Professor Gabor, of UWE Bristol (probably better known to our demographic as the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College) wants to tell us that this idea of a carbon price, a suitably altered market price as the solution to climate change, simply can’t be suffered. For to do so limits the ability of government to exercise its power and we cannot be having with that now, can we?

It reduces democratic government action to higher carbon taxes,

What horrors. What’s the point of all the clever people being in government if that’s all they get to do? Even though she admits that the carbon tax would actually work:

The numbers behind private green investment seem to add up

At which point we’d suggest bothering to read the source material, which here is the Stern Review. In which the point is very strongly made that we want to use the carbon tax, not that exercise of detailed planning along those democratic lines.

Because markets are more efficient at the allocation of economic resources than the state, government or even democracy. There then being another point that an economist should be able to grasp. Humans do less of things that are more expensive, more of those that are cheaper. So, to deal with climate change we want to be efficient. The logic being that if we do things the more efficient, cheaper, way then we’ll do more dealing with climate change. If we do it the more expensive, government planning, way then we’ll do less of it. Just because that’s the way humans operate.

Assuming that anything needs to be done about climate change the answer is the carbon tax. Because that’s how we do more about climate change.