Leading climate economists who support putting a price on carbon, including William Nordhaus and Robert Stavins, have criticized the pope for supposedly opposing or ignoring carbon taxes and/or carbon pricing.
I have long thought that some people were misreading and overemphasizing one paragraph in the encyclical at the expense of others that are clearly supportive of carbon pricing. This week I was able to get some insight from economist and longtime Vatican observer, Anthony Annett, a 15-year veteran of the International Monetary Fund who is a climate change and sustainable development advisor at Columbia’s Earth Institute and Religions for Peace.
Annett worked with the Vatican in the run-up to the encyclical. In April, he helped organize a Vatican event on climate change co-sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. And he co-authored detailed remarks on business and market insights and implications of the Encyclical delivered at the Vatican press conference for the encyclical, named Laudato Si’.
“My view is that Nordhaus misinterpreted the encyclical,” Annett told me. “First, the pope is criticizing the potential abuse of carbon credits, not ruling them out completely. Second, the pope says nothing explicitly about carbon taxes. And later on he says that business must bear the full social cost of its activity — which really implies putting a price on carbon.”
Read more at Yes, the Pope Supports a Carbon Price. Economists Just ‘Misinterpreted the Encyclical.’
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