Carbon tax to keep U.S. safe from terrorism?! NYT’s Friedman urges carbon tax to fix America post Boston Terror!

Carbon tax to keep U.S. safe from terrorism? NYT’s Friedman urges carbon tax to fix America post Boston Terror!

How to Put America Back Together Again – NYTimes.com

UNTIL we fully understand what turned two brothers who allegedly perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombings into murderers, it is hard to make any policy recommendation other than this: We need to redouble our efforts to make America stronger and healthier so it remains a vibrant counterexample to whatever bigoted ideology may have gripped these young men.

So what to do? We need a more “radical center” — one much more willing to suggest radically new ideas to raise revenues, not the “split-the-difference-between-the-same-old-options center.” And the best place to start is with a carbon tax.

A phased-in carbon tax of $20 to $25 a ton could raise around $1 trillion over 10 years, as we each pay a few more dimes and quarters for every gallon of gasoline or hour of electricity. With that new revenue stream, we’d have so many more options. One, preferred by Republicans like the statesman George Shultz and the Nobel laureate Gary Becker, is to make the carbon tax “revenue neutral.” It could be offset entirely by a rebate or by cutting tax rates for every U.S. citizen and corporation, which would increase spending. Another option, the one I’d prefer, would devote half the carbon-tax revenues to individual and corporate tax cuts, use a quarter for new investments in infrastructure, preschool education, community colleges and research — which would create jobs now and tomorrow — and then use a quarter on deficit reduction.In short, if you added such a carbon tax to Obama’s budget, you’d have the makings of a radical grand bargain: Republicans would have the income tax cuts they want; Democrats would get the additional infrastructure stimulus they want, plus a new revenue stream to start gradually addressing the deficit, while reducing the amount that we’d have to bite from entitlements now; and the country would have a vehicle to address climate change, to drive clean-tech innovation (and to take money away from people who fund jihadist hate sites on the Internet).

(Friedman’s full column here.)

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Related Link: 

Warmist NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo Compares Dealing With Boston Bombing to ‘Climate Change’: Says Boston Bombing Part of ‘New Normal’ of Post 9/11 World

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Climate Depot Round Up: ‘The great warmist retreat has officially begun. The mainstream media cannot maintain the official man-made global warming narrative any longer’

Climate Depot Note: “The mainstream media cannot maintain the official man-made global warming narrative any longer. With the lack of warming and the failure to shift the climate debate to “extreme weather”, warmists are now losing once stalwart members of the media in promoting man-made climate fears. These are not good times for the promoters of global warming. Earth is failing to follow global warming predictions and the new study claiming current temperatures are the “hottest ever” may be facing a full scientific retraction.  The great warmist retreat has officially begun.”

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Shock: The Great Warmist Retreat Has Begun! UK Telegraph: ‘Global warming: time to rein back on doom and gloom?’ — Global temp lull ‘raises the possibility that Carbon dioxide may be less potent than has been thought in heating the planet’ — UK Telegraph’s Geoffrey Lean: ‘Some recent research suggests that climate change might not be as catastrophic as the gloomiest predictions suggest…Until now, they have therefore placed much weight on the rapid temperature increases in the Eighties and Nineties. But for at least a decade, these have dramatically slowed, even as carbon dioxide emissions have continued to increase. None of this justifies the frequent claim by climate sceptics that global warming has stopped, and may now reverse. Long lulls have occurred before, only for temperatures to resume their relentless rise…But it may be less guilty than once supposed. And this is reinforced by recent findings that emissions of soot, or black carbon – which patient readers may remember I have been banging on about for years – are causing twice as much warming as previously estimated, meaning that the contribution of CO2 must be correspondingly less.’

Full retreat? ‘Geoffrey Lean at the Telegraph has, somewhat belatedly, picked up on the low climate sensitivity news. Yes, you read that correctly, Geoffrey Lean. Who will be next to turn sceptic?’ — ‘When even zealots like Lean are in retreat it’s fair to say that something significant has changed. One can only wonder whether this change of tune is a function of the Economist’s coverage of the issue or of what Lean’s contacts are whispering to him about the Fifth Assessment Report’

Is the media waking up on global warming? ‘Tic, tic, tic. The sleeping MSM is stirring. Headlines no one could imagine seeing a few years ago are popping up on a regular basis. The backdown is