Longtime legislator, first time blogger...

I wanted to let you know that I last week introduced a carbon tax.

The question before us is not if human activity is responsible for global climate change. There is overwhelming scientific consensus - confirmed by the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report - that we are responsible for the earth's warming. Unless we take immediate action, sea levels will rise, coastlines will flood, and storms will intensify.  

The question we face is how we will respond. Will we completely ignore the problem, as George Bush has done throughout his presidency? Will we pay lip service to the climate change threat, but do nothing about it? Or will we adopt what Matt Stoller recently termed the "cap and trade scam?"  

None of the above, I hope. Instead, we should enact a carbon tax, a simple solution to a difficult problem. Taxing carbon would immediately provide a monetary disincentive for the use of fossil fuels and an incentive for the use of renewable energy.

More after the jump.