Senate Dems to W.H.: Drop cap-and-trade - - POLITICO.com

Bruised by the health care debate and worried about what 2010 will bring, moderate Senate Democrats are urging the White House to give up now on any effort to pass a cap-and-trade bill next year.

“I am communicating that in every way I know how,” says Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of at least half a dozen Democrats who've told the White House or their own leaders that it's time to jettison the centerpiece of their party's plan to curb global warming.
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“I’d just as soon see that set aside until we work through the economy,” said Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). “What we don’t want to do is have anything get in the way of working to resolve the problems with the economy.”

“Climate change in an election year has very poor prospects,” added Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). “I’ve told that to the leadership.”
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Asked about cap-and-trade last week, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said: “At this point I’d like to see a complete bill but we have to be realistic."

California hobbled; warming alarmism the all-purpose tyranny - Opinion - The Orange County Register

If government can assume authority over emissions of CO2 generated by everything from factories to vehicles to people exhaling, then government can control everything. The statist goal of overseeing all aspects of life advanced grotesquely with the quasiscience of global warming alarmism. It proved the all-encompassing excuse to regulate, to tax and to license greenhouse gas emissions under the pretense of saving the planet from rising temperatures.

I've changed my mind about carbon taxes | Tim Leunig | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

I am an economist, not a natural scientist. I have no way of telling, personally, whether global warming is occurring. But scientists, taken as a whole, seem pretty convinced, and I trust my economist colleague (Lord) Nick Stern's review of the evidence. And whether it is man-made or natural climate change doesn't matter: it will harm a lot of people, and we can prevent or reduce that by cutting carbon emissions. [what if the world is cooling?]

I am an economist, and so I supported a carbon tax.
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If carbon was a luxury good, like Van Gogh paintings, then a carbon tax that resulted in only rich people being able to afford carbon would be fine. But when almost all of us rely on gas central heating, and carbon-based electricity, when we all-but-need cars to get around, then a carbon tax sufficient to combat global warming means misery for millions.

Instead we need regulations. It is nuts that one alarm clock will use five times as much electricity as another. It is nuts that it is legal to sell or rent an existing house with walls and windows that leak heat galore. It is nuts that we are not building nuclear power stations as fast as we can. It is nuts to be even thinking of building an energy-guzzling high-speed rail line. It is nuts to have a complex annual vehicle excise tax instead of a CO2-proportionate tax on cars at point of sale, when people make the decision as to which car to buy and run.