Gas tax more efficient than CAFE standards

See Americans Should Pay More for Gas, Not Less by Jinjoo Lee of The WSJ. Excerpt:

"Taxing carbon emissions or gasoline directly, as Europe does, would be far more cost-efficient. An analysis by Prof. Mark Jacobsen at the University of California, San Diego, showed that the cost per gallon saved through the fuel-economy standard is three to six times higher than a gasoline tax."

See also Taxes Show One Way to Save Fuel by Eduardo Porter in The NY Times in 2012. Excerpt:

"According to economists crunching the numbers, this makes mileage standards somewhere between 2.4 and 13 times more expensive than a gasoline tax as a tool to reduce our use of fuel. Indeed, by some calculations, raising fuel-economy standards is more costly than climate change itself.

The government has to predict how much climate change will cost us in the future — through lost agricultural productivity, poorer health, bigger hurricanes and the like — to figure out how much we should spend today. It does so through a measure called the “social cost of carbon,” which captures the added damage that will be caused by adding one more ton of CO2 into the air.

The government’s estimate of the cost to our society covers a wide range of $5 to $68 a ton and increases over time. Several economists have concluded that cutting carbon emissions via fuel-efficiency standards may be even more expensive. Adding in benefits not related to global warming — like less pollution, less reliance on foreign oil, and less time spent filling up — the mileage standards may still cost more than their benefits."

Related post:

Benjamin Zycher Of AEI On The Problems Of CAFE Standards