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The Case Against Green Central Banking

The fact that central banks could use their limited policy tools to pursue climate targets does not mean that they should. There are far more effective climate measures available to fiscal policymakers and regulators, and central bankers already have enough on their plates.

NEW YORK – One way or another, central banks’ behavior will have to change with the climate. But it should evolve only because climate change will create new constraints and drive new forms of public and private economic activity. Central banks’ primary function should not change, nor should they adopt “green” targets that could undermine the pursuit of their traditional objectives: financial stability and price stability (which in the United States is a dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment).

Climate change will be a defining global issue for decades to come, because we are still a very long way from ushering in a low-carbon, climate-resilient world. Three features of our greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions will impede the appropriate response. First, the benefits (cheap energy) are enjoyed in the present while the costs (global warming) are incurred in the future. Second, the benefits are “local” (they accrue to the GHG emitter) while the costs are global – a classic externality. Third, the most efficient methods of limiting GHG emissions impose disproportionate burdens on developing countries, while the task of compensating poor countries remains politically fraught.

The most efficient way to address climate-change externalities is through targeted fiscal and regulatory measures. Pigouvian taxes or tradable quotas would create the right incentives for reducing GHG emissions. Carbon taxes, as advocated by William D. Nordhaus of Yale University, must become the global norm (though it is difficult to envisage a global carbon tax working without a significant transfer of wealth from developed to developing countries). Rules and regulations targeting energy use and emissions can complement green taxes and quotas, and public spending can support research and development in the green technologies that we will need.

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