Carbon Offsets, Carbon Credits, Emissions Trading, Cap-and-Trade

Call it what you will... it's a tax on everything.

The entire business of carbon trading and carbon credits is based on the erroneous assumptions that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, that it causes global warming, that global warming is a bad thing, and that the process can be reversed through legislation. The Coming Climate Dictatorship.  The House and Senate climate bills contain a provision giving the president extraordinary powers in the event of a "climate emergency."  As chief of staff Rahm Emanuel says, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.  If you thought the House health care bill that nobody read has hidden passages that threaten our freedoms and liberty, take a peak at the "trigger" placed in the byzantine innards of both the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill and the Kerry-Boxer bill just passed by Democrats out of Sen. Barbara Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee. Boxer-Kerry Cap-and-Tax Hides Costly Mandate.  Under the direction of Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.), the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed its Boxer-Kerry cap and trade national energy tax bill in early November by an 11-1 vote — right before the week-long Veterans' Day break.  The seven Republicans on the committee walked out of the markup, refusing to participate in the process saying they hadn't been given adequate time to read the massive tax bill.  Imagine that. Leading Climate Scientist:  Cap and Trade Could Ruin US Economy.  As debate over climate change legislation heats up on Capitol Hill, the Director of the University of Montana's Climate Change Studies Program, and a co-author of a Nobel Prize winning report, says cap and trade legislation could ruin the US economy. Save the planet?  Kill cap-and-trade.  If members of Congress need yet another reason to kill the Waxman-Markey bill, the Obama administration's economy-suffocating, job-destroying energy program, Princeton University's Tim Searchinger and his colleagues have a humdinger:  Carbon reduction laws encourage widespread deforestation as trees and other vegetation are harvested to produce energy from biomass to replace oil and gas. Don't buy those carbon credits just yet.  Democrats' cap-and-trade climate change bill contains a provision that could suddenly render useless the carbon credits it creates, says Sen. David Vitter, R-La.  Vitter will speak at a press conference later today [11/10/2009] on how the bill establishes emergency conditions requiring the president to step in and use all of his authority over relevant agencies to stop global warming. Obama's Health Care Rot, Calls For A Massive Boycott.  Both nationalized health care and cap and trade are red herrings of the highest magnitude and represent one of the greatest cons and Ponzi schemes ever devised by man.  Neither is supported by science, a national need, nor is either constitutional.  Either one will break the bank.  Both of them together will sink the good ship America in a sea of red ink where it will rot forever on the rocky bottom, never to surface again. Did someone mention Obamacare? Text of Suppressed EPA Report.  The title of the internal EPA report is "Proposed NCEE Comments on Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act."  The "Preface" of this report includes this statement:  "As discussed in these comments, we believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA before any attempt is made to reach conclusions on the subject." Scrap Cap-and-Trade.  There's much debate about the efficacy of controlling pollutants with economic incentives, also known as cap-and-trade.  Its advocates dress it up with a lot of moral indignation.  Cap-and-trade would not achieve its goals — and it would put America on a ruinous course.  Here's why:  The price tag would be huge.  Cap-and-trade would raise prices for the energy we get from natural gas, coal, and oil.  Putting a tax on carbon means that every American who flips a light switch, turns a car key, or buys anything made or shipped in this country will pay more. None Dare Call It Fraud.  Imagine the reaction if investment companies provided only rosy stock and economic data to prospective investors; manufacturers withheld chemical spill statistics from government regulators; or medical device and pharmaceutical companies doctored data on patients injured by their products.  Media frenzies, congressional hearings, regulatory investigations, fines and jail sentences would come faster than you can say Henry Waxman.  If those same standards were applied to global warming alarmists, many of them would be fined, dismissed and imprisoned; sanity might prevail, and the House-Senate cap-and-tax freight train would come to a screeching halt. Read the bills?  How about reading the Constitution?  [Scroll down slowly]  Read to Vote's efforts earned them a condescending Washington Post editorial last month, complaining that their proposal "would bring government to a standstill."  (Heaven forbid.)  "To read all 1,427 pages of Waxman-Markey," the Post fretted, "it would take at least 12 hours — tough on a tight legislative timeline."  Is reading the cap and trade bill tough?  Tough.  If you're planning to regulate every industrial process in America, you may have to do some heavy slogging. Reasonable Respones to Climate Change.  The U.S. Senate will debate a cap-and-trade proposal in fall 2009 under the American Clean Energy and Security Act. ... Climate researcher Chip Knappenberger estimates the bill would only reduce global temperatures by about one-tenth of a degree by 2050.  The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates it would reduce U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.2 percent over the period from 2012 to 2030 — but other organizations estimate the cost to be much higher. Nike, Starbucks and Other Team Up With the Left to Sell Cap-and-Trade.  Every day we have an opportunity to vote with our wallets by letting companies know there is a price to pay for colluding with those who oppose our values. Capping and Trading for Profit.  I worked for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and its predecessor, the Federal Power Commission, for 32 years, and that experience taught me that no corporation or utility acts in the interest of the American environmental or social conscience.  You can be assured that Nike, Apple and the three utilities want a cap-and-trade bill to pass the House and Senate because it will strengthen their position in the marketplace and increase their profits. Dictator Obama and Reaching the Point of No Return.  In virtually everything they say and do, Obama, the US House of Representatives and the US Senate have made it crystal clear that they do not care what We-the-People want.  They are now talking only amongst themselves and taking only their own counsel.  They want control OVER us — purely and simply.  And they're gaining more and more of it each and every day.  Cap and Trade (now called the "Climate Bill") will not help the climate.  But, it will take more of the people's assets and give them to the UN. More about Obama's potential as a Marxist dictator. Inhofe:  Climate Bill Is a Costly Non-Solution.  No matter how many times Congress debates it, and no matter how environmentalists couch it, cap-and-trade will do virtually nothing to stop global warming, and cap-and-trade, as Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) said, "is a tax, and a great big one."  These are the fundamentals in the cap-and-trade debate, and Republicans must refocus on them. Climate assumptions from another planet.  As the 821-page Kerry-Boxer climate bill gets fast-tracked in the Senate, as a companion to the 1427-page House bill, it is critical that we reexamine the assumptions behind cap-tax-and-trade legislation.  The Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Information Administration and other optimistic analysts claim America can limit and tax hydrocarbon use, and switch to "ecologically friendly" renewable energy, with minimal harm to families, businesses and jobs.  Their low-ball cost estimates are based on assumptions that can only have come from another planet. New Report Exposes Special Interests Tied to Cap-and-Trade Bill.  In what has become standard practice in Congress with important legislation with wide-ranging implications, Waxman-Markey's 309-page manager's amendment containing many of the provisions "used to cajole last-minute supporters ... was not made public until 3 a.m. the morning of the vote and was still being collated into the official text as members were being asked to vote on final passage." Congress Plots to Cap and Spend.  [Scroll down]  The CBO itself characterizes the creation of the allowances as a new source of tax revenue.  And it's right to do so.  If Congress created these allowances and then auctioned them off, it would generate $1 trillion in new revenue for the government.  The need to pay for those allowances would, however, put a dent in corporate profits.  And some firms would cut back production and either lay off workers or reduce their pay. GE appears to be Obama's Halliburton. Cap and Trade.  So why would Obama push so hard for Cap and Trade, knowing what it does to the people and the economy... The answer is:  GE, yes General Electric.  GE stands to gain billions of dollars from this program through the stimulus bill and the purposed budget.  GE is receiving the contracts for wind turbines, and a new power grid.  GE's stock is down 37% in the last 5 years, they need their green technologies division to pull them out.  This is why Obama and the democrats are pushing the "Climate Change" issue. Kerry'd Away on Cap and Trade.  All told, sources tell [The American Spectator] that as many as 15 Senate Democrats are either opposed to cap and trade or on the fence.  It would take as few as four to deny the majority the votes for cloture, which means that Kerry-Boxer would fall to a filibuster unless the Democratic leadership — already tangled in the weeds of health care — wanted to try to ram it through using the reconciliation process. Caught in a lie.  The Treasury Department has been sitting on some data that gives the lie to the administration claim that the cap and trade bill will not substantially affect the average American taxpayer. "Cap" Industrial Competitiveness and "Trade" Domestic Jobs.  Waxman-Markey will undoubtedly "cap" industrial competitiveness and "trade" domestic manufacturing jobs abroad for an entirely undefined environmental benefit.  We can do better. Cap and Trade.  So why would Obama push so hard for Cap and Trade, knowing what it does to the people and the economy... The answer is:  GE, yes General Electric.  GE stands to gain billions of dollars from this program through the stimulus bill and the purposed budget.  GE is receiving the contracts for wind turbines, and a new power grid.  GE's stock is down 37% in the last 5 years, they need their green technologies division to pull them out.  This is why Obama and the democrats are pushing the "Climate Change" issue. The Green Depression:  Wouldn't it be cool if the economy shrank even more?  John Kerry seems to think so.  John Kerry, the former junior senator from Massachusetts who by the way served in Vietnam, is leading the effort in the Senate to pass Cap'n Trade, a measure to combat so-called global warming by imposing massive taxes on energy. Exposing the Special Interests Behind Waxman-Markey.  It is widely agreed that H.R. 2454, cosponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.), is not an environmental bill.  This may seem counterintuitive because the drumbeat for global warming legislation was consistently used as cover to advance the scheme.  No, Waxman-Markey is about control.  The more of the bill you read and the more of the players around the plan you examine, the clearer it becomes who stands to benefit and why. Cap-and-Trade Is Dead.  Long Live Cap-and-Trade.  President Obama's risky perseverance on health care is running over another of his pet government expansions — the cap-and-trade bill sent by the House on June 26 for Senate consideration.  Recall that cap-and-trade is complex legislation with a very simple premise:  make energy so expensive to consume that Americans use less of it, and "greenhouse gas" emissions are thereby curtailed.  But even though it's now clear the bill is not getting out of Congress, look for the Obama Administration to saddle our economy with this huge new energy tax through other means. Live by the Sword...  A bill in Congress to curb global warming has a lot of Texans boiling.  The bill proposes to make some companies pay for the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases they emit, gases that scientists believe are contributing to rising temperatures.  And that puts the Lone Star State, which produces more emissions than any other state and even some big industrialized countries like Canada, squarely in the cross-hairs. The Dog Ate Global Warming.  [Scroll down slowly]  So the question remains:  What was destroyed or lost, when was it destroyed or lost, and why?  All of this is much more than an academic spat.  It now appears likely that the U.S. Senate will drop cap-and-trade climate legislation from its docket this fall — whereupon the Obama Environmental Protection Agency is going to step in and issue regulations on carbon-dioxide emissions.  Unlike a law, which can't be challenged on a scientific basis, a regulation can.  If there are no data, there's no science. A Secret White House Power Grab Is In Full Swing.  It's one thing for President Obama to surround himself with the advisers he'd like to have, but it's another to bestow on them sweeping powers to broker secret negotiations and push forward vast new regulations that could cost American families thousands of dollars. ... Driving the push for this massive power grab and circumvention of the elected branches is a key White House official who avoided Senate confirmation by being installed not as EPA director, but instead as White House Climate Czar:  Carol Browner. A Secret Cap and Trade Tax of $1,761 Per Family?  