Light Rail

In last night's debate, Bill Richardson brought attention to a much-overlooked issue by saying that an effective campaign against catastrophic climate change will entail us building more light rail systems. Mark Steyn and Mark Hemingway responded to this not with criticism, but with asinine sniggering. I didn't think that was particularly noteworthy, since ninety-five percent of conservative commentators don't know anything about any policy questions, but Matt Zeitlin took note then Steyn took note of him and responded with . . . more sniggering.

But of course that's how it goes.

Bill Richardson did a lot of mock-worthy stuff yesterday, including the moment when he suggested that none of the costs of a cap-and-trade system would be passed on to consumers. But at the end of the day, we have four Democrats with serious plans to forestall a major environmental crisis. On the Republican side, we have Mike Huckabee who thinks global warming is a serious problem but doesn't have any particular ideas about dealing with it. We have Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and Rudy Giuliani who basically seem to be in denial. And then most bizarrely we have John McCain who acknowledges the problem, acknowledges its severity, acknowledges that the only solution is curbs on carbon emissions and then . . . won't endorse the sort of curbs that his own analysis suggests is necessary.