Then & Now

Time has an interesting article on the climate policy positions of the GOP front runners. It’s amazing how far we’ve backed away from regulating greenhouse emissions:

Then Now
Pawlenty signed the Next Generation Energy Act of 2007 in Minnesota, which called for a plan to “recommend how the state could adopt a regulatory system that imposes a cap on the aggregate air pollutant emissions of a group of sources.” The current Tim Pawlenty line on carbon is that “cap and trade would be a disaster.”
Here he is in Iowa in 2007, voicing concern about man-made global warming while supporting more government subsidies for new energy sources, new efficiency standards, and a new global carbon treaty. Mitt Romney regularly attacks Barack Obama for pushing a cap and trade system through Congress.

And so on…

I can’t say that I’ve ever been much of a cap and trade fan, and I’d lay a little of the blame for our current sorry state at the door of cap and trade supporters who were willing to ignore what a bloated beast the bills had become. Not much, though. Most of the blame falls to the anti-science and let’s pretend externalities don’t exist crowds, who wouldn’t give a carbon tax the time of day either.

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