ROME—On my first visit to Vatican City, before my meeting with Michelangelo, I greeted the Pope via the city’s ubiquitous souvenir stands. I love this stuff. You can try on the “Papa Francisco” kitchen apron and imagine the pontiff’s smile beaming over your Spaghetti Bolognese. Or gently joggle the pate of a Pope Francis bobble-head. Postcards are everywhere, of course. And for €10 you can score the annual “Hot Priests Calendar,” featuring hunky young men of the cloth. In this “G-rated” feature, priests from all over the world help promote the Eternal City and breathe into the Catholic brand a wisp of hipness, to say nothing of hotness.

But back to the Pope. This week Pope Francis released the much anticipated encyclical on the environment and climate change. And there’s a connection between that, the souvenir aprons, and even the hot priests. I …

This morning CPR Scholar and George Washington University Law School professor Robert Glicksman will testify in support of EPA's proposed rule to regulate ozone. The Hearing, held by the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommitee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade will focus on the potential impacts of the proposed ozone rule on manufacturing. 

Glicksman's testimony corrects misinformation about the ozone rule's potential negative impact on manufacturing. He notes,

My testimony makes four key points:

1. A strong national ozone pollution standard that fulfills the public health goals of the Clean Air act will deliver significant benefits for human health and the environment.  
2. Regulations, such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) pending ozone standard, can and do provide important economic benefits for U.S. businesses, including those in the manufacturing sector.  
3. A frequently cited study purporting to find catastrophic economic effects from a strong …

In the shadow of the upcoming Supreme Court decisions on Obamacare and same-sex marriage is an important environmental case that has important implications for the health of women of childbearing age in America.  The Court will decide whether to uphold the Environmental Protection Agency’s stringent limitations for emissions of the toxic metal mercury from the nation’s coal- and oil-fired power plants. And as with the Obamacare case, the case turns on a matter of language: the single word, “appropriate.” 

If the Court adheres to a long line of its own precedents on how courts are to interpret statutes that delegate decisionmaking power to regulatory agencies, the case should be an easy win for EPA.  If, however, some of the Justices cannot resist the temptation to impose their own policy preferences on EPA, the upcoming decision could be a very bad one for environmental regulation and …

Editor’s Note: This is the second of two posts. Yesterday’s examined the need for a carbon tax as a way to reduce carbon emissions.

Real-time pricing of electricity is a logical complement to a carbon tax. Economists are fond of saying:  “First, get the price right.” What they mean is, if we can take the actions needed to price a good or service at its full social cost, including externalities, we will have much less need to use crude and blunt instruments, like command and control regulation, to get results that maximize social welfare. By placing an appropriate price on carbon, we will take a major step in the direction of getting the price of electricity right by reflecting the social cost of the GHGs used to generate electricity in the price of electricity. We can complete the process of getting the price of electricity …

Editor’s Note: This is the first of two posts on market-based approaches to reducing carbon emissions. Today’s focuses on a carbon tax; tomorrow’s on real-time pricing of electricity.

There is a broad consensus among economists that we will not be able to mitigate climate change efficiently and effectively unless we place a price on carbon. Placing a price on carbon of $40 per ton or more would discourage use of carbon-based fuels. That, in turn, would reduce significantly the quantity of carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas (GHG), that is emitted into the atmosphere.

Placing a price on carbon creates powerful incentives of two types. First, it encourages consumers to devise and implement methods of reducing their use of products and services that account for large emissions of GHGs. Second, it encourages tens of thousands of companies to increase significantly their research and …

A sleeper decision by the D.C. Circuit upholds federal air pollution authority.

The D.C. Circuit’s decision last week in Mississippi Commission on Environmental Quality v. EPA didn’t get a lot of attention, despite having a very significant constitutional ruling.  Since the constitutional discussion doesn’t start until about page seventy, after many pages of scintillating discussion of matters like the reliability of private air pollution monitors and the meaning of the word “nearby”, I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that the case has gone beneath the radar.  But the constitutional issue is an important one relating to funding cutoffs. The issue has been in play ever since the Supreme Court held that it was unconstitutionally coercive for Obamacare to cut off funding for Medicaid to states that refused to expand their Medicaid programs.  In this case, the cutoff is to federal …