At the Values Voter Summit Saturday, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said of cap and trade legislation that "the Obama team had secretly calculated that his plan would cost the average American family $1,761 a year, the equivalent to a 15 percent income tax hike." Cap-And-Trade Is Refinery Killer.  A new study shows that Waxman-Markey will increase prices at the pump, deepen our dependence on foreign oil and shred our ability to turn crude into gasoline.  Even fuel-efficient cars will still need fuel. Stop 'emotionalizing' the cap-and-trade debate.  Environmental activists who favor anti-global warming regulations like the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill now before the U.S. Senate have long claimed that government intervention is essential to save the planet from an imminent man-made catastrophe.  In fact, only Waxman-Markey threatens to be a man-made catastrophe. ... The approach won't work because it would use a government mandate to create a market for which there is no consumer demand. Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year.  The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent. There's a sucker boarding every minute. New kiosks at SFO first to sell carbon offsets.  Travelers flying out of San Francisco International Airport can be the first in the nation to wipe away some of the damage their flights wreak on the planet by swiping their credit cards. Climate bill would bloat federal agencies.  The House-passed climate change bill, if enacted, would expand the federal government so much that it would take billions of dollars and thousands of new employees to implement.  Now-obscure federal agencies such as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would have to become mini-behemoths in order to handle their expanded responsibilities.  Congress would have to appropriate billions of dollars for more bureaucrats, much of which is not reflected in the House bill. Will the Pentagon Fight Global Warming?  It had to happen.  Because every other argument has failed them, the global warmists in Congress have adopted a new tactic in their bid to save their faltering "cap and trade" global warming bill: they are wrapping themselves in the flag.  Led by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA), the greens insist that combating [sic] global warming is the preeminent long-term national security issue facing the United States. Energy workers rally against climate plan.  Local energy workers jammed a downtown Houston theater today [8/18/2009] to protest climate change legislation that the U.S. Senate will take up in the coming weeks.  The Energy Citizens rally, promoted by some major energy companies and business organizations as well as the Greater Houston Partnership, is the first of several such events planned in 19 states in the coming weeks. Study:  Global warming bill could cost 2.4 million jobs, $1,250 per household.  A carbon emissions plan under consideration in Washington aimed at global warming and climate change could cost the U.S. economy between 1.8 million and 2.4 million jobs over the next two decades. Obama's Wrapping Paper.  Perhaps by accident, but more likely by design, President Obama may have very well found the new cover he can apply to the statist ambitions he has for America:  "Saving the Planet."  If Obama is somehow able to get his much desired Cap and Trade legislation, already passed by the House, through Senate, it would open the door for all sorts of new laws and regulations that would seriously compromise the way of life that American have been accustomed to. ACES Up Her Sleeve.  Well before Barack Obama brought hope to the White House, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi was adamant that something new and different and wonderful had arrived.  In 2006, the incoming Speaker pledged that hers would be the "most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history."  At the time, we were skeptical — to say the least.  Our refusal to accept her rhetoric was roundly vindicated last week.  That was when Madam-Speaker used every dirty trick at her disposal to coldly ram a 1,500 page global warming bill through the House of Representatives. 'Cap and Trade':  1000+ Pages of Economic Chaos.  The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, more commonly known as the Cap and Trade Bill, is dangerous for the country and potentially disastrous for the economy.  I cannot say this more simply.  This bill which is designed to lower emissions and stop global warming will do nothing except raise the average Americans' expenses and cause the loss of many American jobs. Climate bill may fall by the wayside.  With the fight over health care reform absorbing all the bandwidth on Capitol Hill, Democrats fear a major climate change bill may be left on the cutting-room floor this year.  A handful of key senators on climate change are almost guaranteed to be tied up well into the fall on health care. Waxman-Markey Bill Would Raise Electricity Prices $846 Billion.  The Waxman-Markey bill to restrict carbon dioxide emissions would cost $846 billion in the next decade alone, in the form of required payments for emissions allowances, according to a June 5 report from the Congressional Budget Office.  The bill has been approved by the U.S. House of Representatives and is pending action in the Senate. Food prices to surge under emissions trading scheme.  Shoppers face a jump in grocery prices of up to 7 percent under Labor's scheme to reduce carbon emissions, prompting calls for the Rudd government to come up with a compensation package to help low- and middle-income families.  Big retailers have warned the government that the proposed emissions trading scheme would add between 4 and 7 percent to shopping bills in what would be a de facto tax on food. Waxman-Markey Deserves to Die.  Most of America's states and communities didn't much like the bill.  No wonder, for it would regulate many things — energy, wages, imported goods, corporations, states, cities, buildings and houses, snowmobiles, lawn mowers, light fixtures, candelabra base lamps and many others — while containing broad exemptions for regulation of agribusiness, ethanol and biofuels.  The Waxman-Markey bill would be without question the biggest expansion of federal government control over our economy since the 1930s. Be honest with U.S. farmers about cap-and-trade.  Essentially, as the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has described it, cap-and-trade pushes consumers away from fossil fuels by making them more expensive.  For agriculture, it could mean a direct hit on our competitiveness with no environmental benefit.  Crops are grown locally, but our producers must compete globally.  We know without question that if the United States acts alone, we will have accomplished nothing with regard to the global climate. Australia carbon trading scheme blocked in parliament.  Australia could have a snap election after opposition and Greens senators blocked the progress of the world's most ambitions carbon trading scheme through the parliament's upper house.  The government-backed plan would force the country's 1,000 worst polluters to buy carbon dioxide permits, covering 75 percent of national emissions, in an attempt to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 5 to 25 percent by 2020. Obama's Pitchforks:  [Scroll down]  Next came Cap and Trade.  Americans know that the Global Warming crowd has a history of doomsday prophecies that have not happened, yet is attempting to rush through the Cap and Trade law which would increase our utility bills by hundreds, if not thousands of dollars per year for no apparent reason at all. Vote For Dave.  Dave McArthur owns a few bakeries in St Louis, Missouri; McArthur's Bakery. ... Dave asked — no, ... he begged his representative Russ Carnahan (D-MO) to tell him exactly how the cap and trade bill will affect him.  In fact Dave merely wants to know if there is a maximum amount he can see in natural gas and electricity prices as a result of the bill.  It's a yes or no answer.  Yes, there is a maximum amount or no there is no maximum amount. ... At the time Dave asked Russ Carnahan the simple question, the good Congressman had not yet read the bill for which he voted. Americans Are Beginning to Understand the Left.  The left everywhere seeks to make as big and powerful a state as possible.  It does so because only the state can redistribute society's wealth.  And because only a strong and powerful state can impose values on society.  The idea of small government, the American ideal since its inception, is the antithesis of the left's ideal.  The cap-and-trade bill's control of American energy and the ObamaCare takeover of American health care will mean an unprecedented expansion of the state.  Added to increased taxes and the individual becomes less and less significant as the state looms ever larger. CBO Lowballs Waxman-Markey Cost.  Supporters of economy-killing cap-and-trade legislation not only misquote the Congressional Budget Office's report lowballing the costs.  They ignore how CBO cooked the books to get its numbers. Meet Al Gore — your new interior designer.  Just how bad is cap-and-trade for Kentucky and America?  If it becomes law, it will provide every American with a new interior decorator — Al Gore.  Bet you didn't know that was included in the deal, did you?  It will force all of us to spend thousands of dollars to upgrade our homes with new energy efficient windows, doors and even appliances before we sell or borrow against equity. Is Cap-And-Trade Just Political Posturing?  If Not, It Could Mean Economic Suicide.  President Obama's climate change legislation, the so-called "clean energy" bill, has passed the House of Representatives and is now being debated in the Senate.  The president claims the bill will "spark a clear energy transformation that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and confront the carbon pollution that threatens our planet."  In reality, the bill will have no impact whatsoever on global warming. The 'Cap And Tax' Dead End.  There is no shortage of threats to our economy.  America's unemployment rate recently hit its highest mark in more than 25 years and is expected to continue climbing.  Worries are widespread that even when the economy finally rebounds, the recovery won't bring jobs.  Our nation's debt is unsustainable, and the federal government's reach into the private sector is unprecedented. Cap and trade — The path to 'global governance'.  It's been nearly a year since President Barack Obama spoke in Berlin as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.  There, he described himself as not merely a citizen of the United States, but as a "fellow citizen of the world."  What was originally a rhetorical flourish has become a particularly revealing indicator of the president's sentiments on national sovereignty. EPA Cover-Up.  "Cap and trade" is first a massive indirect tax on the American people and hence another source of revenue for Congress.  More importantly "cap and trade" is just about the most effective tool for controlling most economic activity short of openly declaring ourselves a communist nation and it's a radical environmentalist's dream come true.  So why the rush and the press on the Senate?  Increasing evidence is emerging that far from there being global warming, the Earth has been cooling and has been doing so for 10 years. Cap and Trade spells disaster.  [Scroll down]  To see how extreme HR 2454 is, one need only go to page 106-107 of the bill.  "Congress finds that the status of oil as a strategic commodity which derives from its domination of the transportation sector presents a clear and present danger to the United States."  With this one statement, House Democrats have declared war on the oil industry.  Currently, oil is supplying the vast majority of this country's energy requirements.  While we need to continue to diversify our energy supplies, we cannot ignore reality. The Carbonated Congress.  Even if the law works as intended, over the next decade or two real U.S. greenhouse emissions might be reduced by 2% compared to business as usual.  However, consumers would still face higher prices for electric power, transportation and most goods and services as this inefficient and indirect tax flowed down the energy chain.  The sound bite is that this policy would only cost households "a postage stamp a day."  But that's true only as long as the program doesn't really cut emissions.  The goal here is to tell voters they'll pay nothing in order to get the cap-and-tax bureaucracy in place — even though the whole idea is to raise prices to change American behavior. Green nonsense.  Waxman-Markey contains unpleasant surprises for Americans, including a provision which could prevent homeowners from selling their homes if they aren't retrofitted to meet federal "green" guidelines.  But the House passed the 1,400-page bill before its members had an opportunity to read it, much less ponder its implications.  Let's pray the Senate is more responsible. Cap and traitors.  Conservative activists are angry at eight Republican members of the House of Representatives for voting in favor of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), which passed the House June 26.  They are right to be angry, but their outrage is misplaced.  With the exception of New Jersey's Rep. Christopher H. Smith, these so-called RINOs (Republicans in name only) represent districts that voted for President Obama after he campaigned on a promise to fight global warming at any cost.  As such, they were only following the misguided will of their constituents. Just another myth used to steal your taxes.  