From DAVID PEARCE
One can only cringe at Julian Rose’s review of Victor Anderson’s Energy
Efficiency Policies (12 June). If either Rose or, worse, Anderson, really
believe that environmental taxes, of which a carbon tax is but one
instance, constitute a ‘new economics’ they are guilty of gross
misrepresentation and neglect of economics as a discipline.
The idea of correcting environmental problems through price measures has
long been part of orthodox economics. I wrote an undergraduate textbook on
the subject in the 1970s when it was already commonplace to teach such
ideas, the origins of which go back at least to Arthur Pigou’s Economics of
Welfare first published in 1920. Julian Rose’s review also reveals
ignorance: carbon taxes actually exist in several countries, and no UN body
(one imagines Rose is referring to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change) has ever recommended a 60 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions.
Shouldn’t ‘new economists’ find out what old economics says first? And
shouldn’t ‘science writers’ stick to science?
David Pearce
CSERGE
University College London
