Reason magazine features a debate between three nominally libertarian thinkers over the appropriate response to global warming: cap and trade, carbon tax, or deregulate the economy. Ron Bailey, one of the debaters, has gone from ardent global warming skeptic, to something is happening but we probably aren’t causing it, to okay warming is real but we can’t do anything about it. Now he supports a carbon tax.
Lynne Kiesling, an economist from Northwestern University, supports cap and trade, but never really says why she favors it over a carbon tax.
Fred Smith, the head of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, argues that either of these approaches are likely to cost more than global warming itself — if global warming is happening, which Smith is almost willing to admit, though he thinks it will hardly be catastrophic. Instead, he argues that the world needs to deregulate — deregulate trade, deregulate electricity, deregulate biotechnology. This way, we can build wealth and technology and be ready for any warming (or cooling) that happens.
