Market incentives probably would reduce any serious harm from global warming more effectively than mandatory reductions of greenhouse gases. But although creating global markets for permits to emit carbon dioxide would cut the cost of emissions reduction, those whose interests are attached to government control strenuously oppose such markets.

J. R. Clark is the Scott Probasco Professor in Private Enterprise at the University of Tennessee.
Dwight R. Lee is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and Affiliated Visiting Faculty Fellow in the Institute for the Study of Political Economy in the Miller College of Business at Ball State University.
EnergyEnergy and the EnvironmentEnvironmental Law and Regulation
Other Independent Review articles by J. R. Clark
Summer 2022 Academic Entrepreneurship in Sometimes Hostile Environments: James Buchanan and the Virginia School of Political Economy
Fall 2011 Shrinking Leviathan: Can the Interaction Between Interests and Ideology Slice Both Ways?
Spring 2005 Economic Freedom in the World, 2002
Other Independent Review articles by Dwight R. Lee
Summer 2023 Fiscal Recklessness, Path Dependence, and Expressive Voting
Summer 2019 The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy
Spring 2019 The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture
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