5 US Nobel Prize winners defend aviation climate regulations

Five American Nobel Prize winning economists wrote a letter to President Obama this week urging him to drop his opposition to EU policies that would charge airlines for climate pollution. The letter will be delivered on Wednesday, according to Reuters.

The letter written by the Nobel Prize winners and 21 other American economists, reads in part:

“We implore you to support the European Union’s innovative efforts to place a price on carbon from aviation through the emissions trading system (EU ETS), or, at the very least, to stop actively opposing these efforts…Today the U.S. is leading a coalition of unwilling countries on a course of refusing to price this risk in the commercial aviation sector…Rather than opposing the EU, we urge your administration to support their efforts to price carbon in the context of the ICAO.” (via)

The Nobel prize winners standing up for regulating aviation pollution are:

• Kenneth Arrow (Stanford)
• William Sharpe (Stanford)
• Eric Maskin (Harvard)
• Thomas Sargent (NYU)
• Christopher Sims (Princeton)

Read more:

• Nobel economists urge Obama: back EU carbon limits (Reuters)