The U.S. Senate is girding for battle over greenhouse gas control bills, and legions of diplomats are preparing to assemble in Copenhagen to debate a new accord on climate change to replace the Kyoto Protocol. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency grinds relentlessly forward in its plans to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. None of the options being considered resembles the simple carbon tax proposals deemed by economists to be the least expensive method of controlling greenhouse gas emissions. Why? What is causing reformers to tackle the most expensive environmental task ever attempted with policies known to cost far more than necessary? Will the result do much to help the environment?

Answering these and other questions and discussing their paper "Political Institutions and Greenhouse Gas Controls" will be Lee Lane, AEI resident fellow and codirector of AEI’s Geoengineering Project, and former Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reviewer W. David Montgomery, vice president of Charles River Associates. John Joseph Wallis, professor of economics at the University of Maryland, and international economics professor Peter S. Heller, a former deputy director of the Fiscal Affairs Department at the International Monetary Fund, will respond. Kevin A. Hassett, director of economic policy studies at AEI, will moderate.