Last week a group of Republicans and businessmen tabled a proposal for a carbon tax, designed to replace the Obama administration’s string of environmental regulations aimed at reducing climate change-aggravating emissions. The idea is not new. It has been put forward before by energy industry representatives, including Exxon’s then CEO Rex Tillerson , now Secretary of State, as a transparent and direct way to curb the effects of CO2 emissions on climate, even though the company lobbied against carbon tax bills last year. Basically, the idea amounts to replacing regulations with taxation—the latter which would be much more efficient in achieving the ends for which the regulations were devised. Starting from US$40 per metric ton of carbon dioxide, taxes would be increased every year to motivate more aggressive efforts to curb these emissions. Annual revenues from the tax are estimated broadly in the US$200 billion to $300 billion range, […]