipated future limits on carbon, hurry to extract resources while they can, adding to the supply, which lowers the cost and encourages use. Furthermore, as countries complying with the Kyoto Treaty lower their carbon use, the price of fossil fuels declines due to less demand, encouraging non-Kyoto countries to buy them, offsetting the decreases of the Kyoto countries. Sinn proposes a new focus on the supply side: imposing capital source taxes that make extracting resources less attractive to fossil fuel producers. The book's technical details may glaze the eyes of noneconomists, but Sinn's conscientious, gentle voice and reasonable proposals portray a humanist sincerely seeking practical solutions.
