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Feel-Good Environmental Regulations Won’t Save the Planet, but They Do Harm Consumers

Feel-Good Environmental Regulations Won’t Save the Planet, but They Do Harm Consumers
Steam and exhaust rise from different companies on a cold winter day in Oberhausen, Germany, on Jan. 6, 2017. Lukas Schulze/Getty Images
Nate Scherer
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Commentary
The fight against climate change is increasingly riddled with lawmakers’ feel-good attempts to save the planet by imposing top-down regulations that do nothing in the way of meaningfully reducing global temperatures or cutting pollution. However, these “feel-good” regulations have a familiar habit of harming consumers by eliminating popular goods and services or making them more expensive.
Nate Scherer
Nate Scherer
Author
Nate Scherer is a policy analyst with the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization, where he researches and writes about a diverse range of consumer issues. He previously served as a Policy Analyst at the Reason Foundation and has also worked for several other nonprofits including the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Leadership Institute. More recently, he worked as an educator for Fairfax County Public Schools and performed research for Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab. He possesses a Master of Arts in Teaching in Secondary Education, Social Studies, and has a Bachelor of Arts in Politics. He currently resides in Arlington, VA.