Today's Becker-Posner-Blog has some interesting comments today about Energy, the Environment, and National Security.  The two University of Chicago luminaries include Nobel-Prize-Winning economist Gary Becker and Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner - one of the priciple founders of the Law and Economics school of thought - to which the ChinaCoalWatcher subscribes in part.

Both comments suggest that if the US were to institute a carbon-tax policy it could mitigate global warming and improve certain aspects of national security - such as our dependence on foreign and politically unstable sources of petroleum.  Unfortunately, and rarely for that blog, the analysis lacks a quantitative basis to determine whether the benefits of such a policy would outweigh the costs, and in my response to Posner - I point out that without China's agreement - the entire discussion is almost certainly moot.