Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Speaking of climate change, here’s Matt Yglesias on the sudden boom in the number of advocates of ditching cap-and-trade in favor of a “simple” carbon tax:

Their basic point, that the kind of carbon tax proposal that policy wonks would dream up would be superior policy to the kind of cap-and-trade plan that would result from the compromises necessary to get 60 votes in the Senate, is very true. But by the same token, the kind of cap-and-trade proposal that policy wonks would dream up would be superior policy to the kind of carbon tax plan that would result from the compromises necessary to get 60 votes in the Senate.

Actually, I’d go even further.  Like it or not, politics is a grungy business.  If you want to pass something big, you have to make lots of compromises and give away lots of goodies.  Cap-and-trade allows this to happen far more easily than a carbon tax while still setting a firm limit on carbon emissions.  It’s not pretty.  And it’s not the way I’d do things if I were a benevolant dictator. But the plain fact is that in the real world, all the moving parts that make cap-and-trade messy are also the things that allow it to have a chance of passing in the first place.

(There are also other benefits to cap-and-trade, as well as some drawbacks.  My piece earlier this year on cap-and-trade runs down most of the big issues.)

And at the risk of pissing off some decent people, I’ll add one other thing.  In the near term, no serious carbon tax will ever pass the U.S. Senate.  Period.  If you believe otherwise, you’re just not paying attention to things.  A big part of the surge in interest in a carbon tax is purely cynical, coming from special interests who are afraid a carbon cap might actually pass and want to muddy the waters with pseudo-liberal arguments in order to build an anti-C&T alliance and keep anything at all from passing.  There are plenty of carbon tax advocates who are perfectly sincere, but I gotta tell them: you’re being played by people who are the farthest thing imaginable from sincere.  If you win, we’re not going to get a carbon tax.  We’re going to get nothing.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate