In his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush proposed new policies to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions thought to cause global warming. Recent AEI research offers better ways to address the issue of climate change. In Strategic Options for Bush Administration Climate Policy (AEI Press, 2006), author Lee Lane argues against the adoption of Kyoto Protocol-style agreements and calls for a focus on new research and development.

Kyoto calls for “cap-and-trade” programs to curb global climate change. Lane contends that these are expensive and ineffective ways to approach the problem. To ward off future calls for greenhouse gas abatement programs like Kyoto, the Bush administration must take a different route, he argues. Lane suggests that more realistic policies, such as the enactment of a “modest and carefully structured carbon tax,” would do more than current proposals. He also argues for a reorganization of “climate-related research and development” programs at home and abroad in order to find lasting solutions.

While cap-and-trade policies may again be rising in popularity, Lane argues that they do not serve the environment as well as their advocates claim and that they waste valuable resources that could be used to produce new clean-energy technologies. Lane calls on the administration to pursue “an effective conservative approach to climate change” because the policies set in place now could represent “one of George W. Bush’s most important policy changes.”

Lane and AEI’s Samuel Thernstrom also addressed these issues in a January Environmental Policy Outlook, discussing President Bush’s climate policy proposals in the State of the Union address and calling for a substantial government research program and a carbon tax. Other AEI scholars who have written on this subject recently include Kenneth P. Green, Steven F. Hayward, and adjunct fellow Anne Applebaum.

For more information about this book, visit www.aei.org/book866/. To read Lane and Thernstrom’s Environmental Policy Outlook, visit www.aei.org/publication25481/.