Climate legislation

In an op-ed this week, leading economists with MIT and Harvard urged policymakers not to “demonize” market-based policies to achieve national environmental and energy goals. The economists underscore the benefits of using market forces to bring about good policy outcomes in a least-cost manner, echoing COMPETE’s support for markets and market-based climate-change policies in a joint position paper with the Environmental Defense Fund.

Markets unleash “ingenuity” and send the proper price signals for investment.  So says Senator John Kerry, D-MA, on the stump to drum up support for a tri-partisan climate change bill he is developing with Senators Lindsey Graham, R-SC, and Joseph Lieberman, I-CT.  Kerry is a strong advocate of creating a market-based program to limit emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.  He pointed to the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, which created a similar market-based program to cost-effectively limit acid rain-producing emissions of sulfur dioxide from power plants. “It works,” Kerry said succinctly of such market-based environmental programs.

The COMPETE Coalition welcomes Senator Kerry’s pro-market commentary, and invites him and his staff to review a joint statement by COMPETE and the Environmental Defense Fund underscoring the importance of competitive electricity markets for electricity as a complement to any market-based program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.