This excerpt originally appeared in Greenwire on July 13, 2012.

The paper, published this week by Ted Gayer, co-director of the economic studies program at Brookings, and Kip Viscusi, an economist at Vanderbilt University known for his research on cost-benefit analysis, calls for a new approach. The authors say it's important to reduce pollution from energy use that harms the public, but people shouldn't be forced to buy certain products when the costs and benefits -- more expensive products in the short run, and energy savings in the long run -- are purely private.