“Collectively endorsing carbon pricing as the preferred route to achieve pledged [greenhouse gas] reductions is relatively easy,” writes Barry Rabe in his latest Brookings blog. “Much harder is navigating the politics upon returning home.”
Rabe’s forthcoming MIT Press book, Can We Price Carbon?, explores the political challenges in detail, looking at a broad range of carbon pricing experiments to understand why some succeed while others fail.
In “Carbon pricing durability and the case of California,” Rabe’s August 30 blog post, he explores the carbon pricing experience in one particular state: California.
"While it is much too early to say that the Golden State has cracked the cosmic egg of carbon pricing,” writes Rabe, “it is impossible to look at California’s record since auctioning began November 2012 and dismiss it as yet another carbon pricing debacle.”
Rabe goes on to describe California’s early success, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
Barry Rabe is the J. Ira and Nikki Harris Family Professor of Public Policy at the Ford School, an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, and a professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. He is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of Greenhouse Governance, Statehouse and Greenhouse, Beyond Nimby, and the forthcoming MIT Press book, Can We Price Carbon?