High gasoline prices and other economic woes have driven car-buyers in the U.S. to purchase smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles lately. Last month, sales of compact and subcompact cars made up about 20 percent of total sales; in the mid 1990s, small cars accounted for only about one in eight cars sold in the country. Sales of vehicles with four-cylinder engines also outpaced sales of six-cylinder cars. "It's easily the most dramatic segment shift I have witnessed in the market in my 31 years here," said a Ford sales analyst. Meanwhile, sales of SUVs and trucks are seeing a sharp downward …

You know we're living in strange and perverse times when ExxonMobil can post a $10.9 billion quarterly profit and still fall short of expectations. This past quarter marked the second most profitable quarter ever for the most profitable company in the history of the world -- a 17 percent increase in year-on profits. And like its competitors at BP and Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon managed to increase its profits despite no increase in production. (Funny what happens when the price of oil literally doubles.) Nevertheless, Wall Street was disappointed and the company's shares fell sharply in early trading yesterday. The …

There is passionate opposition in some circles to combining "social engineering" with fighting climate chaos. But the fact is, an emissions cut is social engineering. To cut emissions, we are trying to make some of the biggest changes in individual and social behavior ever. Putting 100 percent of that change on the backs of ordinary people by giving away emissions permits that are then sold and incorporated into the prices of consumer goods is also social engineering -- social engineering that transfers income and wealth from ordinary people to the wealthy.

The Environmental Defense Fund has struck a first-of-its-kind "green portfolio" deal with gigantic private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. The partnership plans to develop tools to measure and improve the environmental performance of KKR'S U.S. companies, with metrics including energy efficiency, greenhouse-gas emissions, water consumption, and toxic waste. KKR has more than $185 billion in revenue and owns 46 companies, including Toys "R" Us, U.S. Food Service, Sealy, Nielsen, and Energy Holdings (formerly TXU); EDF and KKR were involved in brokering a 2007 buyout of TXU that resulted in coal plants being canceled, and the transaction spurred partnership talks between …

Sean asks, "If you put a price on GHG emissions, will it raise the cost of energy?" and answers, "Mostly, no." I wish he were right, because I really dislike carbon taxes and was only gradually convinced to support them by overwhelming evidence. But pretty much every empirical study that has ever been done about sales tax and other broad-based taxes on gross revenue shows that such costs do get passed along. A fairly typical survey of such studies would be this article (PDF) in the National Tax Journal. The pass-along ranges from two-thirds of the cost (during depressions) to …

Good Jobs First held its first national conference May 7 and 8, 2008, near Baltimore. ----- "Green my job." As I track the emerging "green jobs" debate about renewable energy, energy independence, and green pathways out of poverty, I am struck by how disconnected it seems from progressive tax policy. There are some large "policy forks in the road" being taken, although environmentalists seem unaware they are making choices. As an antidote, I offer two observations and a trial balloon. Observation #1: Some new energy proposals are corporate copycat Some green-jobs policy proposals call for new economic development subsidies to promote the construction …

If you put a price on GHG emissions, will it raise the cost of energy? That question goes to the core of carbon policy. Unfortunately, many people inside and outside the environmental community consistently get it wrong, with potentially disastrous results. Consider: if the answer is yes, then we don't need any incentives for GHG reduction. The costs of carbon-intensive energy will rise, giving we energy users the incentive they need to lower consumption. But if the answer is no, we will find ourselves with a tax on dirty energy but no incentive to reduce its use. That is, we …

Food prices hitting you hard in the pocketbook? Agriculture giant Archer Daniels Midland feels for you, it really does -- but gee, its profits jumped 42 percent this quarter, so it can't really empathize. ADM's grain-processing division is doing lively business keeping up with the bumper corn crop. And, they'll have you know, high food prices are due to high oil prices, not to the ethanol push. Backing away from biofuels would be "foolish," "dangerous," and an "empty gesture," says ADM CEO Patricia Woertz, adding, "It won't fill anyone's stomach. It won't fill anyone's gas tank." It won't fill ADM's …

Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps has filed a lawsuit accusing competitors in the personal-care industry of falsely advertising products as organic. The word "organic" is not federally regulated for personal-care products. Dr. Bronner's, the soap company known for its basic ingredients and rambling messages, voluntarily follows the USDA organic standard for food, which requires 95 percent organic ingredients and no synthetics or petrochemicals. Personal-care companies are technically free to use the word "organic" without meeting any guidelines, though some meet voluntary standards set by California, and 30 cosmetics companies have come up with their own standard. "The last we know, Bronner …

It is fine and necessary to put a price on carbon, via either a carbon tax or 100 percent auctioned cap-and-trade permits. But in the latter case, when those permits are not sold directly to polluters but are released into a secondary market (either via auctioning or, worse, via giveaways), those markets tend to prioritize maintaining their own existence over reducing emissions. In short, a price is fine; an actual market is not. Part of this is that creating such markets creates a whole new set of lobbyists, the carbon traders, who do not exist to reduce emissions, but to …