Bob Novak is an institution. He’s earned his reporting stripes and his conservative credentials, even as he’s earned a certain dismissiveness from younger mainstream reporters in Washington. Today, I’ve got a bone to pick with the PoD.
Today Novak creams Gov. Mike Huckabee and takes a moment to attack cap and trade. I’m not here on Terra Rossa to take sides in the presidential race, but I do take issue with Novak’s implication that free marketeers can’t support cap and trade.
Look, if you believe that something aggressive needs to be done about greenhouse gas pollution — and more and more conservatives like myself do — then cap and trade will let our economy respond to a series of market signals that are currently distorted by all manner of governmental subsidies and historical practices. Ignore these signals for much longer and we’ll have a much tougher time getting the greenhouse gas pollution reductions needed to stop climate change.
Some conservative conservationists are less enamored than I am with cap & trade’s proven efficacy, and favor new carbon taxes, as pointed out in Sebastian Mallaby’s Washington Post column.
As a policy matter, I don’t support efforts that seek to recognize the cost of carbon emissions by funnelling untold millions into the US Treasury, even (or especially) if it’s to be divvied up and handed out as new subsidies.
These policy implications should be all that counts…but you could also look at it as a political matter, and I can’t support efforts to collect these taxes even if the proceeds fund other tax cuts.
This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 4:22 pm and is filed under Cap and Trade, Politics/Government . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
