ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Hans-Werner Sinn’s own recommendations for addressing the green paradoxes that he had identified. Sinn states that regulated quantity constraints could reduce greenhouse gas emissions without initiating green paradox problems. Sinn’s original green paradox model was built on rising carbon taxes that provided the economic incentive to produce fossil fuels in an earlier time period of lower taxes; by reversing the model to implementing decreasing carbon taxes, the incentives work to defer fossil fuel production into future time periods. The chapter deals with a finding that green energy policies can lead to increased greenhouse emissions, but there is certainly no Hardinian “Tragedy of the Green Paradox” to speak of, that by carefully examining the complexity of the regulatory space and by keeping in mind the action-reaction systems of economic mechanisms, policymakers can hope to create new green energy policies that can fully achieve their goals of renewable and sustainable energy production.
