Cap-and-trade has been demonized by conservatives as part of an effective strategy to stop climate legislation from moving forward in the U.S. Congress. As I wrote in my previous blog post (“Beware of Scorched-Earth Strategies in Climate Debates,” July 27, 2010), this unfortunate tarnishing of market-based instruments for environmental protection will come back to haunt conservatives and liberals alike when it becomes politically difficult to use the power of the marketplace to reduce business costs in the pursuit of a wide variety of environmental objectives.
Cap-and-trade has been vilified as a national energy tax, an elaborate Ponzi scheme, and a giveaway to corporate polluters. The fact that none of these attacks are factually correct has not seemed to reduce their political effectiveness. This is one element of the poisonous atmosphere which has come to dominate so much of national political discourse, at least in this election year.
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