While a 1,000-page bill with a one-day imperative to pass it was being rammed through the House, 300 pages worth of pork amendments were inserted in the wee hours of the night in order to buy certain congressmen's votes (a catfish museum is coming soon to a congressional district near you).  Apparently, Congress is breathlessly trying to save the environment in one day. Byrd Blasts 'Cap and Trade'.  He is not yet back to work in the Senate chamber, but U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd is opposing "cap and trade" legislation pushed by the Obama administration. ... "I cannot support the House bill in its present form," Byrd said in a statement.  "I continue to believe that clean coal can be a 'green' energy. Obama's drive for climate change bill hits delay.  As President Barack Obama encouraged world leaders meeting in Italy to intensify the fight against global warming, legislation to cut U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases suffered a delay in the Senate on Thursday.  The leading Senate committee responsible for developing the climate change legislation has delayed by at least a month its crafting of a bill, leaving less time for Congress to fulfill Obama's desire to enact a law this year. The Commissars of Cool.  The two most invasive means our central government has at its disposal to control American lives and livelihoods are taxation and regulation, and this bill is a double header.  It authorizes BHO's government to collect substantial new taxes and to exercise unprecedented economic control via new environmental regulations, all against a backdrop of the worst economic decline since Jimmy Carter was at the helm. Killing Cap & Trade.  The refusal of China and India to go along with the carbon-dioxide limits should be the death knell for the Cap and Trade bill currently being considered by the Senate.  The legislation is a pretty hard sell.  Even advocates admit restrictions would only have a small effect — only a fraction of 1° Celsius, a virtually unnoticeable .07° — on global temperatures by 2050. Commerce Secretary:  Americans 'Need to Pay' for Chinese Emissions.  With the U.S. secretaries of energy and commerce in China this week, much of the attention focused on the standoff over emissions reductions or small breakthroughs in clean-tech cooperation.  But yesterday [7/16/2009], Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said something amazing — U.S. consumers should pay for part of Chinese greenhouse-gas emissions. Small Businesses Irate Over Climate Change Bill.  The revolution will not be televised:  it's been blinking along on a giant bakery sign in St. Louis, Mo., instead.  Fed up with his congressman's vote on a sweeping climate-change bill that passed the House of Representatives in late June, the proprietor of McArthur's Bakery took to his street sign and posted a clear message to all passersby:  "Russ Carnahan voted to ... close us and other ... small business." Bound to Burn.  We rich people can't stop the world's 5 billion poor people from burning the couple of trillion tons of cheap carbon that they have within easy reach.  We can't even make any durable dent in global emissions — because emissions from the developing world are growing too fast, because the other 80 percent of humanity desperately needs cheap energy, and because we and they are now part of the same global economy.  What we can do, if we're foolish enough, is let carbon worries send our jobs and industries to their shores, making them grow even faster, and their carbon emissions faster still.  We don't control the global supply of carbon. House climate bill wouldn't cut U.S. oil dependence much.  Despite its title as the "American Clean Energy and Security Act," the energy and climate bill that the House of Representatives passed recently takes only a modest step toward reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil.  Two studies project that the legislation would cut oil use in the future, but not enough to make much of a dent in dependence on oil from unstable or unfriendly foreign suppliers. Climate bill gives huge powers to government.  In less than a year, we have witnessed a government takeover of banks and lending institutions, a presidential firing of an executive at a major corporation — General Motors — and the toppling of established U.S. bankruptcy laws to the benefit of the president's political allies.  But this breathtaking claim of power may pale in comparison to the impact Americans will feel from enactment of the so-called American Clean Energy and Security Law, which has been passed by the Democratic-controlled House. Energy Bill Text Says It Will Cost Americans Money.  The text of the "cap-and-trade" energy bill, which passed the House of Representatives late last month, contains a frank admission that all Americans will experience "loss in their purchasing power" — meaning a rise in electricty and energy costs.  The bill also lays out an Energy Refund Program to offset the higher energy costs, but only for low-income households. Q and A on the Climate Bill.  The climate bill approved by the House last month started out as an idea — fight global warming — and wound up looking like an unabridged dictionary.  It runs to more than 1,400 pages, swollen with loopholes and giveaways meant to win over un-green industries and wary legislators. Cap-and-Trade and Inconvenient Truths.  The earth no more has a fever than Al Gore has a clue.  But the science that continues to contest and debunk the nonsense Gore and the warmers have pushed out there is having a tough time overcoming the institutional impetus of a Congress, which is ideologically vested in the old message.  And, of course, there's the massive amounts of money and power (both for the government and certain private sources which have helped foment this panic) to be derived from legislation such as cap-and-trade. Cap and Trade:  The Big Con.  Masquerading as an instrument of environmental salvation, the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill will result in one of the largest seizures of wealth in human history.  The legislation will wreak havoc on American manufacturing and industry, and coerce the conformity of an already economically squeezed populace.  The bill is a transparent power grab, based on a fictional crisis — the left's ever-dependable threat of global warming. The Empirical President.  The Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges that under Waxman-Markey, emissions of CO2 will not be reduced by the year 2020.  The Waxman/Markey bill will have little to no impact on world production of greenhouse gases, which are supposed to be responsible for global temperature increases that stopped nearly a decade ago. EPA's Game of Global Warming Hide-and-Seek.  In March, Alan Carlin, a senior research analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency, asked agency officials to distribute his analysis on the health effects of greenhouse gases. ... But Carlin's study didn't fit the blame-human-activity narrative, so it didn't make the cut. ... The EPA now justifies the suppression of the study because economist Carlin (a 35-year veteran of the agency who also holds a B.S. in physics) "is an individual who is not a scientist."  Neither is Al Gore.  Nor is energy czar Carol Browner.  Nor is cap-and-trade shepherd Nancy Pelosi. The Decline of Thinking.  The political establishment's response to the global warming doubts raised by EPA researcher, Alan Carlin, is remarkable.  The mantra chanted by one EPA official — and dutifully echoed across the media — is that Mr. Carlin "is not a scientist."  This fact, of course, has not kept Al Gore from becoming the patron saint of the environmental religion.  (Gore received his PhD in which of the recognized sciences?)  An assertion of this sort is evidence of the anti-intellectualism that has metastasized across academia and spread to other venues of expression. Cap-and-suppress.  [Scroll down]  Moreover, the report said, "Given the downward trend in temperatures since 1998 (which some think will continue until 2030) there is no particular reason to rush into decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data."  Which is why President Obama and the Democrats are rushing their blatantly socialistic and massively expensive cap-and-trade bill through Congress.  They want it to become law before the global-warming theory unravels completely.  So if Americans don't speak up now, they will be saddled with this multitrillion-dollar monstrosity that purports to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Cap and Trade; a Solution to a Non-existent Problem with Devastating Consequences.  D.H. Lawrence said, "Never trust the teller.  Trust the tale."  But what happens if the tale is wrong?  What happens if the teller knows or should know the tale is wrong?  The key word is trust.  A relationship must have trust.  A society can only exist with trust.  Political leaders can only succeed with trust.  Trust cannot exist when an unnecessary end is reached by false means, which is happening with the US climate and energy policies. These People Truly Hate America.  Far too many Americans were distracted by other things to notice that on Friday, June 26th, 211 House Democrats and 8 Republicans defiantly thumbed their noses at the will of their constituents and passed the largest tax increase in the nation's history.  The "Cap-and-Trade" bill will likely kill two or three real jobs for every so-called green job it creates.  If this bill passes the Senate, the president's signature will make it the law of the land. If that happens, look for your utility bills to increase by fifty percent. Capping and Trading Away Our Jobs.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says this is a jobs bill, "Jobs, jobs, jobs."  Unfortunately, the jobs created in alternative energy sources will be more than offset by job losses; and the "millions" of jobs that the bill is supposed to create can indeed be outsourced.  In fact, GE is already importing wind turbines from its plants in China, Germany and Spain to supply wind farms in the United States. The Censorious Left's Global Warming Denier Deniers.  There is so much misinformation on the subject of global warming and so little consensus — as to what environmental changes are occurring, whether human behavior is contributing to them, whether they are causing significant environmental damage, and whether the proposed cap and trade legislation would do anything to alleviate any of this — it is no wonder our freedom-hating majority in the House insisted on cramming it through before they could even read, much less digest, what it contained. Last-Minute Amendment to Cap-and-Trade Bill Includes Indecipherable Provisions.  Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) inserted a last-minute 310-page amendment into the cap-and-trade climate change bill just hours before the bill reached a House vote last Friday evening, and the amendments included indecipherable provisions for something called a "central procurement state."  Lawmakers, who eventually passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 on a 219-212 vote, had little time to review the lengthy amendment, which was posted at 3:09 a.m. Friday, less than 15 hours before the 5:30 p.m. vote. Obama downplays global warming in effort to sell new regulations.  Touting the economic benefits of his energy bill while playing down the climate change aspects, President Barack Obama expressed confidence the measure will clear the Senate. ... The House late last week narrowly approved a bill that includes a cap-and-trade provision requiring industry to reduce emissions associated with climate change by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. Democrats Admit That Their Cap and Trade Bill Is a Job Killer.  In her remarks bringing the debate over the climate bill to a close, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California urged her colleagues to vote in favor of the cap and trade bill, saying the measure was about four things:  "jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs."  She was right — the House-passed version of cap and trade is all about jobs:  jobs lost, jobs never created, jobs sent overseas, and, unbelievably, jobs people will be paid for doing long after they cease to exist. Smoke gets in your ice.  Many Americans find the debate in Washington over adopting a "cap-and-trade" program to reduce carbon dioxide a bit confusing.  That's understandable.  Put simply, it's a tax on energy consumption.  In fact, it would be a huge tax.  If enacted, cap-and-trade would be one of the government's largest revenue sources within the next decade.  It also would break one of President Obama's promises.  In his speech before Congress in February, he said, "If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime."  Unless you use energy, apparently. Republicans who helped pass "cap and trade" benefitted from environmental donations.  House Republicans who received campaign donations from environmental groups helped make up the narrow margin of votes needed to send the Waxman-Markey "cap and trade" bill over to the U.S. Senate.  The legislation passed by a vote of just 219 to 212 on Friday 6/26/2009 with critical assistance from eight Republicans. U.S. Will Suffer So Dems Can 'Save the Planet'.  The recently passed House bill on global warming is a 1,500-page political sucker punch that could give family finances a bloody nose and ultimately flatten the economy while proponents pretend it will save the planet.  In and of itself, it won't do an inch of good.  Assume if you want that all the talk of unperturbed greenhouse gases finally frying us is true and that the bill would slowly reduce carbon emissions in the United States to roughly the level of 100 years ago.  The impact of holding down an increase in world temperatures by the end of this century would still be something utterly unnoticeable. Before cap and trade, how about proof and truth?  