Talk:The Economics of Global Warming Reduction

I'm not desperately happy with the text on this page. Whether taxes to prevent GW would help or hinder economies is a massive argument: you can't get away with saying "its not true" so baldly. William M. Connolley 22:22, 4 November 2005 (UTC).

It would be helpful if you were to point out where the optimal tariff argument (also known as the Terms of Trade argument) is wrong or provide cites contradicting the argument. It has been around for a long time, at least since Robert Torrens (1844). 

Your question is whether taxes would help the economies of oil importing nations. The answer as given by the optimal tariff argument is quite clear, it would. I understand that this is difficult to believe given widely existing but in discussions with economists I have never found it to be contradicted. Maybe we need the opinions of some other economists in this discussion.

I should point out that the argument is not that taxes would help all economies per se. They would help the economies of oil-importing countries at the expense of the economies of oil-exporting countries. A tax would transfer money from the Saudi government to the US consumer, this is standard economic analysis. It would also help reduce GW along the way. Now the Saudi government would not be happy with this tax, but it is not in their power to decide whether the US government imposes it.

Jayanta Sen 22:36, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

As for merging this article with "Mitigation of Global Warming", that would be okay with me. Jayanta Sen 22:58, 4 November 2005 (UTC)