Memo to Sen. Kerry: Climate Science Includes Economics. By James Handley, CarbonTaxCenter, November 12, 2009. "U.S. climate activists are gleeful at Sen. John Kerry's demolition of a sometime climate skeptic [Ken Green, a resident scholar for the corporate-financed American Enterprise Institute] at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Tuesday... The interchange, summarized in a 6½-minute video... showcases Sen. Kerry's skill as a cross-examiner and reveals just how flimsy and muddled the case questioning the climate crisis really is. Lost in the euphoria, however, is evidence of the Senator's own confusion -- not on the need to act to avert climate catastrophe, but on the workings of competing means of pricing carbon emissions... In an earlier part of this week's hearing, Sen. Kerry repeated a point he made in an August 4 Finance Committee hearing on Climate Change Legislation: Allowance and Revenue Distribution: a carbon tax wouldn't reduce emissions... In the August hearing, Sen. Kerry questioned whether American businesses and households would actually respond to higher fuel and energy prices... He had evidently forgotten what happened during the summer of 2008 when gasoline hit $4/gallon: traffic congestion eased, carpools, buses and trains filled up, and SUV sales tumbled. And that was only the short-term effect of a price spike; a long-term, predictable carbon emissions price increase would allow sound business planning and create incentives for long-term investment in energy efficiency and low-carbon alternatives. But his ongoing misunderstanding of the workings of carbon pricing is almost as shocking as the AEI witness's misrepresentation this week of climate science. It's past time for both sides to get it right: The consequences of unmitigated climate change will be grave, whereas clear, simple, predictable carbon pricing is essential to catalyzing the solutions."
2009-11-16
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