Aug. 26-30, 2022.

Opinion by Mathew Carr, CarrZee: It isn’t wrong to make polluters pay for the damage they cause.

That is what economists have been saying the governments around the world should ensure happens.

This story excuses bad political leadership, by focussing on economists as villians rather than the real culprits — governments.

The NYT should be ashamed it publishes such nonsense.

Every climate policy has an implied carbon price. The policy that saves the climate at the lowest carbon price wins. This is what economists have been telling governments for years.

Yes economists can help to find the policies that will work, politically.

But the NYT should not hide the culprit who is making the choices here — the governments. Specifically, successive USA governments.

Hiding the true cost of carbon saved in complicated tax-credit systems, which is what the USA is doing, is inefficient and stupid.

That’s not the economists choice. That’s the government’s choice (ultimately the electorate’s choice because the electorate votes the government in).

Plus, polluters continue to pollute largely for free.

It is ultimately reckless and dangerous from a country (the USA) with 4% of the world’s population that is most to blame for global climate change.

The NYT needs to take a look at its news sense and focus on what truely matters — why politicians in the U.S. can’t or refuse to choose policy that works efficiently amid a global climate negotiation that requires them to move first (not last).

www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/business/economy/economy-climate-change.html

Updated Aug. 30 to make more clear.