The opponents were right last week when, in the U.S. Senate, they blocked further consideration of the cap-and-trade system for reducing greenhouse gases.

The measure was up for a vote to end a filibuster and needed 60 votes. It only got 48. Not even close.

The cap-and-trade approach has been thoroughly lambasted as the wrong way to go. It puts the government in charge of allocating permits to discharge certain amounts of carbon dioxide and certain other greenhouse gases. For these permits the government would charge huge fees. Companies that didn't need their entire permits could sell the extra capacity to those that needed more than they were allocated.

The immediate upshot is that citizens and taxpayers get much higher bills for everything that takes energy to produce or transport. The government gets a lot more revenue to spend on whatever the majority in Congress or the president wants to spend it on. And greenhouse gases are not necessarily reduced, since in many cases they are emitted as a matter of necessity.

Some have suggested a carbon tax instead. But the effect on taxpayers would be the same.

Where do the policymakers get the idea that most working Americans have a lot of extra cash lying around, cash they would be willing to send the government as a carbon tax?

Already, energy costs and prices are going through the roof. Will not that trend alone lead to less consumption gradually, and therefore less production of greenhouse gases?

If the only way to be "green" is to tax people more, being green might just have to wait.

If we wait long enough, maybe somebody will come through with persuasive evidence that the next ice age is only a few hundred years away, and the only thing that can save mankind is to pump as much greenhouse gas into the air as it will hold. (hh)