From a Theory to a Consensus on Emissions: Permits Gain Political Edge Over Taxation

May 16, 2009 By Charles Komanoff

From a Theory to a Consensus on Emissions: Permits Gain Political Edge Over Taxation (NYT)

There’s long been a hope that repeated climate crises will force Republicans to enlist in the fight to stop, or slow, climate change. How can you ignore the crisis when it is your constituents who are frozen, your home that is underwater? But what we saw in Texas is the darker timeline — a doom loop of climate polarization, where climate crises lead, paradoxically, to a politics that’s more desperate for fossil fuels, more dismissive of international or even interstate cooperation.”

NY Times columnist Ezra Klein, in Texas Is a Rich State in a Rich Country, and Look What Happened, Feb. 25.