When John Dingell announced his support of a carbon tax, many environmentalists assumed that “he is really a double agent, cynically supporting an infeasible solution — a big tax increase — as a way to maintain the status quo” (What is John Dingell really up to? The New York Times). David Leonhardt makes a plausible case that he may be serious:
After the town hall meeting was over &ndash and he had listened to a couple of hours of questions about timed traffic lights, nuclear power and the possibility of impeaching President Bush &ndash Mr. Dingell sat down in a dark area behind the stage. I asked him whether Mr. Gore, who has been both a Dingell nemesis and ally at various times, had been right for all those years he was pointing out what was happening to the earth’s climate.“I think a cold statement on that point would be yes,” Mr. Dingell replied.
And would it have been easier to solve the problem if we had started earlier?
“What’s the saying? The saddest words in the English language – “might have been.””
Ted Stevens, on the other hand, continues to deny that human-caused global warming poses a threat: “We're at the end of a long, long term of warming. 700 to 900 years of increased temperature, a very slow increase. We think we're close to the end of that. If we're close to the end of that, that means that we'll starting getting cooler gradually, not very rapidly, but cooler once again and stability might come to this region for a period of another 900 years” (Shishmaref [Alaska]feels heat of global warming, KTUU.com).
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