While campaigning, Obama claimed, "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates will necessarily skyrocket."  But now he claims it will only cost the price of a postage stamp a day.  Designed to combat global warming (well, "climate change" as they now call it to give themselves a measure credibility since global temperatures have actually dropped over the last decade), cap and trade will do little to help our planet. Cap and confuse.  Here's how to get a dubious bill into law, or at least past the U.S. House of Representatives, which last week deserved to be called the lower chamber:  First, make the bill long.  Very long.  So long no one may actually read it, supporters or opponents.  Make even a key amendment 310 pages long.  Introduce this horse-choker of an amendment at 3 in the morning of the day of the roll-call vote.  So it can't be examined too closely or too long.  Only after the bill passes may its true costs emerge.  To cite an old proverb we just made up: Pass in haste, repent at leisure. They Hate the American We Love.  Far too many Americans were distracted by other things to notice that on Friday, June 26, 211 House Democrats and 8 Republicans defiantly thumbed their noses at the will of their constituents and passed the largest tax increase in the nation's history.  The "Cap-and-Trade" bill will likely kill two or three real jobs for every so-called green job it creates.  If this bill passes the Senate, the president's signature will make it the law of the land.  If that happens, look for your utility bills to increase by fifty percent. Power bills could soar under Obama's energy plan.  Imagine your power bill going up by $200 a month.  Progress Energy spokesman Mike Hughes said Thursday [7/2/2009] that it's a possibility under President Barack Obama's energy plan that narrowly passed the U.S. House of Representatives last week. Cap and Trade Dementia.  Barack Obama called for House passage of the cap and trade tax bill last Friday by calling it a jobs bill.  The bill is designed to raise the price of energy in the U.S. so much that it will reduce the use of fossil fuels by 17% by 2020 and by 83% by 2050.  Sentencing the U.S. economy to high cost energy is not a particularly good strategy for creating jobs.  The Charles River Associates, a Harvard based economics consulting firm, estimates a net loss of jobs from the bill of about 2.5 million each year.  This is surely a gross underestimate of the net job losses from a bill designed to reduce the use of fossil fuels to the level in 1907. No climate debate?  Yes, there is.  In his weekly address on Saturday, President Obama saluted the House of Representatives for passing Waxman-Markey, the gargantuan energy-rationing bill that would amount to the largest tax increase in the nation's history.  It would do so by making virtually everything that depends on energy — which is virtually everything — more expensive. ... No one who cares about the environment or the nation's economic well-being should take it on faith that climate change is a crisis, or that drastic changes to the economy are essential to "save the planet." Obama's Statist Ambitions:  Back in 2008, then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton declared "we need a president who is ready on day one to be commander in chief of our economy."  You can't find that role in the Constitution, but Barack Obama has embraced it nonetheless.  The president is hell-bent on further extending government control over Americans' health care, and the administration-backed cap and trade bill that passed the House Friday, would, among other things, create a national building code. Waxman-Markey: Man-Made Disaster.  Not since a misguided piece of legislation imposed tariffs that turned a recession into a depression has there been a piece of legislation as bad as Waxman-Markey.  The 1,000-plus-page American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) is being rushed to a vote by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before anyone can seriously object to this economic suicide pact. The hot one from the Democrats.  You can't blame the Democrats for hurrying to enact their hot-air legislation.  The public is finally paying attention, recognizing the global warming crisis for what it is, a giant scam that will cost every American plenty.  The globe isn't warming — it's actually cooling, in fact — and there's no crisis. Climate bill targets hot tubs and light bulbs.  The Democrat-led House pressed Thursday [6/25/2009] for enough votes to pass landmark legislation that would combat global warming by forcing U.S. companies to reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions, expanding expensive renewable-energy sources and trimming consumers' choices on new light bulbs and hot tubs.  Publicly, President Obama urged passage of the legislation — one of his top priorities — even though it faces near-unanimous opposition from Republicans. ... Light bulbs, now sometimes less than a dollar, would in the future cost much more. The High Cost of Cap and Trade:  Why the EPA and CBO Are Wrong.  Cap and Trade Is Wrong. It's a Massive Energy Tax It Will Not Make a Substantive Impact on the Environment It Will Kill Jobs It Will Cause Electricity Bills and Gas Prices to Sharply Increase It Will Outsource Manufacturing Jobs and Hurt Free Trade It Will Make You Choose among Energy, Groceries, Clothing and Haircuts It Will Be Highly Susceptible to Fraud and Corruption It Will Hurt Senior Citizens, the Poor, and the Unemployed the Worst It Will Cost American Families Nearly $3,000 a Year Cap-and-trade:  unread, undead.  The House just passed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade carbon emissions control act.  If it passes the Senate, expect the president — the bill's pusher-in-chief — to sign it at first opportunity.  I have not read the bill, so I should not comment on it at length.  But then, neither has any congressman read the now 1000-pages-and-plus wonder.  So they should not have passed it. The Editor says... Oh, but the president promised during his campaign to post all new legislation on line for five days before signing it.  I'm sure he'll keep that promise.  Aren't you? Waxman-Markey Global Warming Bill:  Economic Impact by Congressional District.  An analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill (as reported out of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce) by The Heritage Foundation found that unemployment will increase by nearly 2 million in 2012, the first year of the program, and reach nearly 2.5 million in 2035, the last year of the analysis.  Total GDP loss by 2035 would be $9.4 trillion. Waxman-Markey Flunks Math.  Yes, electricity is a good thing.  Where does it come from?  In the U.S., electricity is produced from these sources.  If you are reading this on a handheld and can't read Wikipedia's wonderful pie chart, here is the breakdown: 48.9% — Coal 20% — Natural Gas 19.3% — Nuclear  1.6% — Petroleum Got that?  A tick over 88% of U.S. electricity comes from three sources:  coal, gas and nuclear. If A Tree Falls in Brazil, Why Should U.S. Taxpayers Care?  Because the Cap and Trade Bill (The Waxman-Markey Clean Energy Bill) has a little known provision that affects trees in Brazil and beyond. What's the Point of Reducing Carbon Emissions?   The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) — the bill that would impose a cap and trade regime for U.S. carbon emissions — has passed the House of Representatives.  Was it worth it?  Well, on its own, ACES will in no sense make the world a cooler place.  Other nations will help themselves to more coal, like bad kids on Christmas morning. Cap & Tax:  Nobody Read It ... Because It Doesn't Exist .  Nobody could have read the bill the House passed last night because there is no bill. ... Democrats have passed a concept — not a bill. Cap and Trade Bill is Smoot-Hawley II.  The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act is credited with turning a very bad recession into the Great Depression. Cap and trade legislation: A Smoot-Hawley rerun?  Staring down the barrel of the worst economy since the 1930's, the events of the Great Depression have taken on a new found significance.  And as every school kid knows, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 is one of the ways that the government made the economic situation of the time tragically much worse. Boehner's Amazing Speech on the House Floor Friday.  Just before the House passed what could end up being the largest tax increase in U.S. history, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Oh.) took to the floor and dissected the disgusting "American Clean Energy and Security Act" while accusing Democrats of shamefully adding 300 pages to the bill at 3 AM Friday morning. Cap and Trade: Political Alchemy, Economy Buster and Disaster for Poor.  Cap and Trade must be defeated.  Yet there is a reason why this legislation is on the fast track.  Obama's hope is to advance this bill into law before the American people come up to speed on its dire ramifications for the country.  Cap & Trade is perhaps one of the most important pieces of legislation to be considered by Congress in a generation.  The onus now falls on the American people to contact their legislators in the attempt to head off a radical policy which will change the American way of life in many ways. Cap and trade: It's an economic catastrophe.  If you have even a basic grasp of cap-and-trade policy, you're one in a million.  According to a recent Rasmussen poll, given a choice of three options, only 24 percent of voters could even identify that cap-and-trade policies had anything to do with environmental issues.  A higher number believed that it was about regulating Wall Street.  A plurality had no idea what it was at all.  Who can blame them?  It's preposterously convoluted. Cap-and-Trade Bill: Villainy on a Grand Scale.  Energy is the most vital resource America has and we have enjoyed abundant and affordable energy for our long history.  That will all change if the Waxman-Markey bill becomes law. ... For the nearly six months since President Obama assumed office and in league with the majority Democrat Party in Congress, the actions taken to date appear to have a single purpose, the destruction of the nation's economy. Do carbon offsets actually help the planet?  They may ease guilt, but some experts say they won't reduce global warming at all. Sorry, But The Science Is Never 'Settled'.  President Obama has said that the science of global warming is "beyond dispute," and therefore settled.  This is the justification for the imposition of a carbon cap-and-trade system that will cost $2 trillion.  But Obama does not understand science. Carbon trading won't stop climate change.  One day renewable energy looks like a sunrise industry, the next, tumbleweeds are blowing around a setting solar panel.  What has changed?  The price of emitting carbon dioxide. Cap-and-Trade system aimed at cutting carbon will reward special interests, gut the economy.  Even if we could get other countries to sign on, a cap-and-trade system that works will be an economic disaster because it will raise the price of everything.  Unlike many other pollutants, carbon dioxide emissions are the product of the combustion of carbon-based energy sources such as coal, oil, wood, and natural gas.  Some 98 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions are energy related. Et Tu, Big Business?  Once-proud companies like GE have become seduced by global warming schemes, because they recognize that there's more money to be made selling white elephants to Uncle Sam than there is selling competitive products consumers want.  Indeed, cap-and-trade taxes promise to deliver precisely the protectionist industrial policies the left has dreamed of for decades, only under a "progressive" label. Global Warming Bill Is A Job-Killer.  Democrats failed to create jobs with their unnecessary, pork-laden stimulus bill.  Now they want to kill even more of them with an equally unnecessary global warming bill. If Cap And Trade Passes It Will Kill Off Domestic Fuel Production.  And what happens when fuel supplies go down?  Say hello to $6.00/gallon gas.  Which would be perfect, because it just so happens that the federal government owns a couple of car manufacturers that will be producing [tiny] cars that get very high gas mileage in the coming years.  Oh, and guess what?  Cap and trade would put domestic fuel producers at a competitive disadvantage with foreign fuel producers.  Meaning more dependence on foreign fuels, and fewer domestic jobs. Cap and Trade is really Cap and Tax.  Cap and Tax as an environmentally friendly energy solution is a textbook example of good intentions gone wrong.  Not only will government-regulated caps on carbon emissions do little to nothing to lower CO2 emissions here or around the globe, but it will also be an unmitigated economic disaster.  Cap and Tax will cause the cost of energy to skyrocket, as it will just about every good or service you buy.  Cap and Tax will increase electricity rates 90 percent and gasoline prices 74 percent, after adjusting for inflation.  The average American family's energy bill will be $1,500 more every year! Climate bill clears House in close vote.  The highly publicized Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill (H.R. 2454) cleared the House Friday afternoon [6/26/2009] by a roll call vote of 219 to 212. ... Waxman-Markey now heads to the Senate where that body's procedural rules often make closely contested bills much more difficult to pass. Waxman's Economy Killer.  The House of Representatives will vote Friday on the so-called "American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009" — a.k.a the "Waxman-Markey" global warming bill.  But whatever you want to call this legislative atrocity, if enacted into law, it will go down in history as the death knell of the American standard of living and way of life.  