We shall see. One of Obama's trademark policies, cap-and-trade legislation to reduce progressively greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal, oil and natural gas (which combined provide the cheaper 80 per cent of America's energy), failed in the Senate in 2010. A number of Democratic members of the House of Representatives who had narrowly voted to pass cap-and-trade in 2009 were defeated in the 2010 congressional elections, which contributed to the Republicans winning a majority in the House. They maintained that majority in last month's election, despite Romney's loss and a gain of two Democrats in the Senate, suggesting that the electorate has not changed its mind on cap-and-trade since 2010. 

The reason is that Americans now understand that cap-and-trade is a disguised tax on energy use. It was defeated because opponents successfully educated the public that, although it was not called a tax, it was in fact a tax on consumers. Having failed to enact a sneaky tax, global warming alarmists have now turned to pushing a direct tax on emissions: a carbon tax.

On the face of it, a carbon tax seems to have no chance of being enacted. However, its proponents have a clever strategy. They are trying to convince fiscally conservative Republicans to support a carbon tax as part of a much larger tax and budget deal that will reduce the federal deficit. The appeal of a carbon tax is not its minimal contribution to saving the planet from global warming, which has no appeal to Republicans in Congress and little appeal to the American public. Rather, the case for a carbon tax is that it would raise a huge amount of revenue.

So the idea is that deficit hawks could support a carbon tax in order to cut the deficit. The problem is that there are competing claims on the revenue it would raise. Big spending liberals want a carbon tax in order to fund more government programmes. Environmentalists and investors in green energy companies want a carbon tax to subsidise green energy programmes. And yet others on the Left demand that some of the revenue be given back to poorer people, who already pay a much higher percentage of their incomes on energy than do wealthier people, so raising energy prices will hit them hard. My guess is that a carbon tax will founder over squabbles about how to divvy up the booty. Unfortunately, that is not the end of efforts to implement the alarmists' agenda.