Print Window    The Independent Institute  Carbon Caps: Not
Supported by Science or Economics  Some day an enterprising
journalist may tell us just how, just before last year’s
election, an unholy alliance of coal-burning (yes!), electric
utilities and environmental groups managed to insert a call for
mandatory limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants
into the Bush platform. Such a policy is so obviously at
variance with his opposition to the Kyoto climate treaty that
one might suspect it was sneaked in last September while cooler
heads were nodding. The power companies supporting CO2 caps
proclaim that they were only looking for "regulatory certainty"
-- an odd excuse for more regulation. It is not difficult to
imagine other, less noble motives.  It is surprising, however,
to find a Wall Street Journal editorial endorsing carbon caps
and associated market-based trading of valuable emission rights.
One can charitably attribute this misplaced exuberance to a
Pavlovian response; economists fairly sa