A Question On Cap and Trade Strategy

… our readers are pretty smart people. Here’s a question: where do proponents of cap-and-trade go now that they are forced into a new strategy?

For a long time, cap/trade advocates had an amazing advantage in that few politicians saw an immediate possibility of passing a bill, so everyone was for another doomed environmentalist ploy. And, of course, there was the fact that few people understood that such a plan was a massive tax all decked out in disguise.

Well, things are changing. Rep. John Dingell grilled Al Gore last week, noting that cap-and-trade was indeed a massive tax. And people are far less likely now to 1) believe the environment is in dire straits or 2) pay through the nose for feel-good, economically absurd carbon caps...

David Sassoon: Are Environmentalists and the Fossil Fuel Industry Calling a Truce?

For the fossil fuel industry, it's a mandated cap on carbon that will squeeze roughly 80% of current emissions from the economy by 2050; and for environmentalists, it's accepting the necessity of a still speculative technology called carbon capture and storage (CCS). Both play a prominent role in the bill. Many greens have come around to the opinion that CCS is fundamental to solving global climate change, and the fossil fuel industry realizes it needs federal help developing the technology in order to stay in business.

So at this legislative crossroads, the nation is on the verge of deciding to store vast quantities of CO2 -- not in the atmosphere any longer -- but in the Earth instead. It is something worth remarking for the sake of Earth Day 2009.