The Last Time: Global Warming Recommendations That Will Put You In the Red

April 6th, 2007 4:44 PM

Time is money. Those words took on special meaning when Time magazine gave its readers “51 Things You Can Do to Make a Difference” and stop global warming.

Number 5: "Pay the carbon tax."

Liberalism at its finest ... taxes and more taxes. The magazine was neutral on which major government regulation should control our lives – caps or taxes. But when it came to taxes, Time writers were quick to point out even a “10% flat carbon tax” “may not be enough.” Even worse, according to the magazine, it might not be either cap-and-trade or big taxes – the “environmental equivalent of Elvis vs. the Beatles.” The publication claimed “in the end, the world may need both.”

Number 40: "Get a carbon budget."

According to Time, everyone in the world would be allocated a certain carbon output to "spend" and anyone who went overbudget would have to pay taxes on the excess. One can only hope exhaling isn't part of the calculation.

Number 36: "Play the market."

The folks at Time need to go take Econ 101 because they have a serious misunderstanding of free market economics. Time said, "environmentalists are using the force of the free market" to buy and sell carbon credits. But the government creation of an artificial market is really just another tax and there certainly isn't anything "free" about it.