Two surprising and valid new points of view to highlight today…
First, the American Enterprise Institute’s David Frum has written a new book advising how we conservatives can apply our principles to today’s issues. I haven’t yet read David’s book, but an excerpt recently appeared on AEI’s website under the title “The Conservative Case for Going Green.”
“A new Republican party’s first energy priority must be: Lead the world to consume less oil and gas,” David writes. “Oil is a globally traded commodity. There is one world oil market, one world price. If Iran uses its oil revenues to underwrite a nuclear program, what does it matter whether those revenues are denominated in dollars, euros or yen? If Osama bin Laden were to seize control of the Saudi state, would it console us that comparatively little of his oil wealth derived from U.S. sources?”
Bingo.
But…while I agree completely with David on reducing oil dependence and leading the rest of the world, I think he’s wrong about the solution.
A carbon tax is just another form of government control over the marketplace. And despite everyone’s assurances (including David’s) no one has yet to convince me that the dollars flowing into Washington from such a tax won’t be used for more government spending. A better solution is a market-based cap and trade policy that lets business and consumers pick the clean-energy alternatives that will replace oil, coal and gas. That’s the real conservative solution, right?
Second, while we’re on the global implications of climate change, check this out to see how it is increasingly impacting our military forces in Africa. And add National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell to the growing list of US national security leaders who have warned about the threats of climate change. In a profile in the current New Yorker McConnell is asked about Al Qaeda. He goes farther than I would in downplaying the terrorist threat, but I can’t help but take notice when a Bush-appointed intelligence guru says, “There are national security ramifications to global warming.”
This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 16th, 2008 at 9:58 am and is filed under Cap and Trade, Climate Change, National Security, Oil and Gas . 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.
January 16th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
How is the real conservative solution intrusive government regulation instead of intrusive government taxation? What is the difference from an ideological perspective between the two? Both are “another form of government control over the marketplace.”
For a conservative, one reason a tax is preferable to a cap-and-trade system is because a tax is transparent. People know exactly how much the government is charging them. Also a tax is explicitly from the government. That’s not the case with cap and trade. Cap and trade forces private parties to pass on the costs, obscuring the costs of the program.
There is no such thing as a “market-based cap and trade policy” because government has to set the cap and allocate the allowances. That isn’t a market transaction and is more fraught with danger of political favoritism and abuse than a tax is.
Both cap and trade and taxes are “just another form of government control over the marketplace.” I can’t see how you can argue that cap and trade is the “real conservative solution.”
January 21st, 2008 at 1:45 pm
[...] week a Terra Rossa reader wondered how I could think cap and trade is a better – and more conservative – solution to climate [...]