Why would the Obama administration allow new drilling in U.S. coastal areas, and what will it mean for greenhouse gas reductions? My colleague Frank Ackerman has a posting on the TripleCrisis blog today on off-shore drilling, peak oil, and how they relate to a carbon tax:

Solving our energy problems, without a change in direction, will lead to increasingly costly and environmentally destructive production – either deep offshore, or deep in the rocks below existing communities and watersheds. We need a tax (or a fee resulting from an allowance system) on energy, to keep the cost to consumers high enough to encourage conservation, while holding the price for producers low enough to discourage the pursuit of the worst fossil fuel deposits.

This is another way in which the distributional consequences of carbon permit giveaways (i.e., who gets the revenue – see Alejandro Reuss’ Public Goods posting from earlier this week) differ from those of permit auctions. A cap and trade system will increase the price of oil exploration only if businesses have to pay for their permits; if permits are given to the largest polluters for free, there will be no incentive to limit fossil fuel extraction from areas where underground reserves are not very rich and the environmental consequences of extraction are enormous.