The Climate Change Debate: Carbon Taxes vs. Cap-and-Trade

For anyone keeping up on climate change news, they will notice that Australia has been going nuts over the subject, staging rallies in support of action on climate change under the "Say Yes" Campaign. The campaign's current demand is for a carbon tax, a per-unit fee for each unit of carbon emitted. Recently, thinking on the subject of climate legislation has moved away from the cap-and-trade legislation championed by those nasty socialists over in Europe and in the White House and towards a carbon tax. Since there are compelling arguments for both, I felt it was necessary to outline the economic argument for each one.