Carbon: tax, trade or deregulate?

The title of a debate/discussion between Lynne Kiesling, Ronald Bailey and Fred Smith (of CEI)-- moderated by Matt Welch in Reason...

You can here it on video by clicking here...

On August 11, 2005, Ronald Bailey, reason’s science correspondent and the author of such enviro-skeptic books as Eco-Scam: The False Prophets of Environmental Apocalypse, wrote the following words at reason online: “Anyone still holding onto the idea that there is no global warming ought to hang it up. All data sets—satellite, surface, and balloon—have been pointing to rising global temperatures. In fact, they all have had upward-pointing arrows for nearly a decade.”

Although there are still plenty of free market thinkers who aren’t yet ready to “hang it up,” the center of the debate has shifted in recent years from contested science to proposed policy. And with the prospect of an anti–global warming crusader...joining forces with a Democratic Congress carrying years of pent-up environmentalist frustration, significant new global warming regulation isn’t a matter of “if” but “how much.”...

Bailey painfully concluded that climate change “is a real problem” and reluctantly favored a tax on carbon. Kiesling pointed to the difficulty of assigning property rights to the atmosphere and tentatively came out for a “cap and trade” system of creating a market for pollution credits above a government-imposed ceiling. Smith robustly rejected both ideas in favor of private innovation....

That's the intro, click here for a text of the discussion...