From ThinkProgress:

Eli Lehrer argued in The Weekly Standard this week that a carbon tax could ostensibly break this gridlock. Because it reduces carbon emissions in a particularly efficient and market-friendly manner, the policy could ostensibly enjoy support from experts and thinkers across the political spectrum. But as Lehrer points out, the idea remains anathema to GOP politicians. He thinks liberals could change this, but they would have to give up “new revenue, new regulations, and new resource development restrictions” to make it happen…

…Because it builds the price of climate change into fossil fuels from the beginning, a (sufficiently punitive) carbon tax really would make fuel-economy standards, EPA’s power plant rule, and restrictions on fossil fuel drilling technically redundant. Liberals won’t give up on the goal of massive public investment in renewables, but that’s something the U.S. should be doing regardless — there’s no reason to politically tie that goal to the revenue from a carbon tax. But while state-by-state carbon taxes would be better than nothing, one federal carbon tax would make life simpler for businesses. It would also allow Lehrer’s revenue-neutrality goal to be hit by reducing payroll taxes — the form of federal taxation that falls hardest on the poor and working class — an equivalent amount.

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