Labor unions bargain with employers to improve employee pay, benefits, and working conditions as well as conduct legislative lobbying. However, unions are often criticized for blocking corporate innovation and forcing workers to pay membership dues regardless of whether they agree with the union’s bargaining strategy, and, in some cases, what a union’s legislative lobbying may entail. Why do unions exist, and what difference do they make for workers and employers?

One potential strategy for mitigating climate change is shifting how Americans generate and use energy. Federal tax credits are intended to incentivize individuals and businesses to make these changes. Energy tax credits are expensive, but how much of an effect do they have? Are there other drawbacks to these programs?

As discussed in our brief on decarbonization, most strategies for reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere involve switching to power generation and transportation technologies that produce less CO2. An alternate strategy is to extract and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, referred to as sequestration. At first glance, sequestration could be an attractive option for achieving the “net zero” goal, where the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would remain constant instead of increasing. Instead of building costly new renewable energy sources, retrofitting buildings, and switching to electric vehicles, sequestration offers a way for society to continue producing and using energy largely as we do now. The primary difference is that we would have to implement enough sequestration measures to offset global CO2 emissions. The question is, is sequestration on the levels required to achieve this outcome even possible? What would it cost?