Clear Skies

So Al Franken has this joke that the Clear Skies Initiative is designed to clear the sky of birds. I'm a lazy man, though, and while I tend to be liberal, I need someone to explain to me what's the matter with a market approach. In fact, my faith in the market is part of what leads me to be a liberal, but more on that another time. This article in The Economists' Voice gives a pretty compelling defense of Bush's Clear Skies program. Basically, you can achieve lots of reductions in emissions at relatively low cost by allowing companies to trade the right to pollute. Like the authors of the article, I find some faults in Bush's proposal, but overall it seems like a good idea to me. The one thing I would be careful about is mercurcy, which is more of a local pollutant than a regional one and could create "hot spots." The paper addresses this issue, but not entirely persuasively.

Anyway, I would love to be proved wrong, so any liberals out there should let me know if there's something I'm missing. I'll follow up if I hear anything. Until then, with great reluctance I have to side with Bush on this one. Franken should make an argument or drop the joke.