Edwards on Cap on Emissions

He's for it, through a cap-and-trade system with an auction, starting in 2010. Best said in his interview with Rolling Stone: "I have the most aggressive plan: It calls for an 80 percent reduction by 2050 in greenhouse gases. You get there by capping carbon in America, and ratcheting down the cap every year. Beneath the cap, you auction off the right to emit any greenhouse gases, using that money — $30-$40 billion — to transform the way we use energy, which means wind, solar, and cellulose based biofuels. You put at least a billion dollars into developing carbon sequestration technology, a billion into making sure we’re building more fuel efficient vehicles."

In November 2007, he came out against the Lieberman-Warner Senate bill because it gives away pollution permits to industry for free, instead of auctioning them off. He called it "a massive corporate windfall...instead of doing what is right and selling them so that we can use these resources to invest in clean energy research and help regular families go green."