Robert Samuelson is a smart guy. I enjoy reading his columns because they’re straightforward – he’s a “just the facts, ma’am” kind of writer. I don’t always agree with him, but his columns make me think. I like that.
Samuelson rightly suggests his colleagues should take the same approach. See his latest piece in the Aug. 20 issue of Newsweek in which he criticizes those in the media (Newsweek, in particular) who simplistically attack climate change’s most hardened skeptics. Better to focus on the hard questions of what to do about climate change, he says. Those are wise words.
Where Samuelson and I part ways is his thinking on potential climate change solutions. He supports a gas tax and more R&D, among other things – frequent readers here know that I don’t think more taxing and spending is the way to go.
But in a broader sense Samuelson is disappointingly pessimistic, believing any steps we could take now would be futile because “…the overriding reality seems almost un-American: we simply don’t have a solution for this problem.”
Actually, we do have a most American solution for reducing carbon emissions within our grasp, one originally conceived by George Schulz and successfully implemented by President George H. W. Bush to reduce acid-rain emissions at a mere 10 percent the cost of industry estimates: cap-and-trade. It would use the marketplace to slow emissions right now and inspire development of new clean-energy technologies that will actually reduce emissions tomorrow. In the process it would reduce our dependence on foreign oil, improve our global economic competitiveness and reputation as a technology innovator, and open new markets for America’s farmers to make money.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Cap and Trade, Climate Change . 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.
