With Clean-Energy Default Rules, It's Easy Being Green

Last month, President Obama proposed a federal investment of $2 billion during the next decade for research on alternative sources of fuel for cars, trucks, and buses. The move is laudable, but the administration is undoubtedly aware that a commitment of this kind won’t do what needs to be done to combat serious environmental problems, including climate change. Significant progress in reducing greenhouse gases will remain difficult to achieve as long as clean sources of energy are more expensive than the dirty kind.

In the last five years, energy consumption in the U.S. has fallen significantly and carbon emissions have dropped by more than 10 percent. These developments have been driven by a number of factors, including an unanticipated boom in natural gas production, a sluggish economy, and tougher fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles. But the U.S., the world’s largest economy and second-biggest source of carbon emissions (after China), can do more. Some of the most widely discussed proposals for increasing clean energy use, such as a carbon tax, face resistance in Congress, not least because the economy continues to struggle and costly regulatory requirements are rightly subject to careful legislative scrutiny.