All Rolled Into One

This post (by who else but Megan McArdle) has a little of everything:

A tax, on the other hand, makes people better off by letting consumers choose whether they want to use more efficient bulbs; turn on fewer lights; or to cut their carbon consumption somewhere else. But efficiency regulations are easier to pass because the non-cash costs are invisible

I do not pretend that Obama is perfect, but he is much less likely to favor increasing regulatory authority; his solutions tend to focus on transparency and simple rule changes rather than massive new apparatuses for extending state power.