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For years the very idea of a carbon tax has been toxic in the US – a sure way to ignite the full fury of the far-right, Tea Party, weirdos who equate such a thing with socialism and a UN plot to take our sovereignty, and almost every elected Republican in the land. That is deader'n dead on arrival in our present super-majority governmental setup. A cap and trade market for carbon credits, since it had a Republican lineage dating back to the fix for acid rain, has been the limit of the politically possible. Lately, and we'll get to a media roundup in a bit, policy makers and policy wonks of many stripes are talking up the carbon tax almost as though it is a shiny new idea, as a way to transform society and energy consumption via the market pressure auto-pilot but without the fiendish complexity and easy-sabotage (ie gaming) of cap and trade systems.The warming mood toward it is even substantially bipartisan. News writers are noticing. A few have helped to shape the debate.
Before a look at a selection of news stories out right now here's a salute to two news pieces earlier this year that stick out (in my mind) as pivotal in this shift in public conversation.
- Rolling Stone (July 19) Bill McKibben: Global Warming's Terrifying New Math; Tons of people read this. As of this morning it has 5391 comments. After scaring the bejesus out of you (or if you're of a suspicious and reactionary nature, throughly pissing you off), and painting the fossil fuel industry as satanic in effect if not intent, it embraces a carbon tax as a good step away from a future resembling hell.
- AP (November 13) Seth Borenstein : Global warming talk heats up, revisits carbon tax ; A roundup of warming politics, somewhat along the line suggested in this post's opening theme. It includes a quote that is priceless and perfectly sums up the transformation of the carbon tax's political currency. It's from a Republican, former South Carolina Representative Bob Inglis: "I think the impossible may be moving to the inevitable without ever passing through the probable." Perhaps other reporters heard him say this and passed it on, too, but the AP story had enormous pickup and sent it almost everywhere. Inglis, Borenstein's story noted, was booted by his constituentstwo years ago in part because he does not doubt the existence of global warming that we did and must fix. Inglis now heads a group promoting a carbon tax, theprivate enterprise-oriented Energy & Enterprise Initiative.
McKibben is as much agitator as veteran environmental writer and is exceedingly well informed. His piece seems to violate nothing that such outfits as the National Academy of Sciences or IPCC say about the reality of climate change. It adds a fresh synthesis of global fossil fuel marketing and industrial statistics to make his case for explicitly demonizing said industry as something so awful society needs to shut it down ASAP.
And Borenstein's is a good look as of about a month ago at the rising respect given a carbon tax as imaginable US (and global) policy. The Inglis line is the icing on a cake – a rare instance of a quote that pulls its own weight. It says something about as clear, pithy, and original as anything a skilled reporter could write him or herself. The words, and their source, really tell.
I cannot be sure whether any specific news story or policy development drove the spike in the carbon tax's plausibility. But something sure did. Here are just some samples from a search this morning:
- SF Chronicle – David R. Baker: California faces carbon conundrum ; a good analysis of the box California's recent startup of a cap and trade program puts the state in should a carbon tax fad starts sweeping the nation. One should not try to do both at the same time, it says here.
- CNN – David Frum: A tax we could learn to love ; The tax part is appended to a good roundup of recent meteorology that makes this pill easier to swallow. Or as he puts it, "Take three worrying long-term challenges …combine them into one, and suddently three tough problems become one attractive solution." That being the carbon tax.
- ABC (Autralia) – Karon Snowden: US carbon tax would boost chances of global cllimate agreement ; Filed from Doha IPCC meeting. Audio recording, from radio broadcast, of interview with a Brookings Institution analyst.
- Christian Science Monitor – Elias Hinckley: Carbon tax: It's not coming soon ; By 'soon' reporter Hinckley means in time to be part of any package in DC that keep the US from falling off the sequestration known as The Fiscal Cliff. The story also says it would be a good idea if somehow a carbon tax did get enacted soon.
- New Yorker – Elizabeth Kolbert: Paying for It ; Where we get a detailed etiology of the economics term "Pigovian."
- Washington Post (op-ed) Jamelle Bouie: Why conservatives should want a carbon tax ;
- McClatchy Newspapers via Kansas City Star – Kevin G. Hall: Carbon Tax: The idea no leader proposes but that won't die ;
- Forbes – Tim Worstell: Is America Getting Ready For A Carbon Tax? ; A story that is in response to the next one down..
- The Observer (UK) Henry Porter: America's carbon tax offers a lesson to the rest of the planet on fighting climate change ; But as it says in the story, the refrenced "America's carbon tax" is not a done deal yet. This, it would seem, is to put it mildly.
- ..and in the dept. of don't hold your breath: The Hill Energy & Environment blog – Ben German: GOP lawmakers float resolution to keep carbon tax grounded;
Grist for the Mill: Center for American Progress – Richard W. Caperton issue statement: A Progressive Carbon Tax Will Fight Climate Change and Stimulate the Economy; Brookings Instition Barry Rabe blog: The Political Viability of Carbon Taxation.
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