Note: This letter to the editor appeared in the Wall Street Journal on July 20th, 2022 in response to the Journal’s July 9, 2022 op-ed titled “Is a Carbon Tax the Only Way to Stop the Greens?”

Mr. Jenkins is not correct that a carbon tax would “bring us all the energy we want . . . without running a gantlet of environmentalists trying to shut [fossil energy] down.” The opposition to oil and gas is fundamentally ideological, derived from opposition to modern industrial society, which would be impossible without fossil fuels. The left opposes a carbon tax because the revenues will expand the political coalition favoring robust fossil-fuel production and carbon-tax revenues over the long run.

Besides, a reduction in capital taxation financed with an increase in energy costs is not viable politically. Even a carbon tax adopted on an international basis would have an impact on climate phenomena close to zero. Efforts to minimize the adverse competitive effects of a carbon tax in the context of international trade would be hugely complex, and would engender a massive shift toward resource allocation driven by government.