If you hate America, this bill is for you. Cap-and-Trade is another way of saying 2+2=5.  The sponsors of the global warming bill, which is known as Waxman-Markey, are telling Americans that not only will the legislation save us from calamitous climate change, it will also produce new jobs and new prosperity by transitioning America to new forms of "green" energy.  In other words, under Waxman-Markey, there's no trade-off necessary to save the planet; no price to be paid.  It's a win-win-win.  Right.  And 2+2=5.  The reality is that the bill before the House today imposes what could be the largest tax increase in history on the American people.  And every single one of us who heats a home, drives a car, and manufactures or consumes products made in America will pay the price. House passes major energy-climate bill.  In a triumph for President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed sweeping legislation Friday [6/26/2009] that calls for the nation's first limits on pollution linked to global warming and aims to usher in a new era of cleaner, yet more costly energy.  The vote was 219-212, capping months of negotiations and days of intense bargaining among Democrats. House rejects GOP energy alternative.  The House has rejected a Republican alternative to a Democratic climate bill.  The vote set the stage for passage of a bill that for the first time would limit U.S. greenhouse gases linked to global warming.  The GOP proposal was defeated 172-255.  The measure would have scuttled a proposed cap-and-trade system to cut greenhouse gases. The Editor says... There are just a few minor details left out by the Associated Press:  First, there are no "greenhouse gases linked to global warming", since there is no universal agreement about such a link.  Secondly, the statement above makes it sound as if the U.S. is the only country producing "greenhouse gases," when in fact every country in the world produces them.  The oceans produce the most influential "greenhouse gas" of them all — water vapor.  And third, the "cap and tax" bill isn't going to limit U.S. emissions — it's just going to tax them.  Except for those tiny little omissions, the Associated Press is right on target. RINO alert! Republicans who voted for Waxman-Markey climate bill.  The House just passed the sweeping carbon tax bill commonly known as Waxman-Markey by the thinnest of margins, 219-212.  [The eight Republicans who voted for it] are as follows:  Mary Bono Mack (Calif.), Mike Castle, Mark Steven Kirk (Ill.), Leonard Lance (NJ), Frank LoBiondo (NJ), John McHugh (NY), Dave Reichert (Washington), Chris Smith (NJ). Only Warming Is On The Left.  What were these RINOs thinking?  The GOP is supposed to be the party of low taxes and free markets.  Rep. Mike Castle, one of the eight offered an explanation right off of President Obama's teleprompter. Climate Change Republicans.  The Waxman-Markey climate change bill is more about redistributing wealth from traditional energy companies to new "Green" and yes, Democrat-friendly energy companies.  President Obama is the first politician in the history of the United States that is judged not on job growth, but the unquantifiable jobs created or saved.  I guess climate change will be the same.  Yes, it is 75 degrees now, but it would be 115 had Waxman-Markey not been passed.  One cannot prove otherwise. Cap-and-Trade:  What's Next?  The House passed a sweeping energy and global warming cap and trade bill Friday.  This bill, titled "America's Clean Energy and Security Act," or better known as Waxman-Markey, is the Democrats' answer to the worst recession in decades:  a national energy tax — a tax designed to impose economic pain through higher energy prices and lost jobs.  Or, as a recent Washington Post editorial put it, the bill "contains regulations on everything from light bulb standards to the specs on hot tubs, and it will reshape America's economy in dozens of ways that many don't realize"... Waxman-Markey subsidizes 'Shower Nazi'.  A "Shower Nazi" may be coming your way courtesy of Waxman-Markey.  Section 217 of the bill provides for a "water efficient product incentive program" that would provide rebates, vouchers, direct installs and other forms of financial assistance for the installation of water-saving products. Democrats' Cap-and-Trade Bill Creates 'Retrofit' Policy for Homes and Businesses.  The 1,400-page cap-and-trade legislation pushed through by House Democrats contains a new federal policy that residential, commercial, and government buildings be retrofitted to increase energy efficiency, leaving it up to the states to figure out exactly how to do that.  This means that homeowners, for example, could be required to retrofit their homes to meet federal "green" guidelines in order to sell their homes, if the cap-and-trade bill becomes law. Could Australia Blow Apart the Great Global Warming Scare?  As the US Congress considers the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, the Australian Senate is on the verge of rejecting its own version of cap-and-trade.  The story of this legislation's collapse offers advance notice for what might happen to similar legislation in the US?and to the whole global warming hysteria. The Cap and Tax Fiction.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has put cap-and-trade legislation on a forced march through the House, and the bill may get a full vote as early as Friday [6/26/2009].  It looks as if the Democrats will have to destroy the discipline of economics to get it done.  Despite House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman's many payoffs to Members, rural and Blue Dog Democrats remain wary of voting for a bill that will impose crushing costs on their home-district businesses and consumers.  The leadership's solution to this problem is to simply claim the bill defies the laws of economics. Earth warming gradually, not rapidly.  An energy policy expert says the Obama administration is "upping" global-warming hysteria with the release of a 190-page report.  The report is called "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States," and according to The Guardian was overseen by a San Francisco-based media consulting company in an effort to drum up support for the Waxman-Markey Energy Bill — otherwise known as cap-and-trade.  Democrats and Republicans alike have distanced themselves from the legislation because they believe it would lead to tremendous energy rate increases that could adversely affect poor people and local economies dependent on the coal industry. He Thinks You're Stupid.  The idea that the energy tax will come to rest with "polluters" — that is to say, power companies, manufacturers, agribusinesses, and so on — is absurd.  The cost will be passed on to consumers, as Obama himself admitted during a moment of candor during the campaign, when he said that electricity costs would "skyrocket" under his cap-and-trade proposal.  Obama isn't dumb enough to believe that the many billions of dollars in costs that his proposal will impose on energy companies, etc., will somehow disappear thereafter.  But he thinks you are. Emissions Control, Myths And Realities.  Carbon-dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels increased 0.7 percent in the United States from 2000 to 2006, far below the worldwide increase of 21.6 percent.  During the same period, emissions grew 4.9 percent in Europe, 37.6 percent in the Middle East, and 52.3 percent in Asia.  Major developing nations saw big increases; for instance, India, Malaysia and China's emissions increased 27.7 percent, 45.8 percent and 103 percent, respectively. You can't hug the tree if you chop it down.  To contain global warming, government pressures private businesses to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.  But that pressure also encourages private companies like the utilities that generate electricity to find substitutes for the coal they currently depend on.  So, guess what many utilities here and in Europe are starting to burn?  Wood. Watching How Hopenchange is Made:  It seems clear that, if the public knew what is in this [Waxman-Markey] bill, and how much it may cost them, they would concur with this analysis:  it is a "disaster."  But the Democrats plan to ram it through without hearings or even public availability of the relevant text.  The same legislative process that brought us trillion-dollar stimulus spending and trillion-dollar deficit budgets is about to replicate itself yet again.  Why so fast?  Aside from the obvious reasons, there is a need to make room for the next bill to be railroaded through on a fast track by a one-party Congress. What is going on with the Cap and Trade bill?.  The bill is only available online at the House Rules Committee and is reported as "text of the bill to be introduced."  Despite having a bill, H.R. 2454, that has been reported out of the Energy & Commerce Committee and discharged by eight other committees, there is now, suddenly, a new bill that is almost 300-pages longer — but it's still being considered as H.R. 2454. The Immorality Of Waxman-Markey: Intense Pain, No Environmental Gain.  If the pending Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill (HR 2454) becomes law, utility bills will soar.  Farm and business energy costs will skyrocket — and be passed on to consumers, or defrayed by layoffs.  Everything Americans grow, make, buy and do will be far pricier.  And bureaucrats will control our lives.  Compared to no cap-and-tax regime, Waxman-Markey would cost the United States a cumulative $9.6 trillion in real GDP losses by 2035, concludes a study by the Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis. GOP threatens ethics probe over Markey letter.  House GOP leaders and members of the Energy and Commerce Committee have not "ruled out the option" of forcing a vote in the lower chamber to investigate the possible ethics violations, accusing the senior Democrat "retaliating and bullying" a witness who appeared last Tuesday before Markey's subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, where the CEO of a major energy company told members that the White House-backed cap-and-trade bill would do nothing to reduce carbon emissions while driving up energy costs. More about Obama's thugocracy. The 'Dependence on Foreign Oil' Canard.  As the public's enthusiasm for a major new energy tax wanes, advocates of the administration's "cap and trade" emissions proposal have found a new justification:  national security.  We should adopt a cap and trade energy tax, they say, because this will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and thus strengthen America's national security.  It is unsurprising that national security would be the last refuge of a policy that cannot be sold on its merits. The word microcosm comes to mind... Carbon conmen selling the sky.  Papua New Guinean landowners are being ripped off by conmen travelling village to village offering fake carbon trading deals and promising big returns from "sky money".  The crude carbon trading racket has duped at least 500 villagers since late last year around Popondetta, Oro province, on the north-west coast, an industry insider said. ... Locals pay 1110 kina ($510) for "registration as a shareholder" in a carbon trading company with promises of big dividends from the millions expected from PNG's carbon trading. ACORN Enters the Highly Lucrative Global Warming Hysteria Business.  The radical community group, which is now facing voter registration fraud charges in Nevada, has joined forces with Al Gore and other groups for the ultimate taxpayer shakedown:  carbon emission controls. Eight Fallacies about Global Warming:  The reality is that there is no clear evidence that human emissions of carbon dioxide have any measurable effect on temperatures.  Such a claim rests on climate models of unproven accuracy and on lines of physical argument that expressly exclude consideration of other known important drivers of climate change. ... At its most basic, if scientists cannot be sure that temperatures are today rising, nor establish that the gentle late 20th century warming was caused by CO2 emissions, then it is nonsense to propose that expensive controls are needed on human carbon dioxide emissions. Our Public Servants At Work.  Cap and Trade is being rushed through Congress, despite a new report showing that levels of numerous gases linked with air pollution, like carbon monoxide, have fallen off since 2001 and air quality in the U.S. has improved significantly over the last decade.  Translation:  The greenhouse gases Congress is in such a rush to regulate are at their lowest level in 19 years. Obamamotive.  There are some fanatics that have drunk the global warming Kool-Aid and truly believe that we're going to set the Earth on fire with a car.  These people happen to be the constituents of Obama and those in Congress who are behind the cap and trade legislation.  However, those proposing this ridiculous regulation and legislation see it as a means to an end.  They use the global warming hysteria to destroy the engine of capitalism so as to usher in their socialist utopia. Cap and trade all about appearance.  Cap and trade may happen in the US, though not as quickly as Obama would like.  A US-Canada scheme makes sense if it is going to happen, but the compromises and trade-offs required to get this law on the books will probably limit its impact on CO2 emissions.  It will become more about appearances than reality.  What it will not do is have real impact on the climate. Cap and Trade Primer: Eight reasons why cap and trade harms the economy and reduces jobs.  The most popular way to regulate carbon dioxide emissions is through a cap and trade program.  President Obama and many policymakers support some form of this regulatory policy. ... These proposals are very, very costly and economically damaging.  