Conservatives and a carbon tax

In fairness to Ross--and without saying Matt's wrong--there actually are a lot of conservative pundits and thinkers who support, vocally, a carbon tax. That said, Ross' media-market explanation of why there isn't even more public support for the idea strikes me as only half right. Or rather, it's entirely right, but only explains half of the the silence. The other half is that--whether it's because they've drank the Kool-Aid, or because they're lying--most other conservative pundits don't believe in global warming. Or they don't care about it. And so any conservative economic reasons they may have for supporting a carbon tax become subverted by their own interests in continuing to deny the phenomenon and to reject measures that would forestall it.

Every column that Brooks writes about carbon taxes does--at least in a symbolic way--a great service. And every post that Sullivan writes in support of them does its small part. But remember that this still leaves George Will, National Review (and their execrable, excremental blog Planet Gore), The Weekly Standard, Wall Street Journal and a non-trivial percentage of other newspapers around the country. The silence of all the rest of conservative punditry has to be explained by more than just the market. Matt's three reasons go a long way in doing that.