Promoting quiet recreation in Wisconsin.
Opposing the coming attempts to sell off Wisconsin's natural heritage.
Fighting denial about climate change. When are we hitting the streets?


Thursday, December 08, 2011

The Republican Franchise means you make the burgers the Koch way

Via, Joe Romm, a great article in the National Journal on why so many Republican politicians-including Presidential candidates- have changed their minds on global warming and became deniers at the same time the evidence for climate change became even more certain.

The answer: The Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity:


"What it means for candidates on the Republican side is, if you … buy into green energy or you play footsie on this issue, you do so at your political peril. The vast majority of people who are involved in the [Republican] nominating process—the conventions and the primaries—are suspect of the science. And that’s our influence. Groups like Americans for Prosperity have done it.”
As I said, in order to be a Republican candidate, you are told exactly what positions you will take.   While on some level those positions are "ideological", that isn't the case with global warming. This is purely about supporting the interests of the Koch brothers and others like them over the interests of the market and the people of the United States.  Simply put, there is no free market right to pollute.


The clearest and most "free market" way to deal with Global Warming pollution would be through a carbon tax in order to create incentives for developing the most efficient market alternatives. Money from the tax would could be funneled back to those, like long distance truckers, most effected by the tax.

The second most "free market" way would be through a cap and trade system.  Paradoxically, the Reagan administration proposed the second idea, and Al Gore something like the first.

But Republicans today oppose both.   The reason they oppose both is that they know the kind of blizzard that would come down on them if they did.

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