The Clinton/Gore carbon tax of 1993: defeated by every republican in congress plus 4 Democrats

[pampango]

http://delong.typepad.com/.a/6a00e551f0800388340167691881a5970b-pi

Back in the spring and early summer of 1993 it was my great honor and privilege to work at the U.S. Treasury for Al Gore's carbon tax proposal. There were three powerful reasons why we should then have started taxing carbon at an increasing rate:

A more energy-efficient U.S. economy would consume less Middle Eastern oil, and the world economy and indeed human life would then be less at hostage to the deeds of the God-maddened in the Middle Est.

A more energy-efficient U.S. economy would have been one with less traffic congestion--and time spent sitting in traffic is one of the greatest pure economic losses in the U.S. today.

Most important, by 1993 the odds were 95% that serious global warming from human-caused CO2 and CH4 emissions were on the way.

Thanks to Democratic then-senators John Kerrey of Nebraska, John Breaux of Louisiana, Ben Campbell of Colorado, and David Boren of Oklahoma--and thanks to every single Republican then-representative and every single Republican then-senator: Ted Stevens, Frank H. Murkowski, John McCain, Hank Brown, William Roth, Connie Mack, Paul Coverdell, Larry Craig, Dirk Kempthorne, Richard Lugar, Dan Coats, Chuck Grassley, Bob Dole, Nancy Kassebaum, Wendell H. Ford, Mitch McConnell, William S. Cohen, David Durenberger, Thad Cochran, Trent Lott, John C. Danforth, Kit Bond, Conrad Burns, Bob Smith, Pete Domenici, Al D'Amato, Jesse Helms, Lauch Faircloth, Don Nickles, Mark O. Hatfield, Bob Packwood, Arlen Specter, John H. Chafee, Strom Thurmond, Larry Pressler, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Phil Gramm, Orrin G. Hatch, Robert Foster Bennett, James Jeffords, John W. Warner, Charles S. Robb, Slade Gorton, Malcolm Wallop, and Alan K. Simpson--we failed to pass the carbon tax.

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/08/global-warming-the-years-the-locust-hath-eaten.html

And we are no more likely to see a carbon tax today and the opposition would come from exactly the same quarters.