Columnist and best-selling author Thomas Friedman noted how opponents of a cap-and-trade tax on carbon have been singing the same tune: President Obama “is going to raise your taxes and sacrifice U.S. jobs to combat this global-warming charade.” Americans for Prosperity had a commentary on Saturday’s Opinion page that made such an argument. Friedman agrees that the cap-and-trade proposal has problems — but because it is too complicated, not because it raises taxes or because global warming isn’t a serious concern.
“Americans will be willing to pay a tax for their children to be less threatened, breathe cleaner air and live in a more sustainable world with a stronger America,” Friedman wrote. “They are much less likely to support a firm in London trading offsets from an electric bill in Boston with a derivatives firm in New York in order to help fund an aluminum smelter in Beijing, which is what cap-and-trade is all about. People won’t support what they can’t explain.”
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