Climate-Change Policy and CO2 Emissions from Passenger Vehicles. Economic and Budget Issue Brief

摘要

Human activities are producing increasingly large quantities of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2), and their accumulation in the atmosphere is expected to affect the climate throughout the world. This Congressional Budget Office issue brief examines the role of passenger vehicles (cars and light trucks) in the U.S. effort to curb those emissions. In particular, the brief looks at how putting a price on CO2 emissions for example, through a cap-and-trade system would affect gasoline prices and, as a consequence, vehicle emissions. Charging a price for CO2 emissions would raise the price of gasoline, but that increase and the resulting decrease in vehicle emissions would be relatively small.Most of the reduction in CO2 emissions would occur in other sectors.