I favor a carbon tax, but I have a number of issues with this argument.

First, the objectives of this plan do NOT square with those of Trump; giving a big boost to fossil fuel companies is one of his highest priorities. Even the Democrats are loathe to challenge entrenched money and power.

Our political system is not democracy (rule by the people) but a combination of plutocracy (rule by the rich) and putocracy (rule by the whores–meaning Congress).

The system we have ensures that virtually all lawmakers are beholden to wealthy interests, and SCOTUS has ruled that we can make no laws to change that. The only way we can get meaningful climate legislation under this bribery system is if somehow the solar and wind companies and environmentalists could pony up enough money to outbid the fossil fuel folks.

Second, even if this approach ditches denial around climate change, it still clings to the larger denial, that using it we can maintain economic growth. No. Growth is done. We are far enough into overshoot that growth can only be revived by further destroying the basis on which a small remnant of the current massive human population can survive. Yes, we can pretend that isn’t true, but while we’re at it why not pretend climate change is a hoax? It’s easy!

Finally, I have a basic problem with the philosophy that underlies conservative environmentalism and our political system, the philosophy that could be called a religion, whose ancient name is Mammon, whose modern name is neoliberalism. This is the philosophy that says that if we want pristine land and rivers, healthy soils, or clean air, we must buy it back from those who have aggregated much of the Earth into their possession.

This is the philosophy that says that a fifteen year old Brazilian kid is entitled to wake up a middle-aged cook in his household at two in the morning because he’s hungry, and demand she cook him a meal, because his family owns a million acres, because some long-ago ancestor of his was friends with a king of Portugal who never set foot in Brazil. Having been born into this family rightfully entitles him to inherit that million acres, and decree what is done with it, and evict her family and anyone else who lives there, and to buy Brazilian legislation to perpetuate and exacerbate this arrangement into the future, while she rightfully owns her own body and nothing else.

In theory, this philosophy says, when one person has, Monopoly-style, come to own the entire Earth, he would be entitled to kick everyone else off. This philosophy is WRONG, unjust, illogical and if we can’t wrench power from its adherents it will cost us, quite literally, the Earth.

Mary Wildfire, Roane County, WV