Morning Bell: The Hugo Chavez Case for Cap and Trade

Conn Carroll / December 18, 2009

This morning while President Barack Obama addressed the United Nations Climate Change Conference, his allies were busy trying to shield him of the political fallout from the conference’s apparent failure to produce anything substantial. Throughout the conference, one of the biggest obstacles to an agreement was the insistence of developing nations that rich countries sign a binding treaty that included a large transfer of wealth to the developing world. If there were any doubts that wealth distribution was at the heart of climate cap-and-trade agreements, President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Hugo Chavez put them to rest when he delivered his anti-capitalist diatribe that drew thunderous applause from the convention’s delegates Wednesday:

One could say, Mr. President, that a ghost is haunting Copenhagen, to paraphrase Karl Marx, the great Karl Marx, a ghost is haunting the streets of Copenhagen, and I think that ghost walks silently through this room, walking around among us, through the halls, out below, it rises, this ghost is a terrible ghost almost nobody wants to mention it: Capitalism is the ghost, almost nobody wants to mention it. It’s capitalism, the people roar, out there, hear them.
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Socialism, the other ghost Karl Marx spoke about, which walks here too, rather it is like a counter-ghost. Socialism, this is the direction, this is the path to save the planet, I don’t have the least doubt.

And yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reported on a case study in how international cap and trade facilitates just the type of wealth distribution Chavez and his allies are fighting for: (more…)