Carbon costings
The billboard had a picture of Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who asked: “I still believe in global warming. Do you?”
Concerned about global warming and angry to be equated with a murderous psychopath, insurance companies like Allied World, Renaissance Re, State Farm and XL Group dropped their support for Heartland.
Even more telling, Eli Lehrer, a Heartland vice president who at the time led an insurance-financed project, left the group and helped start the R Street Institute, a standard conservative organization in all respects but one: it believes in climate change and supports a carbon tax to combat it. And it is financed largely with insurance industry money.
Mr. Lehrer points out that a carbon tax fits conservative orthodoxy. It is a broad and flat tax, whose revenue can be used to do away with the corporate income tax — a favorite target of the right. It provides a market-friendly signal, forcing polluters to bear the cost imposed on the rest of us and encouraging them to pollute less. And it is much preferable to a parade of new regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency.
“We are having a debate on the right about a carbon tax for the first time in a long time,” Mr. Lehrer said.
