Kelly McParland: Carbon reduction needs to be protected from its friends - Full Comment

Now, however, they find that the president's cap-and-trade plan would be used as a mammoth revenue-raising machine to help pay for the administration's ambitious social reform plans.

"It's opened eyes to the fact that this is about a social welfare transfer system, not about climate," says William Kovacs, a vice-president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Sound familiar?

One of numerous reasons Canadians failed to embrace Stephane Dion's grand plan for the environment was the realization that it was largely a Trojan horse aimed at taxing energy to pay for Liberal social welfare plans. Mr. Dion probably doomed the scheme the moment he linked it to "poverty reduction," making it clear that he saw climate change as a revenue-generator for a sharp shift to the left in the Canadian economy.

Dispatch from the world inhabited by Dave Burdick: Climate Deniers Gather In Times Square

But Klaus and the others at the conference are being abandoned and questioned by others who only last year would have stood beside them. The New York Times' Andrew Revkin points out a wide variety of reasons that the conference is a bit weaker than usual, including the fact that not even Exxon wants to sponsor it now...