Could a federal carbon tax serve as an effective method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions? Brian Murray, Billy Pizer, and Christina Reichert examine the tradeoff between certainty about emissions and certainty about prices and costs.
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A report from the Aspen Institute Dialogue Series on Water Data presents a vision for a national policy framework that addresses institutional barriers to scaling the integration of water data and information to support sustainable water management.
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Ecosystem Services Program director Lydia Olander delivered the keynote address at Ecosystem Services: From Concept to Policy in Washington, D.C. on May 19, hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science & Technology Policy Fellowships.
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The authors of a G20 policy brief describe oceans as the largest and most critical ecosystem on Earth—hence their proposal for a global ocean governance process to ensure oceans' ecologically and economically sustainable management.
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The Clean Water Act allows use of compensatory mitigation to replace the benefits of lost wetlands and streams. A new Nicholas Institute working paper summarizes North Carolina’s use of preservation for compensatory mitigation by private mitigation banks and a state-operated in-lieu fee program.
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Nicholas Institute director Tim Profeta and Environmental Economics director Brian Murray discuss President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord, starting with the science that underlies the accord. Exiting the agreement, they say, will undermine the ability of the United States to shape solutions to the global challenge of climate change. They note that the withdrawal process will take several years—concluding near the 2020 election, which will put the issue of U.S. participation in the near-universal pact on the ballot.
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The Nicholas Institute’s Brian Murray told Spectrum News’s “Capital Tonight” that President Donald Trump’s decision to exit the Paris Agreement “means that the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases is now stepping away from the international process to try to address the reduction of emissions over the next several decades. What that means is that the responsibility is going to fall on the rest of the world to take those actions”—a move that “allows others to dictate the terms of trade.” He said the costs cited by President Trump for emissions reductions are “significantly overstated,” and he noted that a significant number of businesses had backed staying in the climate accord. (Murray’s comments begin at 8:25.)
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