(RoyalPatriot.com )- Last week, Utah Republican Senator Mitt Romney indicated he would support a carbon tax to help fight climate change.
During a Washington Post webinar last Thursday, while discussing the importance of fighting climate change, Romney said a carbon tax would be the most useful tool because it would pressure the private sector to innovate toward clean energy alternatives.
He said MIT found that the “number one thing” that would have a “major impact” on reducing carbon emissions and keeping global temperatures from rising is to have a “price on carbon” either through a carbon tax or “through a whole series of mechanisms.”
Romney explained that a carbon tax wouldn’t just be about “raising money for the government,” arguing that this would not be the purpose of putting a price on carbon. Instead, Romney claimed, a carbon tax would “create a massive incentive for the private sector to innovate and to create innovations.”
These innovations, he explained, would be “low-emitting” and “low-cost” and could be adopted, not just in the United States, but also adopted “voluntarily” in China, India, and Brazil.
He said the US has to do things “that get accepted globally.”
Is Mitt Romney actually naïve enough to think China will “voluntarily” shoot its energy sector in the head because the US did it first?
Romney offered some criticism for the Democrat Party’s approach to climate change, arguing that the policies they are pursuing might sound good, “but won’t make a difference.” He said spending money on insulating buildings or incentivizing the purchase of electric cars will be ineffective in the long term since carbon emissions will still be increasing globally.
Romney explained that whatever the United States does to combat climate change will have to be things that are “adopted everywhere” rather than things “that make us feel better about ourselves.”
He said the Democrats could have passed a carbon tax while they controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress, and said their failure to do so was a “missed opportunity” that will have a lasting impact.
