Friday, July 02, 2010

Ken Rogoff thinks the BP spill might produce a groundswell for a carbon tax...

...but Mark Thoma is not so sure [Rogoff's take is here].

I am actually more inclined to agree with Rogoff on this one. When environmental problems are easily visible, they seem to generate political consensus for action. The air quality in Los Angeles, which was obviously awful 30 years ago, is much better currently--the vast majority of days are quite clear now(although we still have the problem of invisible small particulates). The 1952 smog disaster led to major policy changes in the UK. The BP disaster could similarly mobilize policy.

Mark could still be right about this--I just hope he is not.

2 comments:

Cathy Mena said...

First, I would think that gambling habits would be a good underwriting variable for predicting mortgage default. If lenders could know whether someone gambled more than one percent of their annual income in casinos, at the race track. real estate

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