for reference: Al Gore and the Carbon Tax
Podcast:
web.mac.com
Rough text:
Al Gore Deserves More Credit, Guys
John Tierney advocates taxes on energy use. However, it somehow slips Tierney's mind to praise Al Gore, who was the driving force behind the Clinton administration's attempt to raise energy taxes back in 1993.
I have observed in the past that it takes nerve to criticize Al Gore in one breath, call for a carbon tax in the next, and yet have neither the honor, the grace, nor the guts to remind his readers that Al Gore--the driving force behind the Clinton administration's attempt to raise energy taxes back in 1993--had been ahead of him for two decades. Nor does Tierney have the independence of mind to remind his readers that back in 1993 Gore's BTU tax had been blocked by a combination of the oil lobby, the Republican congressional leadership, and a few feckless Democratic senators with names like Breaux and Boren.
Would it have strained John Tierney's brain to tell his readers that Gore did propose a carbon tax back in 1993, got no backup at all from John Tierney and company, and lost? That the topic is "taboo on Capitol Hill" in large part because Gore got very little backup when he tangled with the American Petroleum Institute a decade ago?
Indeed, my sweeps through Google News suggest that nobody in the media both remembers and wants to remind their readers of the history of this issue.
And now I find that John Tierney is joined in his amnesia by the usually excellent Clive Crook. Clive laments that "the crucial thing is to think long term, the very thing that Washington does worst." And he calls for "an initially moderate carbon tax... an honest plan to promote long-term energy efficiency." And he does all this without whispering a word about how this is the gospel that Al Gore has been preaching for twenty years.
And Clive Crook is in turn endorsed by Greg Mankiw, who calls for a carbon tax but has no praise for Gore's attempt to get one back in 1993.
How about it guys? A little bit of the history of this issue would greatly raise the level of the debate, wouldn't it?
Jun 7, 2006 |
