Senator empirical: Bob Corker takes on climate change

National Review, May 19, 2008 by Ramesh Ponnuru

If you accept the estimates that Lieberman and Warner use for the cost of these permits, around $13 per ton of emissions, their bill would have the government raising $1 trillion through 2031. If you use a more realistic estimate--in the EU's existing cap and trade system, a ton costs $40--that figure rises quite a bit. The bill stipulates how that money will be spent, and it removes that spending from the normal budget process. Whatever else it is, Lieberman-Warner is a bill to raise taxes and spending.

States would get emission permits too. They would be expected to sell them and then use the proceeds to promote energy efficiency, mass transit, and the like. Corker asks: If Congress is not willing to spend all this money directly on mass transit, what's the point of doing it indirectly? Other, that is, than to disguise the wealth transfers taking place?

Corker has been nearly alone in raising these points. "The level of understanding around this issue in the House and Senate is lower than any issue I'm aware of," he says. Even on an issue as complex as health care, he notes, elected officials have "some practical experience." They rarely do on energy policy.

Corker plans to offer several amendments to the bill. He wants any money raised by auctions to be returned to taxpayers. He thinks that other energy subsidies should be cut. If we are setting up a quasi-market to determine how energy sources should be used within our emissions goals, he asks, what is the point of spending money on particular energy sources as well? And he will support other Republicans as they make the case for relying more on nuclear power. If the amendments pass, he says, he will have improved the bill. If they do not, he will have educated people about its drawbacks.

So far, both conservatives and liberals have approached global warming as though it were a culture-war issue rather than an empirical one. Whether one "believes in" global warming has been treated as a theological dividing line. But determining whether it exists, and how bad it is likely to be if so, should be only the beginning of a process of figuring out a response.

Liberals want to jump directly from "it's a problem" to draconian reductions in carbon emissions. Over the last few years they have labeled those who doubt the existence of global warming "denialists" (an allusion to Holocaust deniers). Now those who concede it but balk at cap and trade are being called "the new denialists." But the existence of trade-offs can't be shouted away--and it won't be if Senator Corker has anything to say about it.