For the Wall Street Journal's editors, fear of a bigger government outweighs the fear of a warmer planet.

John Miller, Dollars and Sense

The Wall Street Journal's editors are celebrating having dodged a big- government bullet when the cap-and-trade global warming bill sponsored by Joe Lieberman and John Warner, as amended by Barbara Boxer, went down to defeat this June in the Senate.

But the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008 was a fairly low caliber munition in the fight against global warming. While undoubtedly the most comprehensive global warming bill ever to reach the Senate floor, its emission reductions fell well short of those called for by environmental groups or by the Clinton and Obama campaigns.
Inside Cap-and-Trade

"Cap-and-trade," introduced in the 1990 Clean Air Act to regulate sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions or acid rain, is now the favorite form of environmental regulation for politicians and big business. They find it far preferable to either command-and-control regulation, such as federal directives ordering electrical power plants to install smokestack scrubbers, or emissions taxes, such as a broad-based carbon tax.

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