Respectfully offered as a tribute to Robert Stavins as part of the 2014 Miller Upton Forum at Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin.

The Beloitysburg Address

Four score and seven months ago [i.e., about 2007] brave political leaders brought forth on this continent some new climate policies, conceived in economic liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all external costs should be internalized.

Now we are engaged in a great political war, testing whether those policies, or any policies so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

We are met on a potential battlefield of that war, and we have come to dedicate a portion of our lives to honor the work of one who is devoting his life to putting a price on pollution.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what he has done here.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that we here highly resolve that these economic theories shall not have been scribbled in vain—–that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of economic freedom and environmental protection—–and that the governments and peoples on this earth, of this earth, and—whether we like it or not—over this earth, shall not perish from this earth.