Carbon tax... a good idea... good timing?

In the last months analysts have been playing with the question "If oil price is so close to the historic highest records how come we haven't seen a crisis such as the ones we saw in the 1970's?" For further analysis you can take a look at this article on The Economist and also to this other one by Greg Mankiw, that also makes a very interesting observation on the efficiency of energy consumption.
Given that, what I would like to point out is that maybe the spot price is today closer than ever to a social efficient one, therefore even though in the past many of us economists would have supported a specific tax on oil to account for the carbon effect... maybe we are too late now... Furthermore, doing so now might be a wrong measure pushing towards the recession we've been successfully avoiding, so far.

Powered by ScribeFire.