Friedman: Carbon tax would avoid climate cliff

NYTimes columnist Tom Friedman shows he really can’t do any math.

In his column equating U.S. debt with atmospheric carbon, Friedman advocates a carbon tax:

What would you rather do to help solve our fiscal problem: Give up your home mortgage deduction and wait two more years for Social Security and Medicare, or pay a little extra for gasoline and electricity? These will be our choices. I’d rather pay the little carbon tax, especially since it would clean up the air for our kids, drive innovation and make us less dependent on the most unstable region in the world: the Middle East.

But if you can do simple math, you can readily understand why a carbon tax is senseless.