Jon Henke is obviously a more astute analyst than moi, so I post this with some angst. But I think he is thinking along the lines of French military strategists after World War I,
As historians recall, France was bled dry from fighting a trench war deep in its own terrain. So apres guerre the French decided to build high tech fortifications-- the Maginot Line--along their frontier to cause the war to be fought on the German side of the border and on French terms.
By 1940, of course, the Me 109 and the Stuka proved to be well able to fly over fortifications and destroy French forces from the air. Oops.
I fear we may be doing to same thing by trying a new and improved strategy to deal with "climate change". Both the ambient and political climate may not be what we expect.
First, there are two central flaws with the Republicans becoming the champions of carbon taxation. First, it muddles the party's anti-tax message. It's easily trumped politically by the advocacy of economically delusional class warfare. Instead of arguing taxes in general ought to be reduced or kept from rising, we are left bargaining over what taxes to raise. Is that an argument that is going to win elections?
Secondly, if the carbon tax works it will generate progressively less revenue. Since I think the "starve the beast" strategy has pretty well been proved to be a failure in practice (expecting a long term libertarian control for Congress is daft) the result will be progressively higher deficits and demands to raise other taxes. While payroll or sales taxes do penalize "good" activity, they also tend to mirror the overall economy. A carbon tax intended to readjust the economy to lower carbon use will inevtiably reduce its own revenue and plants the seed to bring back other taxes.
That said, I'd rather have the efficient mechanism of a carbon tax than the crony capitalism of cap & trade. But I think we ought to reconsider whether either is inevitble.
I'm a skeptic on global warming, not a denier, but the empirical observable information in the northern US this year puts a real dent in the alarmist camp. We have yet to see 90 degree weather in CT all summer, and this seems to be the case as well in MN.
I'm not sure hitching our political wagon to getting huge heat waves in populated areas is so wise. It's "An Inconvenient Truth" the salience of this issue depends on observable episodes of warm weather.
I also think the based on my read, the salience of the "climate change" issue is focused on a) younger and b) better educated voters. I suppose a long run argument can be made to address this issue, but in 2010 we are going to be dealing with an electorate which is going to skew older. Are we better off using limited time and resources talking to 50 year old people who are highly likely to vote than 20 year old voters who may have simply cast an Obama-mania vote in '08?
It may be true that the "chattering classes" may think a response on this issue is essential ( see David Cameron, UK) but the cold hard truth is we've already lost virtually every one of the high end House seats where this issue matters (WA 8 and IL 10 the visible exceptions). The low hanging fruit for Republicans in 2010 is likely to be in blue collar places like IN 9 and OH 16 where the cost is obvious and the reward speculative for enviromental legislation.
Now how are the Democrats reponding? And doesn't that say something.
My Congressman, Chris Murphy, who holds a swing seat in a blue state, voted for Waxman-Markey. And how did he justify his vote? Based on the alleged argument the bill would wean America from foreign sources of energy and the cost of inaction was too high. (hmm, open up ANWR, naw!)
As the CT Republican State Chairman pointed out in his weekly e-newsletter.
But here is the kicker - no where in this entire letter is global warming mentioned or the need to save the polar bears or the quality of our air. In it he simply says, we must rush to placing the development of a new whole technology in the hands of the government, to decide, through taxes, who can use what fuel for what purpose. If it doesn't work out, well, at least Uncle Sam tried.
(IM: Guess it's now not so much fun being Henry Waxman's towel boy, Chris.)
I think that Democrats have decided that the Global Warming issue is a stone dead loser in the face of the Great Recession. (Yes, the salience of the environmental issue moves in lockstep with the economic cycle).Much like the antiwar movement, this was a useful cudgel against the eveeeel Republicans, but now they are quickly losing their desire to actually have to walk the walk on taxing the crap out of everyone to "save the planet". Looking at the climate issue through the prism of: a) the 2006 election when the economy was prosperous; or b): the 2008 election with its unusually high youth vote, may just cause us to fight the "last war"; now that we are going to be dealing with the grim economic conditions expected for 2010 and 2012. Given our opponents were astute enough to win the last two elections, why would we benefit from picking up an unpopular issue they are now either walking or running away from?
