Never motivated by serving the common good, powerful old-school Republican leaders such as James Baker, George Schultz, and Henry Paulson have put forward a proposal for a carbon emissions tax to fight climate change. You ask: why would they do this? Global warming is not good for business and even if they don’t fully buy into it, these powerful Republican men are hedging against the risk. Their plan would tax carbon heavily and send the money back to all Americans as dividend checks. Progressive green purists voted down a similar measure in the state of Washington in November but as Charles Komanoff, co-founder of the Carbon Tax Center argues here, it’s wrong to make the good the enemy of the perfect. This plan could work.