If enacted, last year's flagship cap and trade proposal, the Lieberman-Warner bill, would increase the cost of gasoline by anywhere from 60 percent to 144 percent and increase the cost of electricity by 77 to 129 percent. Dunce Cap-and-Trade.  The mechanism for mitigation proposed in the Waxman-Markey bill is a "cap and trade" plan.  The idea is quite simple:  The government sets a fixed annual limit to total carbon-dioxide emissions and distributes ration cards for the right to emit a portion of this amount (that's the "cap"); it also allows those who receive ration cards to sell them (that's the "trade").  Now, "distributes" is an artfully chosen word:  How would the government decide who gets the ration cards?  One method is to sell them; another is to give them away, theoretically based on some objective criterion such as historical emissions, but in practice more likely based on campaign contributions. Cap and Trade: They Said It.  [Quoting President Obama, January, 2008]:  "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket. ... Because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, natural gas — you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations.  That will cost money.  They will pass that money on to consumers." Al Gore invests millions to make billions in cap-and-trade software.  Al Gore's venture capital firm has invested $6 million in a software company that stands to make billions of dollars from cap-and-trade regulation — further fueling controversy that Gore lied about his profiteering from cap-and-trade to Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee during testimony in April. Video:  Waxman Admits He Doesn't Know What's in His Cap-and-Trade Bill. Obama:  Not The First Head Of State To Design Cars.  It's the dorks who are most obsessed with control, in whatever way they can get it.  How does Obama fit into this?  Well, did you see him riding that bike in his blue jeans during the campaign?  Obama is a dork, pure and simple — and now he's going to impose all his control games on society at large.  Meaningless control games based on rules of the dork's invention are at the very foundation of the dork existence. ... Climate change is the pretend cause, and cap-and-trade is the new game. Winners and Losers in the Waxman-Markey Stealth Tax.  [Scroll down]  Cap and trade is also much more susceptible to simple corruption.  Precisely because it is so confusing to the general public, the stealth tax of cap and trade allows politicians to transfer wealth from consumers and hand it over to special interests in a much more disguised fashion.  Politicians have championed cap and trade, and have run from an explicit carbon tax, because they understand how much easier it will be to reward their favored constituencies with cap and trade. Cost of cap-and-trade bill would trickle down to consumer.  President Barack Obama and liberals in Congress support federal regulation of carbon dioxide.  Proponents of CO2 regulation claim that taxing polluters is an effective way to reduce carbon emissions, but the staggering costs of a cap-and-trade program will stifle our domestic energy and manufacturing sectors and result in major rate increases for consumers.  The cap-and-trade plan should really be called "the light switch tax," because if this bill becomes law, you will pay a tax every time you flip your light switch. Obama/Waxman Fast Track Carbon Tax.  Thanks to the efforts of grassroots citizens across the country, the bill leaves the committee weakened.  News reports indicate that Democrats in the House are still very divided. Obama's European Energy Vacation.  [Obama has made a] proposal to institute a cap-and-trade regime to lower carbon dioxide emissions similar to the one European nations implemented earlier this decade.  However commendable the goal may be, the evidence is clear that cap-and-trade is a monumental failure.  Emissions have soared in most industrialized European nations during the plan's first phase, in most cases more than in the United States during the same period.  Moreover, cap-and-trade has led to substantial increases in electricity bills for European consumers, hindering economic growth. Harmful Implications from Cap and Trade.  Any policy that boasts hundreds of billions in new federal revenue has to get that money from somewhere.  Under the cap and trade plan, the average American family is looking at an annual increase in energy costs of $3,100.  But for states like Montana, where more than 60% of our electricity comes from coal — it could be even more.  That's why the Montanans I've talked to are expressing more concerns about cap and trade every day. Enron's other secret.  The climate-change industry — the scientists, lawyers, consultants, lobbyists and, most importantly, the multinationals that work behind the scenes to cash in on the riches at stake — has emerged as the world's largest industry.  Virtually every resident in the developed world feels the bite of this industry, often unknowingly, through the hidden surcharges on their food bills, their gas and electricity rates, their gasoline purchases, their automobiles, their garbage collection, their insurance, their computers purchases, their hotels, their purchases of just about every good and service, in fact, and finally, their taxes to governments at all levels. Energy bill is windfall for greedy Gore camp.  This whole theory about carbon emissions is based on bad science, and has proven to be false by many scientists.  According to a report from the United Nations, average global temperatures have decreased in the last 10 years, and carbon emissions have increased tenfold in the last 10 years.  Now that is an inconvenient truth.  So who stands to benefit with the passage of this bill?  Well, for starters there's Al Gore and his carbon trading company, environmental consultants, all the new bureaucrats that would be needed. Cap and trade confusion.  [Scroll down]  some of the answers politicians gave under media questioning caused me to doubt whether they even understand what a cap-and-trade market is.  The Canadian Press, for example, reported McGuinty "dodged questions about whether Ontario's worst polluters — its coal-fired (power) generation plants — will be forced to bear extra costs under the system, which could be passed on to taxpayers."  Huh?  The answer to that is of course they will and of course those costs will be passed on to taxpayers in the form of higher electricity prices, unless McGuinty plans to exempt these plants from cap-and-trade, which would turn the entire exercise into a complete farce. The cap-and-trade racket.  Who says Democrats wish to take from the poor to give to the rich?  In practice, they much prefer to take from everyone to give to their friends!  In the name of environmental protection, Democrats are readying just such a transfer on a scale that would have impressed the Pharaohs.  Tens of billions of dollars, possibly hundreds of billions, will be shifted from American consumers of electricity to shareholders of favored utility companies in primarily blue states. Need for Speed (Read) to Pass Climate Bill.  Democrats in the House Energy and Commerce Committee have taken a novel precaution to head off Republican efforts to slow action this week on a sweeping climate bill.  They are hiring a speed reader. Paper Tyrants.  If Waxman does send his speed-reading assistant up to the mike to do a [John] Moschitta impersonation, the C-SPAN visual record will be YouTubed to millions.  The masses will discover that all those unintelligible words whizzing into law at lightning speed, and without sufficient debate, will kill 850,000 jobs, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. Unpleasant surprises buried in cap and trade.  A Heritage Foundation analysis also found that Waxman-Markey is the largest, most intrusive energy-tax increase in American history.  It would reduce the nation's GDP by $7.4 trillion, and raise electricity rates 90 percent and gasoline prices 74 percent.  Apparently, the authors of this legislation were unaware that a recent poll found six out of 10 Americans oppose energy policies that raise their electricity bill by even 1 cent, much less practically double it. Rep. Barton: Even Democrats Divided on Climate Change.  Obama seems oblivious to the potential impact [of "cap and trade"] on the economy.  "President Obama has never worked in a for-profit situation," Baryon says.  "His support groups have tended not to be the business groups that really create the jobs, and he has focused on listening to the environmental groups who really don't care too much about the cost, and they're interested in it purely from the possible negative effects on the environment.  And they think whatever the cost, we need to act, and we need to act now.  When he was a senator and when he was a candidate, he accepted that." I presume you know that AGW stands for Anthropogenic Global Warming. Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade scheme will wreck U.S. economy.  [Scroll down]  The problem for such [AGW] advocates, however, is that earth's average temperatures have been declining for a decade, and a fast-growing number of climate and other scientists now question the root idea of a global warming crisis.  These critics are increasingly banding together with elected officials and other experts in the public policy arena who see cap-and-trade schemes like Waxman-Markey as fatally flawed on two counts. Perpetual Recession.  Reps. Henry Waxman and Ed Markey have modified their cap-and-trade global warming bill, but that's not good news.  The new legislation will increase U.S. economic losses by $2 trillion. Waxman-Markey Cost-Benefit Analysis:  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has done the first cost estimate for Waxman-Markey.  It finds that by 2020 Waxman-Markey would cause a typical U.S. household to consume about $160 less per year than it otherwise would, and about $1,100 less per year by 2050 (before any potential benefits from avoiding warming).  That doesn't sound like the end of the world, but this cost estimate is based on a number of assumptions that seem pretty unrealistic, to put it mildly. Cap-And-Trade A No-Go Once Costs Are Factored In.  The latest IBD/TIPP Poll laid it all out in a somewhat lengthy question and drew a very different response:  By nearly 3-to-1, Americans oppose a cap-and-trade system that, if opponents are correct, could add $800 to $1,200 per household to energy prices. Cap-and-trade showdown.  A committee chairman is threatening House leaders to either give him a role in shaping climate change legislation or risk losing every Democratic vote on his panel when the bill hits the floor. Liberal Fantasyland.  Carbon credits (a) are costing a lot of money, (b) may do nothing to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and (c) incentivize the destruction of the environment and people's homes.  Or so the Associated Press reported.  The carbon credit system "is an excessive subsidy that represents a massive waste of developed world resources," said Stanford University's Michael Wara. Obama's cap and trade plan "monstrously stupid".  President Obama's proposal for a cap and trade system to head off global warming would be "monstrously stupid," according to Berkshire Hathaway Inc. CEO Charlie Munger, in an interview with CNBC.  "It would be a huge shock to the economy and it wouldn't accomplish very much given the fact that the vast majority of the pollution, or rather the CO2, is coming from a place like China." Cap and trade amounts to a tax, Chaffetz says.  A cap and trade proposal supported by President Barack Obama would increase electricity bills in the Beehive State by $1,115 per capita, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said Friday at the Utah Taxpayers Association's annual conference.  Chaffetz obtained the information from an analysis created for Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, and he described the increase as a tax on businesses and regular folks. Obama's 'Cap and Trade' Plan Likely Will Raise Energy Prices.  President Barack Obama's "cap and trade" plan is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that allegedly contribute to global warming.  Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told CNSNews.com that to attain that reduction, it is "likely true" that energy costs for Americans will go up. Cap and Trade a 'Declaration of War,' Say Republicans.  In general, under cap and trade, the amount of carbon that energy producers emit is capped.  They can exceed that cap through the purchase, i.e., "trade," of carbon permits.  The money for those permits would be collected by the government and presumably redistributed under a system still being crafted.  "The reality is the cap-and-trade legislation offered by the Democrats amounts to an economic declaration of war on the Midwest by liberals on Capitol Hill," Chairman of the House Republican Conference Mike Pence (R-Ind.) told CNSNews.com. Solar Scenarios.  The end of the world has always been a popular theme for various religions and for doomsayers in general. ... The latest version, of course, is Al Gore's prediction that the Earth is on fire from "global warming" and we have to buy his carbon credits to avoid it.  Even President Obama is preaching this absurd, baseless nonsense in order to drum up votes in Congress for his economy-killing "cap-and-trade" scheme to tax all energy use. Cap and trade bill shouldn't pass.  The public is being conned by Congress and special interest groups advocating global warming.  Many individuals identified with these groups have a financial interest in companies that will benefit greatly once we have the so called Cap and Trade passed into law.  This bill, like prior spending bills passed by this Congress, could not pass if the public knew the specific details contained within them. Deadly Duo of Obama-Gore Deceit on Cap and Trade.  Obama presents Cap and Trade as essential to stopping global warming by reducing atmospheric CO2.  