Cap and Tax, er Trade..um Trade Our Jobs Overseas

Due to the heroics of Nancy Pelosi, and against the futile protests made by Citizen Zane to his local Representative, the House rammed a Cap and Trade bill through last Friday under the guise of stopping climate change and promoting green energy. I will point out right here that Nancy's personal carbon footprint from tooling to and from California every week in a private jet makes her look like a complete hypocrite, but that is for her to rationalize.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/24364.html

"Ooh, we are going to stop global warming and decrease our dependence on foreign oil - sounds like a can't miss prospect." I can just hear the terminally uniformed and otherwise stupid gushing as they gulp down another Diet Coke at 10:00 am. It really amazes me that even some members of Congress think that this bill is in any way a good idea.

Here's the basic premise of the bill. Entities are limited in the amount of carbon emissions that they can spew based on some government derived formula. If you are spewing out less carbon than your quota, you can sell "credits" to polluters who can't make standards and have to buy the right to pollute above quota. Over time, the quotas get stricter and stricter, so in theory, our polluters need to adjust to living without fossil fuel emissions, and then presto - global warming is amazingly stopped! Yeah Al Gore!!!

Sounds neat in theory, but like all bone-headed attempts by liberals to create utopia, it costs lots of money and will probably do more harm than good. Actually, I will go down on record saying that the benefits of this nonsense will be somewhere in negative numbers. Here's why:

Who do you think that the biggest emitters of carbon are? Yup, public utilities. If your local electric company is in the market to buy carbon credits, guess who gets to pay for them? Will it be some fat cat CEO??? Will it be the coal producer? Hmmmm, or will it be YOU? Doesn't take a genius to figure that out now, does it?

Even worse news: Manufacturers will now be subject to cap and trade, making it more expensive to produce goods here in America. That gives them two choices: 1) pass the costs on to consumers; or 2) ship the jobs overseas. Well, its always possible that China is already undercutting any business caught in cap and trade, but this will certainly not help us stay competitive. And guess what? Those third world countries that will get our manufacturing jobs are NOT subject to much environmental regulation. They use resources less efficiently and spew a lot more crap into the environment than producers in the USA could ever think of getting away with. Yup, cap and trade will end up increasing carbon into the atmosphere. Hell, that extra carbon may actually contribute to a .0001 degree increase in global temperature. That's what I need here in New York during winter. Yeah, more cap and trade, please! A reader provided this gem about the "benefits" of cap and trade in Europe

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=14411

I suppose that the idea is to promote "green" energy and to create jobs in that industry. I thought that was where a lot of the stimulus money was supposed to go!!! Weren't we going to flush a bunch of $$$ down the toilet to develop "green" energy with some of that stupidity??? If green energy is a viable source, and we develop it with stimulus money to where it is practical to use, then why do we need cap and trade to force us to use it. If green energy is available at a cost near fossil fuels, we will all jump for it, will we not?

Funny thing is, I have still not heard one single good argument for this bill. The sponsors gamely tout their desire to promote green energy and protect the environment, but those vague general promises have no substance whatsoever. Is it me or is it Congress? One of us must be stupid. Well, that and the general electorate who have no clue about what our Representatives are doing - Citizen Zane