Larry Kudlow of National Review seems to think that John McCain has dropped his support for cap-and-trade, after reading the Republican candidate's policy pamphlet [PDF] on "Jobs for America," released this week. Kudlow notes that the document includes no mention of cap-and-trade, though there is a portion titled "Cheap, Clean, Secure Energy for America: The Lexington Project." He writes:
So I picked up the phone and dialed a senior McCain official to make sure these old eyes hadn't missed it. Sure enough, on deep background, this senior McCain advisor told me I was correct: no cap-and-trade. In other words, this central-planning, regulatory, tax-and-spend disaster, which did not appear in Mac's two recent speeches, has been eradicated entirely -- even from the detailed policy document that hardly anybody will ever read.
Marc Ambinder called up Jill Hazelbaker, McCain's communications director, to inquire. She said that the idea that McCain is abandoning his support for cap-and-trade "totally false."
Kudlow is not exactly one of the conservative movement's more sober, trusted voices. Perhaps this is just wishful thinking on his part?
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Comments
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Paleocon Posted 11:37 am
09 Jul 2008
It is about transferring wealth in the spirit of "oil for food". The wealth will no doubt flow across the desks of countless "Directors of Climate Policy" creating a lot of rich progressives while all the while the cost of energy will continue to rise.
Directors of Climate Policy have no interest in increasing the standard of living of anyone but themselves.
Often misunderestimated
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:50 pm
09 Jul 2008
Or maybe just toss it all into paying off the gigantic federal debt Bush/Bush/Reagan got us.
Really it doesn't matter.
_
What really matters is the pigovian effect.
Or put another way, the important part is correcting the market failure to include the cost of carbon into the operating cost of fossil power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax
"Market failures" such as these are largely one of the huge major reasons we have government in the first place.
Because currently the market price of fossil energy does not reflect the damage caused by green house gases.
Once it does, the market should represent a more realistic price, and other new technologies should be able to easily out-compete existing ones.
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Paleocon Posted 9:37 am
10 Jul 2008
Ironic that AGW Fundamentalists in the "hard science" community turn to the "science" that belongs on the Humanities side of campus for support.
Even more ironic is the fact that I was educated in Economics where Pigou was a fellow.
Before gigo was a word, he expressed the concept that calculating externalities was only possible with hard data.
If AGW Fundamentalists were not so blinded by religious zeal, they would focus on external costs like OPEC THREATENING THE WORLD OVER IRAN and accomplish the very same goal.
Often misunderestimated
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Paleocon Posted 9:38 am
10 Jul 2008
Thanks
Often misunderestimated
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