It won't because it allows people to produce the same amount or more by buying the privilege and passing the cost to the consumer.  It also requires ignoring the scientific evidence that CO2 is not causing warming. Environmentalists Say 'Cap-and-Trade' Is Designed to Drive up Energy Costs.  President Obama's "cap and trade" plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is specifically designed to drive up energy prices and redistribute wealth, according to a coalition of environmental, union, and liberal activist groups that is pushing for Congress to enact the proposal this year. Inhofe:  Cap and Trade Will Cost U.S. 800,000 Jobs.  Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe tells Newsmax that the Obama administration's plans to curb carbon emissions would immediately cost the U.S. 800,000 jobs and actually lead to a net increase in worldwide emissions.  Sen. Inhofe, the ranking Republican on the Committee on Environment and Public Works, also said an Environmental Protection Agency proposal would raise taxes by $400 billion a year — and charged that Obama is "gutting" the military. EPA concedes it analyzed bill it 'hadn't even read yet'.  EPA administrator Lisa Jackson was forced to admit she had not even read the Waxman-Markey carbon taxing bill before her agency released a report claiming the economic impact of cap and trade legislation would be "modest."  Asked how the EPA could produce a report on a bill they hadn't even read yet, Jacson said:  "We had to make assumptions." Cap-And-Trade:  Al Gore's Cash Cow.  At the cap-and-trade hearings, it was revealed that not everyone will suffer from this growth-killing energy tax.  A congresswoman wanted to know why sea levels aren't rising but Gore's bank account is.  When Gore left office in January 2001, he was said to have a net worth in the neighborhood of $2 million.  A mere eight years later, estimates are that he is now worth about $100 million.  It seems it's easy being green, at least for some. Obama Cap-and-Trade Plan Still Forming.  Retreating somewhat from promises made during Barack Obama's presidential campaign, the White House announced on April 8 that the administration might agree to postpone auctioning off 100-percent of emissions allowances under a cap-and-trade system proposed to limit so-called greenhouse gas pollution. Trying to Turn CO2 Into Au.  Remember when we thought many ancients to be laughable for believing that lead could be transmuted into gold?  Well, today's government-funded scientists, backed by biased media and dilettantish politicians, have surpassed the alchemists:  these modern sorcerers would have us believe that an odorless, colorless gas that makes plants grow, which has been exhaled by human beings in the respiration process since time immemorial, is literally killing Mother Earth and that getting rid of the gas will ensure wealth. Obama proposals cap growth.  I recently predicted that President Obama's cap-and-trade energy taxes would be the first casualty of his ambitious legislative agenda.  A bipartisan group of Senate Democrats and Republicans drove the first nail into its coffin by adding an amendment to the pending budget resolution.  The amendment will deny carbon-emissions-tax supporters the use of a fast-track budget reconciliation rule to limit debate and pass their tax scheme by a simple majority, skirting the tougher 60-vote hurdle to end debate and quickly move to consideration of the measure. Cap and Trade:  A Huge, Regressive Tax.  In today's society, where "global warming" is a term that pops up in conversation and print almost daily, the cap-and-trade scheme may appear to many to be a cost-efficient way to help forestall an environmental crisis of legendary proportions.  However, upon closer examination, both the economic and environmental arguments used to justify cap and trade are found to be based on specious evidence. Energy Bill, Energy Tax, or Government Hand-Out?.  The 648-page energy bill just penned by Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman and Edward Markey is ostensibly designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save money.  But conservatives contend that the bill is nothing more than a tax, adding costs to energy producers and distributors for unproven methods of greenhouse gas emissions.  These costs would be passed on to consumers to the tune of $3,900 per year, per household. Darkness Descends Over Environmental Coup d'état.  The cadre now occupying Washington has staked itself out to inflict "green" energy alternatives by a sleight-of-hand labeled "cap and trade." Senate makes it harder to pass global warming bill.  The Senate is making it tougher to pass the cap-and-trade legislation President Barack Obama wants as part of an effort to reduce global warming. ... Republicans and Democrats are wary of Obama's proposal to allow the government to auction permits to companies to emit greenhouse gases, with the costs of the permits being passed on to consumers. Growing Cap-and-Trade on the Tax Farm.  While the president's stated objective is indeed worthy and in fact critical to the future of the nation, unfortunately, as a means to achieve it, a carbon cap-and-trade system is a complete non sequitur.  The cap-and-trade mechanism is primarily a method of constricting electricity production.  The United States only gets 3% of its electricity from oil.  Thus taxing electricity will do nothing to free us from dependence on foreign petroleum. Don't Let Cap-and-Trade Become Tax-and-Spend.  A cap-and-trade tax hike is the worst kind of tax increase, because the tax increase is hidden behind a complex regulatory apparatus that only adds to the cost. Lost jobs, big hikes in your bills — that's cap-and-trade.  President Obama has repeatedly said he will not raise taxes on low- and middle-income families, yet his policies do not match his rhetoric.  Take for instance, a new tax he has proposed on the use of energy.  It's called cap-and-trade or, more appropriately, cap-and-tax.  The tax would require energy producers and businesses to pay to emit carbon emissions in the hope of reducing greenhouse gases. Cap and trade looks like a bad deal for Michigan.  Those who support cap and trade believe that by instituting such a program we can stop manmade global warming, but they never seem to share the costs of the scheme with the American people. ... I believe cap and trade would further devastate Michigan's economy because we are so dependent on coal generation for electricity and manufacturing for our jobs. Cap and Tax Collapse.  Please pass Al Gore a Valium — and better make it a double — because his cap-and-trade dreams just took a dive in the U.S. Senate.  In a vote late Wednesday [4/1/2009], no fewer than 26 Democrats joined all 41 Republicans to insist that any new cap and tax on carbon energy would require at least 60 votes. Cap and Trade Legislation Would Kill Coal Industry, Congressman Says.  Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) said cap and trade systems would be devastating to coal manufacturing states like Illinois and West Virginia and proposed cap and trade legislation could kill the entire coal mining industry.  "This cap-and-trade scheme may not just reduce Illinois coal jobs further — it is my worry that this legislation aims to kill the entire coal industry," Shimkus told CNSNews.com. Dems Failure to Fast Track Cap-And-Trade a Terrific Omen.  [Scroll down]  You see, as recently as Tuesday [3/31/2009] it appeared the climate-hysterics might succeed in attaching their dreadful stealth national sales tax scheme to the budget resolution by employing a sneaky little trick called the reconciliation process.  But yesterday's passage of an amendment put forth by freshman Senator Mike Johanns (R-Neb) forces the green ideologues to muster 60 votes instead of a simple majority to pass their inane plan. A tax by any other name.  Many Americans find the debate in Washington over adopting a "cap and trade" program to reduce carbon dioxide a bit confusing.  That's understandable.  Put simply, it's a tax on energy consumption.  In fact, it would be a huge tax.  If enacted, cap-and-trade will be one of the government's largest revenue sources within the next decade. Obama and Your Electric Bill:  President Obama's energy tax plan — a version of the failed European "cap and trade" global warming fiasco — may cost families $1,800 yearly in higher utility bills, far exceeding his promised $800 a year tax cut for 95% of Americans.  While campaigning, Obama admitted that his energy plan would cause electric bills to "skyrocket."  Few took note, perhaps because Sen. John McCain also backed some form of a "cap-and-trade" energy tax. White House Admits Cap-And-Trade Tax Costs Triple Their Official Estimate.  I've already explained here on the Forum how the cap-and-trade energy tax works, and would be the biggest tax increase in the history of the country.  Now, amazingly, the White House is telling something closer to the truth about this tax hike, admitting that the official budget estimate of $646 billion over 8 years — already a mighty steep price to pay — is far, far lower than the real cost. Feds Play Down Carbon Cap-and-Trade.  Recent statements and actions of Obama administration officials have some observers wondering whether the president may be backing away from campaign promises to impose a cap-and-trade system to control greenhouse gases. Cap and Trade War.  One of President Obama's applause lines is that his climate tax policies will create new green jobs "that can't be outsourced."  But if that's true, why is his main energy adviser floating a new carbon tariff on imports?  Welcome to the coming cap and trade war. Lovin' the Earth Hour bonfire.  How much of your money are you willing to spend to help China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia and over 100 other developing nations, lower their greenhouse gas emissions, while you're also paying through the nose (see cap-and-trade, "green" taxes, etc.) to lower — or, given the way this stuff actually "works" in the real world — not to lower, Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. The Economic Contradictions of Obama-ism.  While billed as a program to reduce greenhouse gases, cap-and-trade is, inescapably, a tax on virtually all economic activity, as fossil fuels are an input in nearly all economic outputs.  Even a lawyer, after all, has to use electricity to have the lights on in his office and power his computer.  And electricity is mostly generated by fossil fuels, especially coal, the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide.  This will be no small tax.  The Obama budget estimates that the carbon tax will bring in revenues of $78.7 billion in 2012.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that it might net as much as $300 billion. Obama Years Ago Helped Fund Carbon Program He Is Now Pushing Through Congress.  In 2000 and 2001, while Barack Obama served as a board member for a Chicago-based charitable foundation, he helped to fund a pioneering carbon trading exchange that is likely to fill a critical role in the controversial cap-and-trade carbon reduction scheme that President Obama is now trying to push rapidly through Congress. Kerry, Boxer:  U.S. 'Needs' Cap-and-Trade on Carbon Emissions Even if Energy Costs Rise.  Democratic Sens. John Kerry and Barbara Boxer told CNSNews.com that the nation must adopt the Obama administration's cap-and-trade proposal to reduce carbon emissions, even if it results in massive increases in gasoline and electricity prices. It's a duck.  There's no need for a "Top 10 Things to Call the Global Warming Tax."  It's a global warming tax.  It's just a very expensive one, 4-5 times as expensive as simply taxing emissions, according to center-left economist William Pizer of Resources for the Future.  But that expense added to an already regressive energy tax is ok, you see, because "cap-and-[whatever]" isn't transparent, but hidden in the form of Soviet-style production quotas. Hint:  They were promised a tax cut during the Obama campaign. Who Pays for Cap and Trade?  Cap and trade is the tax that dare not speak its name, and Democrats are hoping in particular that no one notices who would pay for their climate ambitions.  With President Obama depending on vast new carbon revenues in his budget and Congress promising a bill by May, perhaps Americans would like to know the deeply unequal ways that climate costs would be distributed across regions and income groups. Carbon credit markets waiting on Obama's move.  The past 12 months have been a roller-coaster ride for the carbon credit market, from a $1.90 price per credit to $7.40 and back to $1.60.  The market's advocates are hoping the installment of a new presidential administration brings one more upswing. Cap-and-trade:  Obama's 'economic dagger'.  Prospects for passage of President Barack Obama's cap-and-trade solution for global warming have become decidedly chillier since the idea was first proposed in 2002.  Obama wants to cut CO2 emissions 80 percent by 2050.  He's got his work cut out for him.  Not only are hundreds of credible climate scientists now publicly debunking former vice-president Al Gore's claims of apocalyptic environmental disaster, a new Gallup poll reveals that 41 percent of Americans believe such alarms are "exaggerated." Five Ways that Insanity Has Become the New Normal in America:  The earth has been getting warmer and colder since it was formed, the planet has been considerably warmer in the past than it is today, and the earth is currently cooling, not warming.  Yet and still, our President intends to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a Cap and Trade scheme that will spike energy costs into the stratosphere so that we can solve this non-existent "problem." Eight Democrats oppose quick debate on global warming bill.  