Liberal interest groups, think tanks, lobbyists, bloggers and other nuisances are inundating the incoming Obama Administration with advice, but James Hansen recently managed to say something interesting. Namely, the famous NASA scientist had the nerve to expose some of the global-warming fantasies widespread among children and politicians.
No, the spiritual leader of the climate-change movement hasn't recanted. Global warming threatens "not simply the Earth, but the fate of all its species, including humanity," he writes in his manifesto, which is tame by Mr. Hansen's normal rhetorical standards. (He likes to compare carbon to the Holocaust: "those coal trains will be death trains -- no less gruesome than if they were boxcars headed to crematoria.")
But Mr. Hansen also had the honesty to follow his convictions to their logical conclusion, while reproaching his followers -- President-elect Obama among them -- for not doing the same. To wit, Mr. Hansen endorses a straight carbon tax as the only "honest, clear and effective" way to reduce emissions, with the revenues rebated in their entirety to consumers on a per-capita basis. "Not one dime should go to Washington for politicians to pick winners," he writes....MORE
Regular readers know my thinking on cap-and-trade: You will have the people who brought us the subprime meltdown, the California electricity frauds, the dot.com scams and other examples too numerous to mention, trading carbon. Cowardly politicians wanting to evade their responsibilities plan to outsource tax collection to private parties and charge the public for the privilege.
