Nor, despite Mr. Paulson's claims, is there much reason to think that adopting a U.S. carbon tax would cause Beijing to do the same. China's Communist Party, after all, flouts Western norms on human rights, on intellectual property, and even on market-based exchange rates. Why should climate be different? To the contrary, that high Party officials are extracting fortunes from the massively polluting state owned enterprises would seem to cast an especially dark shadow of doubt over hopes for change in this area. Yet Mr. Paulson, a self-proclaimed expert on avoiding needless risks, urges the United States to incur the costs of a carbon tax based mainly on the rather far-fetched hope that it will induce Beijing to change its behavior.