President Biden is seeking an unprecedented level of U.S. reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. A surprising twist: His administration and others are shying away from one of the biggest potential tools for doing that.

During his first months in office, President Joe Biden has pushed an unprecedentedly aggressive climate agenda, rejoining a global treaty, firing off executive orders, and proposing billions of dollars for transitioning toward a clean energy economy.

But one policy has been notably missing from the president’s plans. And it happens to be the one that economists around the world say is the most straightforward way to curb emissions and fight climate change.

This is the carbon tax – or “carbon pricing,” as supporters prefer to call it. The idea is to let markets do the transformative work: When a fee or tax is assigned to carbon emissions, then those who produce or use fossil fuels feel an incentive to produce or burn less. 

The absence of carbon pricing in the president’s proposals, scholars say, highlights the roadblocks in the American political system for major environmental action. It also raises questions about the possibility for bipartisan compromise when it comes to curbing global warming, at a time when environmentalists are worrying that the president’s climate initiatives will get dropped from any infrastructure bill in favor of across-the-aisle dealmaking. 

“One of my takeaways from this is that any climate policy in the U.S. is hard,” says Barry Rabe, professor of environmental policy at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and the author of the book “Can We Price Carbon?”

“It’s why we’ve really struggled with this for more than 30 years,” he says.