Hansen on How the GOP Could Support a Carbon Tax

James Hansen believes that the GOP may support carbon tax legislation. Republican support would not come as a consequence of their belief in global warming as that the vast majority of the GOP have consistently and tenaciously denied the veracity of anthropogenic climate change despite the overwhelming body of scientific evidence.

Hansen believes that the party of "NO" could support a carbon tax due to their tendency to like market based solutions, particularly if they are revenue neutral.

Republicans could also get onside to avoid big government, something the GOP fervently oppose. As explained in a June 13 article in The Balance Sheet, many Republican climate change deniers could be made to understand that ignoring science will lead to big government.

This is the argument put forth by Jim Hansen, who has been at the forefront of efforts to manage climate change since 1988. Hansen, formerly a NASA climate scientists, is now devoting his time to climate change activism.

“It has to be a carbon tax and it really has to come from conservatives,” Hansen said. “That money has to be given back to the public on a per capita basis so all legal residents of the country get an equal amount and that way the person who does better than average in limiting their carbon footprint would make money and then everybody in the country becomes an environmentalists whether they want to or not,” Hansen said.

“The fundamental fact is that as long as fossil fuels appear to the public to be the cheapest energy we are going to keep burning them,” Hansen said.”Fossil fuels are not the cheapest energy they only appear to be because they are subsidized.”

Hansen opposes the carbon tax scheme put forth by Senators Barbara Boxer and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“As usual the Democrats are going to take some of the money, 40 percent of it,” Hansen said. “Conservatives have to put their foot down and say you can’t use this as another excuse to make government bigger. Democrats have a problem they can’t keep their hands off our wallets...It is important that all the money go to the public, so get this push from below,” he said.

“If they continue to pretend that human-made climate change is a hoax, eventually you get to the point where nature makes it clear it wasn’t a hoax and then the public demands the government do something and that’s the worst nightmare for conservatives,” Hansen said.

“It would allow the government to take over and do things by fiat, which not in anybody’s interest in my opinion, because the government never, seldom, makes the right choices,” Hansen said. “Let the market make the choices, which is a conservative approach.”

© 2013, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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