Last week I noted how Steven Chu, Energy Secretary, had apparently opened the door to discussing a carbon tax as an alternative to cap-and-trade. Apparently I wasn’t the only person to find these comments curious. Today’s ClimateWire reports on follow up questions put to Chu. In typically read-the-tea-leaves fashion observers wonder whether the clarification is really a clarification or a cover for a trial ballon. Only the insiders know for sure. Here is an excerpt for ClimateWire:

Energy Secretary Steven Chu yesterday clarified comments that seemingly opened the door to support of a carbon tax.

“Secretary Chu supports a cap-and-trade system as the best way to reduce our carbon emissions and confront the climate crisis,” said Department of Energy spokeswoman Stephanie Mueller in an e-mail statement.

Her remark came in response to a largely overlooked paragraph of a New York Times interview last week. The article stated, “[Chu] said that while President Obama and congressional Democratic leaders had endorsed a so-called cap-and-trade system to control global warming pollutants, there were alternatives that could emerge, including a tax on carbon emissions or a modified version of cap-and-trade.”

His words raised eyebrows with some, since Obama has been a consistent supporter of a cap-and-trade system, which would set an overall lid on greenhouse gases. At his Senate confirmation hearing, Chu supported Obama’s ideas but added that “the simpler the cap-and-trade system is, the happier I will be.”

An executive branch official said yesterday that Chu was simply acknowledging congressional proposals on a carbon tax during the newspaper interview.

According to Thomas Mann, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution, Chu backtracked a bit in his clarification, but in a way that was “well within the tradition” for Cabinet secretaries.

A ‘gaffe’ that may have political legs

“What he said originally meets the classic definition of a gaffe: a politically awkward truth widely acknowledged by experts but one not yet allowable in the political arena,” Mann said. “Cap and trade has the virtue of obscuring the costs of carbon reduction in a way that a carbon tax does not.”

Supporters of the carbon tax, including Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson and many environmental justice advocates, continue to press their case, though. On Capitol Hill, backers include Reps. John Larson (D-Conn.) and Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), who recently wrote a Times op-ed arguing that a carbon tax — the impact of which would be offset by other tax breaks — was a palatable option to many conservatives because of its revenue neutrality (E&E Daily, Jan. 14).

Yesterday, Inglis said in a phone interview that “he sensed openness” in the administration to the tax idea, even though Chu had to publicly back the president. A “Wall Street kind of trading scheme” would not go over well these days with lawmakers, he said.