but he did support cap and trade
-In 2000, candidate George Bush pledged mandatory carbon caps; it was a campaign pledge. What did you think of it at the time? Were you for that?
I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there’s a package there that’s very, very good. And frankly, it’s something I would strongly support.
-And did you, at the time, in 2000?
At the time I wasn’t directly involved in the campaign.
-He reversed that campaign pledge within months of taking office. Would we be in better shape today if he had kept that campaign pledge?
If he had instituted a regime that combined three things I just said — mandatory caps, a trading system inside the caps, as we have with clean air, and a tax incentive to be able to invest in the new technology and to be able to produce the new technology — I think we would be much better off than we are in the current situation. ...
The CAFE [Corporate Average Fuel Economy] system for automobiles hasn’t worked. Everybody cheats and gets around it. The caps, with a trading system, on sulfur has worked brilliantly because it has brought free-market attitudes, entrepreneurship and technology and made it very profitable to have less sulfur. So people said, “Wow, it’s worth my time and effort.”
Americans get incentives. Americans like winning. ... What we ought to be doing is inventing a whole series of breakthrough mechanisms that create incentives for people to have a better environmental outcome in an economically positive way, to accelerate the transition to better and cleaner technologies. If Bush had led that effort in 2001, or if somebody will lead that effort in 2007, we will get much further down the road than we’re going to get with litigation and regulation. ...
ari-freedom, thanks for your link to pbs interview with Newt on global warming... that, combined with Nancy on the couch thing, and his past as an “enviromental studies” professor, make me really think that he would quite likely betray the anti-AGWers and the anti-treehuggers
I’ve been kind of undecided. Now I say go with Santorum. Consolidate with an anti-Romney. Mainly it is that he is coming on strong with his anti-Obama rhetoric. Much better, or at least more consistent (performance wise), than Newt. And he forcefully expresses what the heart of the fall election will be about: FREEDOM. (Not [solely] the economy, or some other thing of minor importance.)
Check out his Meet the Press performance from Sunday, very strong performance. Seems surprisingly articulate. And has good answers to the “contraception smear” etc. http://www.therightscoop.com/rick-santorum-on-meet-the-press/
And his “Made in the USA Plan” whatever will be a winner in the upcoming election, who cares about the economics of it, which are fine (need domestic manufacturing for natl security, also). His appeal to Joe the Plumber types, and the working man, and the industrial states, is huge.
Finally, I assume Santorum will excite the base in a major way. Romney is reported to be having money problems (hotair). Romney may raise an inadequate $300 million, but with an excited base, tons of small and large donations will flow to Santorum, yielding $1 billion or more. This type of money will be -required- to beat Obama.
How about when Newt was for individual mandates on one day and then a few days later was against it back in May of last year ?