MEGAN MCARDLE: “I have been urged to support Waxman-Markey on the grounds that we musn’t make the perfect the enemy of the good, and maybe I do. But the mediocre can also be the enemy of the good. Even if you support national healtch care, you certainly wouldn’t build Medicare in its current form. But there is path dependance in institutions: once they exist, they’re precious hard to change. Enacting a crappy climate trading system in order to do something forestalls the possibility of enacting a better design five or ten years from now. Given that this bill is universally expected to accomplish virtually no significant emissions reduction in the foreseeable future, that should worry people. Other than me, I mean.”

But the opportunities for graft are delightfully present.