Since last summer's National Review article by Jim Manzi "Game Plan: What Conservatives Should Do About Global Warming," Republicans have changed their strategy for how to respond to the threat of global climate change. Before they denied there was a problem. Now they deny there's a solution.

Manzi says conservatives want policies that are "appropriately optimistic, science-based, and low-cost."

The fact that conservatives are Johnnies-come-lately to global climate issues doesn't give much street cred to begin with. They have spent years fighting against the obvious by undermining the very science they now want to use to argue for "appropriately optimistic" cost-effective solutions. Fine, we can accept the concession graciously and sportingly. Better late than never.

But what's really unfortunate is the conservatives now see climate change as the new wedge issue. Not surprisingly the underlying issue is taxes, specifically repealing the tax breaks that the big oil companies have enjoyed for years.

The Heritage Foundation says repealing the big-oil tax breaks to give fair play to the low/zero carbon economy is penalizing successful energy sources to subsidize unsuccessful ones. They miss the point that what they once considered successful is atrociously unsuccessful in a carbon constrained world. If they didn't subsidize big oil with special tax breaks, the free market might be rewarding the good sources and penalizing the bad ones. To them, "successful" is code for Fortune 500 profits based on government tax-break subsidized oil consumption and "unsuccessful" is code for suppressed new, innovative and progressive technology based on 21st Century science.

The conservatives also argue that repealing tax-break to oil companies will cause gasoline prices to go up. But nobody argues that the price will go up only about 1 cent. That's less the difference between any two gas stations in town, and if you not willing to pay that, then you're not ready to do anything about climate change.

But the real reason conservatives don't want to repeal the oil tax breaks is they don't want to hurt corporate profits. Never mind that the companies are reporting all time record profits from the high price of gasoline.

So it's no surprise that nothing is happening. Democrats are so afraid of repealing a tax break, even a grossly unfair and counterproductive one, that they're handing Republicans a victory that is going to hurt us all. It's high time Democrats fought back. No more tax breaks for big oil profits. No more suppressing low/zero carbon technology.