The group, led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, with former Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Henry M. Paulson Jr., a former secretary of the Treasury, says<br />that taxing carbon pollution produced by burning fossil fuels is “a conservative climate solution” based on free-market principles.<br />A Conservative Climate Solution’: Republican Group Calls for Carbon Tax -<br />A group of Republican elder statesmen is calling for a tax on carbon emissions to fight climate change.<br />The Baker proposal would substitute the carbon tax for the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, a complex set of rules to regulate emissions which President Trump has pledged to repeal<br />and which is tied up in court challenges, as well as other climate regulations.<br />A survey taken just after the 2016 election by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found<br />that 66 percent of registered voters supported a carbon tax on fossil fuel companies, with the money used to reduce personal taxes.<br />Mr. Baker is scheduled to meet on Wednesday with White House officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, Jared Kushner, the senior adviser to the president,<br />and Gary D. Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, as well as Ivanka Trump.<br />He suggested that even former President Ronald Reagan would have blessed the plan: “I’m not at all sure the Gipper wouldn’t have<br />been very happy with this.” He said he had no idea how the proposal would be received by the current White House or Congress.
