From, of all the unlikely places, Taegan Goddard’s offshoot called Political Insider. From anybody else I would just say this is nuts…but wasn’t Robert B. Reich, Secretary of Labor during the first Clinton administration, given a great deal of the credit for fixing the US budget after the last time the Republicans looted the place?

He’s got an idea. Not a “carbon tax,” which would workd but would not get passed until about the time the sun expanded to the orbit of Venus…but a carbon auction:

The best idea I’ve heard so far to deal with global warming is not a carbon tax. I can’t imagine any politician calling for higher taxes affecting the middle class, or for that matter the middle class — already squeezed by high energy prices and stagnant wages — putting up with it.

The winning idea isn’t a cap-and-trade system, either. That system would allow companies to continue polluting, just require them to buy the right to pollute more from companies that keep their dirtying to a minimum. Today’s biggest polluters — those who’ve done least to reduce their emissions — would be the biggest winners because they’d get the highest caps.

The best idea I’ve heard is described as a carbon auction. Companies would have to bid for the right to pollute. And, most ingeniously, the money raised in the auction would be shared equally by all citizens in the form of yearly dividend checks — just like the residents of Alaska now get yearly dividends for their share of the state’s oil revenues.

I mean, it’s our atmosphere, right? Think of a national park or a national forest. No company is simply allowed to take what they want from it, free of charge. Why should the atmosphere be any different?  Read more