Hiding costs

Via Ezra, via Joe Klein, I don't think this argument from Hillary Clinton holds much water:

Just before our interview, Clinton gave a speech launching her energy-independence proposal. It would drastically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by auctioning off permits to pollute and is similar to Obama's — but Obama has added a fillip of honesty by telling his audiences that the program might result in higher energy prices. I asked Clinton why she hadn't been similarly honest, and she immediately turned it around: Obama wanted to spend the proceeds of the pollution auction — perhaps as much as $50 billion — on alternative-energy research and development. "I have committed to putting money from that auction into programs to ... cushion the economic impact on working and poor families," she said. And then she added scornfully, "So if you want to go and get some debating point telling people this is going to cost you money, then I don't think you've thought through the policy as carefully as you could ... This is going to be a tough transition. It's got to be done politically. One of the ways to make it politically palatable is to rebut the Republican talking point that ... it's another huge tax increase on Americans. You know what? It isn't."

Most of the future costs of addressing climate change are completely unknown, so if there's a case to be made against Obama's politics here, it's that he may be overstating the problem--causing politically inconvenient concerns where none are needed. But he may also be understating the problem, in which case it might be a good thing that he's preparing people for the shock ahead of time. What we can say for sure is that addressing climate change will require: 1). Investment in renewable energy and 2). economic relief for poor Americans. Hillary's choosing to emphasize 2 because it's politically gentler, and that's important as far as actually getting a plan enacted goes. But as far as actually solving the problem goes, number 1 is prior here. By quite a ways.

Ideally we'd live in a country that hadn't stigmatized the word "tax" out of decency altogether so that Hillary Clinton could talk about economic assistance and Barack Obama could talk about clean energy subsidies without getting tripped up for years in the morass of selling a policy that, however it's structured, is crucially necessary. But in the mean time, both candidates are going to have to be prepared to for both programs. Obama seems to think that he can get this done without hiding the potential costs--he may be wrong. But that doesn't mean Hillary should default to a blase position on all this, because the fact remains that the cost of selling a climate change program and the cost of solving the climate crisis are fixed, and unknown, and will have to be paid for somehow.