The new conservative dogma: cap and trade = massive new tax increase on businesses. And unfortunately, Kevin's article admits as much.

for a brief trip down memory lane, see the discussion of "environment as property" in Krugman's old "looking back from the future" piece in the Times magazine. Other parts are interesting too

http://www.pkarchive.org/theory/backwrd2.html

Superman —
Allergic to a rainbow of Krypton

"Conservatives" !
Allergic to Thought and Poisoned by truth .
"Conservatives" !
The R. M. Renfield of the limp neo con aristocrat artists .

Climate change and any required action is a very hard thing for them to concede. Here's George Lakoff the other day:

Conservatives tend to think in terms of direct causation. The overwhelming moral value of individual, not social, responsibility requires that causation be local and direct. For each individual to be entirely responsible for the consequences of his or her actions, those actions must be the direct causes of those consequences. If systemic causation is real, then the most fundamental of conservative moral—and economic—values is fallacious.

Global ecology and global economics are prime examples of systemic causation. Global warming is fundamentally a system phenomenon. That is why the very idea threatens conservative thinking. And the global economic collapse is also systemic in nature. That is at the heart of the death of the conservative principle of the laissez-faire free market, where individual short-term self-interest was supposed to be natural, moral, and the best for everybody. The reality of systemic causation has left conservatism without any real ideas to address global warming and the global economic crisis.

They've spent their whole careers trying to keep technocrats as far away from the levers of power as possible. So this is really a problem for them.

By the way, the people to their right, like George Will? They're either conspiracy theorists (scientists have the game rigged) or they're making a calculated Straussians gamble (ie, lying). And his editor at the Washington Post is perfectly willing to let him do it.

(Sorry, some pronoun confusion in there, but you get my point...)

Conservatives do not agree that there is an environment problem, nor do they agree that carbon is an externality. If they do agree that it is an externality, they assign a very low pricetag to it, and then protest that the money can't go to the government anyway as they will misuse the funds.

So this is the strange world they live in.

A cap and trade would only be agreeable to economic conservatives if the externality was price correctly and if the revenue was redistributed fairly amongst businesses (as say a corporate tax reduction or income tax reduction).
Instead cap and trade is little more than a progressive tax on something liberals don't like with all the revenue used to buy votes.

But why are we (conservatives and progressives) ignoring the international trade implications of cap and trade? A 28$ per ton tax on US carbon is like placing a duty on all goods produced in the US. Domestic jobs will be lost and Republicans better make sure the democrats take all the credit.

If you wish to meaningfully reduce carbon emissions, there is no solution....NONE....that doesn't involve the cooperation of China and India and a few others.

But I believe most know that. They do not measure the success of a program as to whether it actually accomplished the goal. Instead, they measure it by 'good intentions' as is done with the war on poverty. Trillions spent since LBJ and little to show for it.

Carbon emission control will be similarly ineffective and expensive. It will accomplish nothing.

El is right--India and China have to be on board. But if we do not lead, if we instead take the attitude of "we got ours (being rapid economic growth based on cheap carbon) now screw you", then we have no hope of getting India and China to move in the right direction vs repeat our mistakes.

Council of despair much, El Viajero?

What's needed to solve the problem is what Steven Chu called "giving the problem to the engineers instead of the lobbyists." If we don't lead, why should China and India do anything? If we don't lead, we gain no leverage in international negotiations.

Also, this is everyone's problem. Everyone has an interest in solving it.

El is right--India and China have to be on board. But if we do not lead, if we instead take the attitude of "we got ours (being rapid economic growth based on cheap carbon) now screw you", then we have no hope of getting India and China to move in the right direction vs repeat our mistakes.

India and China are interested in getting theirs. They aren't interested in learning a moral lesson from us.
Really, it's like saying "We can only teach them that winning isn't everything by running this race really slowly. They are sure to slow down, too!"

"India and China are interested in getting theirs."

They certainly will if they have no more fresh water due to the disappearance of mountain snow and ice.

Hold your horses, gordon gekk.

A cap and trade would only be agreeable to economic conservatives if the externality was price correctly and if the revenue was redistributed fairly amongst businesses (as say a corporate tax reduction or income tax reduction).
Instead cap and trade is little more than a progressive tax on something liberals don't like with all the revenue used to buy votes.

Cap-and-trade is precisely the mechanism by which you allow the market to reveal the correct price of the externality. That's one of its merits over a carbon tax. A carbon tax is unlikely to be set to the "right price," and politics means it will almost inevitably be set too low. (Politics mucks up cap-and-trade too, which is why Europe's scheme is largely a bungle. Too many permits and, importantly, free distribution. Free distribution largely undermines the internalization effort. And internalizing is the whole point of either a tax or a cap-and-trade.) With cap-and-trade, revenue is redistributed among businesses. The businesses that cut their carbon emissions relatively more end up capturing money from the businesses that fail to do so. Every business has the same choice before them, and at the same price: the clearing price of the initial permit auction. I'm not sure how much more fair you can get.

Also, Ezra, not only does Frum seem to get it wrong about the existence of revenues from shrinking emissions, but the quantity of those revenues could well hold steady or even rise as emissions go down. Fewer emission permits means each permit is that much more valuable, at least until (and if) some major shift in cost-effective technology makes cutting emissions cheaper than the cost of the previous year's permits.

With the economy is the shitter, the timing could not be worse for increasing the costs of struggling American businesses.

It's the last thing this economy needs.