A Carbon Tax Is the Big Issue Burbling Under the Surface of Obama’s Plan to Regulate Power Plants

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President Obama hasn’t given his big climate speech yet, but the bullet points have been released and I think it’s fair to say that everyone thinks the biggest deal is his executive order telling the EPA to establish carbon pollution standards for both new and existing power plants.

I’ll wait for more details to comment further, except for one thing: one of the key issues here is what Obama’s real goal is. Does he really want the EPA to create new regs? Or does he want to use the threat of new regs as leverage to get Congress to pass a carbon tax of some kind? Probably the former, but you never know. Back when the cap-and-trade bill was being debated in 2010, one reason for guarded optimism was the fact that even Republicans might prefer it to the alternative, which was crude EPA regulation of power plants. In the end, that turned out not to be enough. Republicans apparently weren’t convinced that the EPA would really go through with tough new rules.

But now that changes. If Obama and the EPA are serious, then utility operators are going to get increasingly nervous as the rules work their way through the system and start to look like they’re really going to happen. At that point, will Republicans relent and agree to a bill that sets a carbon tax (or cap-and-trade limits) in return for a congressional halt on new EPA regs?

No one knows, of course. But to me, this is the key issue burbling under the surface of Obama’s announcement today. Are his new regulations just what they seem, or are they really a bargaining chip for a carbon tax? Stay tuned.

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“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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