The global-warming bill died in the Senate last week, and the margin of the vote suggests that it won’t be easy to pass a similar bill next year even if the Democrats do well this fall. But maybe a better deal — and a better policy — will emerge from this failure.
As my colleague Andy Revkin reported, the influential NASA climate scientist James Hansen is now pushing for a new approach to cutting greenhouse emissions. Instead of the cap-and-trade approach pushed by some politicians and environmentalists — and rejected in the Senate last week — he’s urging a “tax-and-dividend”: a carbon tax whose revenues would all be directly returned to citizens. The money would be divided equally, so that people who use less energy than average — like lower-income people — would get back more than they spend.
Dr. Hansen and I are not exactly public-policy soulmates, but I’m with him on this one....MORE
Monday, June 9, 2008
TiernyLab on Cap-and-Refund
The New York Times' John Tierney in his own words:
A New Climate Deal?
