The Gary Null Blog

http://www.grist.org/climate-policy/2011-04-28-why-did-environmentalists-pursue-cap-and-trade-was-it-doomed

by Joseph Romm

28 Apr 2011

We're starting to see pieces of counterfactual history on the climate bill in The New Republic and elsewhere based in part on a widely debunked "false narrative." Since cap-and-trade has been so vilified by the entire right wing and even some on the left, I thought I would try to set the record straight on some key points.

I'm not here to say cap-and-trade was the "correct" strategy. And it may be that any strategy was extrinsically "doomed to fail" -- that the Senate's anti-democratic, super-majority 60-vote "requirement" meant that a dedicated minority could have killed any approach -- once the Republican Party decided to become the only major political party in the world dedicated to denying science and blocking any action.

I mainly want to show that cap-and-trade was not intrinsically doomed to fail, that it was not obviously or inherently a flawed idea in, say, 2008 -- or even 2009. Quite the reverse. Only someone who doesn't know history -- or who chooses to ignore it -- could believe that.