A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

There is a way to bring about some kind of consensus on environmental policy that transcends partisan divides. It is to implement a smart carbon tax proposal. A carbon tax is preferable to cap-and-trade schemes that will only serve to pass down costs to consumers after a retrofitting is complete or carbon offsets, which are frauds, pure and simple.

Increasingly, we are seeing that libertarians and small-government conservatives are prepared to deal in negotiating a smart carbon tax in order to take on carbon emissions to the extent that emissions represent a negative externality. Bob Inglis and Art Laffer (he of the Laffer Curve, of course) have proposed a carbon tax with payroll tax offsets. The laudably free market Adam Smith Institute agrees that the implementation of a carbon tax that is revenue neutral would be a good idea as well.

I continue to hold to my favored carbon tax proposal. But we can negotiate the specifics of the eventual carbon tax. The good thing is that more and more people are realizing that the carbon tax can serve as a good policy idea in its own right. And it can help head off the lousy carbon offset and cap-and-trade schemes that all too many politicians are seeking to push on a largely unsuspecting public