text: Obama has always favored putting a price on carbon a carbon tax as the most efficient way to achieve his goal of reducing emissions that he believes threaten life on the planet. I am not as certain as the president and his environmental supporters, and so-called emerging countries, whose beliefs on this front might just be affected by the piles of cash they want transferred to them from the likes of us, that we are at such great and immediate risk. After all, basing policy on the predictive ability of models did not ensure the enduring health of the financial system. But neither can we be certain that the climate change believers are wrong, especially when they worry that if we go forward with this sensible policy, our domestic manufacturers will be at a further cost disadvantage to Chinese exporters. Besides, here is an opportunity to replace growth-stifling taxes on work and risk-taking with a tax on pollution at a time when oil and gasoline prices are so low that a modest increase in the tax on fossil fuels would hardly be noticed.