Put a cap in your plan.(Letter to the editor)

Jim Manzi's suggestion that Republicans oppose cap-and-trade in Congress next year ("You Paid What for That?"; December 1) seems a good blueprint for turning the party into a permanent minority.

Obama's campaign rhetoric about reducing carbon emissions by 80 percent is obviously pure fluff. More likely is a modest cap-and-trade or carbon tax that may raise gas prices by 20 cents and electrical bills about $6 a month, and promise to reduce carbon emissions 20 percent by 2020. So what's wrong with this? Manzi concedes there are reasons to worry about global warming. Passing a law to restrict carbon emissions is no more worrisome than passing a law to prevent people from littering the sidewalk. Cap-and-trade is a market mechanism originally suggested by Milton Friedman.

Conservatives should be concentrating their firepower on the liberal environmental effort to stonewall nuclear power and replace it with windmills and solar energy, because in fact nuclear power is the only technology that will ever be able to replace fossil fuels.

William Tucker

Piermont, N.Y.

JIM MANZI REPLIES: I agree with Mr. Tucker that many government-sponsored alternative energy schemes are ...