Two years before policital unpopularity forced Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to abandon cap-and-trade legislation regulate carbon emissions, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., praised the idea of “mandatory carbon caps” combined with tax incentives, and said that then-President Bush should have led the charge to implement such a policy.

“I think if you have mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur, and if you have a tax-incentive program for investing in the solutions, that there’s a package there that’s very, very good,” Gingrich said during a PBS interview on February 15, 2007. “And frankly, it’s something I would strongly support.”