Eight Senate Democrats are opposing speedy action on President Barack Obama's bill to combat global warming, complicating prospects for the legislation and creating problems for their party's leaders.  The eight Democrats disapprove of using the annual budget debate to pass Obama's "cap and trade" bill to fight greenhouse gas emissions, a measure that divides lawmakers, environmentalists and businesses. Barack Obama faces 'revolution' if he imposes tough carbon targets, warns IPCC.  Barack Obama faces a "revolution" if he imposes emission cuts on the US similar to those set in Europe, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has conceded.  But Rajendra Pachauri, head of the United Nation's body tasked with leading the fight against climate change, also questioned the value of a new global climate deal without such a US pledge.  He said political constraints such as creating new jobs made it impossible for the new president to announce the measures that scientists believe are necessary. The Climate Change Lobby Has Regrets.  Jim Rogers is not happy with the Obama administration.  Ever since the White House unveiled its costly climate program, the CEO of Duke Energy has been arguing the proposals amount to nothing more than a tax.  Indeed. Reducing carbon footprint is a 'waste of time'.  The millions of well-intentioned Australians turning off light bulbs, installing insulation in their ceilings and solar panels on their roofs, cycling to work or buying low-emission cars are wasting time and money.  Commentators from both sides of the climate debate have criticised the emissions trading scheme proposed by the [Australian] federal Government as being ineffectual.  Under the scheme, the more individuals save on their emissions the more corporate polluters such as coal stations and aluminium smelters are allowed to emit. Carbon Tax:  The Lesser Of Two Evils.  Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, long reviled by environmentalists for his skepticism of extreme global warming claims, now supports a tax on C02 emissions.  A new convert to the cause?  We doubt it. The Inept Politics of the US Cap and Trade Plan:  The obvious first step is to remove the false urgency of a potential EPA rulemaking, by clarifying for the Supreme Court and the agency that the Clean Air Act as written is actually not intended as a vehicle to regulate greenhouse gases.  It's quick, clean and would allow Congress to consider what would possibly be the most expensive course ever charted at least with deliberation. You betcha, drill and mine.  Yesterday [11/1/2008], a ten month old audio clip and video of Sen. Barack Obama in front of an editorial board in San Fransisco made its way onto the internet, thanks largely in part to the Illinois senator's comments about coal.  "What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there," Obama said in a Jan. 17 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. China dams reveal flaws in climate-change weapon.  The hydroelectric dam, a low wall of concrete slicing across an old farming valley, is supposed to help a power company in distant Germany contribute to saving the climate — while putting lucrative "carbon credits" into the pockets of Chinese developers.  But in the end the new Xiaoxi dam may do nothing to lower global-warming emissions as advertised.  And many of the 7,500 people displaced by the project still seethe over losing their homes and farmland. Are climate change investors living in a fool's paradise?  It looks on the surface like an investment and legislative dream come true, combining the public's desire to 'save the planet' and compensate for recent stock market losses with helping corporations fulfill their 'corporate social responsibilities'. ... On closer examination however, one notices something remarkable.  Practically without exception, all of these organizations, many of them among the most successful and respected in the world, completely ignore the risk that the very foundation of all of these activities might be shown to be faulty. In the Tank for Kyoto, Inc.  Pay no attention to the ceramic facilities in Spain shutting down because it was more profitable to go into the business of making nothing — and just selling their CO2 ration coupons.  Nothing to see here; move along.  Those EU politicians and executives pleading for a carbon-cap cessation — or, at a minimum, that Europe stop digging?  You don't hear that, either. Carbon Offsets:  Eco-Extortion, Green Guilt, and the Selling of Indulgences.  The selling of "voluntary carbon offsets" — eco-indulgences — is a $55 million per year industry, involving over three dozen companies worldwide.  Total sales are anticipated to double both this year and next, and entrepreneurs are clamoring all over themselves for a piece of the action.  And it's all a scam.  Yes, the money is very real, but the alleged benefits to the environment are fake. Green market risk:  To the layers of confusion that now exist in our financial markets we are about to add another, as opaque and volatile as the others, and as unhinged from the real world — a carbon currency.  President-elect Barack Obama wants it, Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants it and their European counterparts, to some extent, already have it.  Europe's Emissions Trading System (ETS) is the world's largest trading exchange for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.  If ambitious Kyoto-style plans come to fruition, ETS will morph to account for, among other things, the carbon content of all industrial and biological processes, and the carbon carrying capacity of all the real estate on our planet.  Because carbon is a building block of life, and because we live in a carbon-based planet, carbon prices will become more ubiquitous than the U.S. dollar.  It would become, in effect, a globally traded currency tied to gaseous commodities that until recently were nowhere traded. Cap this foolish enviro plan.  Regular readers will know I have been warning about what a disaster Europe's three-year-old cap-and-trade carbon market, the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), has been.  It has led to skyrocketing electricity prices for consumers, undeserved profits for giant companies and failed to reduce GHG emissions.  Despite this, Canadian politicians are seldom challenged on their naive, almost child-like advocacy of cap-and-trade. Carbon quacks:  Our politicians ask us to believe humanity is facing Armageddon from man-made global warming.  That is, imminent, world-wide, climate catastrophe that will scorch the Earth, kill and displace hundreds of millions of people, drown cities and cause massive starvation and disease.  And what's their solution?  It's to impose another tax on us or create another stock market, which is all a "cap and trade" system is. Gore the Vandal:  So far as Al Gore and his fellow global warming charlatans are concerned, the reduction of energy, whether it be electricity to power our homes and businesses or oil to fuel our cars and trucks, must be curtailed and then replaced with "clean" alternatives such as wind and solar power, and biofuels.  Meanwhile, Gore grows wealthy giving speeches and collecting money for "carbon credits", the modern equivalent of Confederate currency. A Wonderful, Magical Green Bailout.  Much has been said and written in recent days about how "The liberal uses crises, real or manufactured, to expand the power of government at the expense of the individual and private property."  The current financial situation is surely no different.  What is striking is how brazen are the attempts we are seeing to attach pet schemes to the bailout's coattails. Carbon credits' dirty secret.  At the bottom of the house of sand on which the Kyoto accord and world carbon trading markets are built, there's a leaking foundation.  Otherwise known as a carbon credit.  A carbon credit is a permit or, alternatively, a unit of currency, allowing a country or corporation to emit one metric tonne of carbon dioxide, linked to man-made global warming.  Carbon credits are the main mechanism by which Kyoto transfers wealth from developed nations like Canada to developing ones like China. Ontario launches three carbon offset projects.  Ontario farmers are being recruited for carbon offset testing as the province prepares to participate in a cap-and-trade system, which officials say is the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.  Three pilot projects will be launched this summer to test the feasibility of ways that farmers and others can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in exchange for obtaining carbon credits. Kyoto's Long Goodbye.  The irony is that Kyoto has handed [developing countries] every reason not to participate.  Europe knew all along that it couldn't meet its quotas, so it created an out in "offsets."  A British factory, say, buys a credit to pay for basic efficiency improvements in a Chinese coal plant, like installing smokestack scrubbers.  This is a tax on the Brits to make Chinese industries more competitive.  Sweet deal if you can get it. Climate mafia has us fooled.  Vested interests have hijacked the climate debate, and taken Australia's future hostage.  The ransom they demand?  Simple agreement or, at the very least, compliance.  Voices of dissent face derision.  Legitimate questions are met with ridicule.  But with many of the squabbling forces of power in this country now apparently united in their enthusiasm for an emissions trading scheme, it is more important than ever that we go back and examine the basis of their campaigns. Climate mettle about to be tested.  An emissions trading scheme has not even started but the Government's hostility to carbon emissions is already choking off the supply of electricity, leading to an inevitable rise in prices.  Coal is used to generate 90 percent of Australia's electricity, but no business can fund new coal-fired power plants under the existing policy settings. Beware green zealots.  Nowhere is the fanatic's touch more apparent than in the confused notion of an emissions reduction budget, the idea that there is a fixed quantum of emissions reduction we should achieve by a given date, with the result that if we reduce a bit less in one area, we will have to reduce by more elsewhere. Power plants in danger from emission tradings scheme.  Four out of five power stations in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, both coal-fired power stations in South Australia and several generators in NSW and Queensland could close down under an emissions trading regime designed to meet even a modest greenhouse reduction target.  New modelling for the electricity industry finds that Australia could achieve cuts of 10 or 20 percent in its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared with 2000 levels — but only after a massive upheaval in the energy sector. The great carbon offset con:  Flying, walking, eating, sleeping?  pretty much everything we do seems to add carbon to our footprints.  And just as once industrious priests used to sell absolutions to erase our sins, some clever clogs have hit on the idea of charging us for exuding CO2.  They called it Carbon Offsetting and they're laughing all the way to the bank. Cap and Burn:  After [GOP Senator Bob] Corker called the bill "the mother of all earmarks" and "a huge unnecessary transference of wealth," Ms. Boxer was reduced to arguing that it's really "a huge tax cut for the American people" and "will not increase gas prices."  These are delusions, or worse.  Cap and trade is designed to raise energy prices, which are supposed to spur the investments and behavior changes needed for a less carbon-intensive economy. Your Carbon Ration Card.  While American politicians mull a carbon cap-and-trade system for industry, our British cousins are already contemplating the next step:  personal CO2 rations.  A Parliamentary committee in May proposed giving all British adults "carbon allowances" that they would be required to spend — along with, you know, real money — when buying gasoline, airline tickets, electricity or natural gas. Cap-and-Trade = Cap-and-Tax.  The Senate is debating a cap-and-trade proposal, which would decrease carbon-based fuel emissions from coal, oil, and natural gas by making them illegal:  These fuels currently provide about 85 percent of U.S. energy needs and generate most greenhouse gases.  Companies could emit greenhouse gases only if they had annual "allowances" — quotas — issued by the government, which would gradually decline; that's the "cap." Faster than a speeding ballot — it's Super Obama.  An emissions trading scheme is what you get when you leave important economic decisions up to scientists who think they're economists and economists who think they're scientists.  It's a vision of paradise that only makes sense on a cosine-loaded blackboard.  Ask any proponent of an emissions trading scheme to explain why it's such a great idea.  Thirty minutes later you'll know how it felt in the '70s to be lectured on the wonders of socialism by some elbow-patched academic beardo. Let's Just Call It 'Cap and Tax'.  Cap-and-trade would act as a tax, but it's not described as a tax.  It would directly regulate economic activity, but it is promoted as a "free market" mechanism.  Finally, cap-and-trade would quickly become a bonanza for lobbyists, who would scramble to exploit the system for different industries, venture capitalists, localities and others.  All the influence peddling would undermine the system's abstract advantages. Climate is right for another swindle.  How does Washington plan to resolve our energy problems and control atmospheric temperatures?  Well, how do they fix anything?  By proposing a gargantuan boondoggle.  A "cap and trade" bill, one that will supposedly cut 66 percent of our emissions by 2050, is being debated in Congress this week.  To begin with, proponents of America's Climate Security Act have been misleading the public by claiming that cap and trade is a "market-based" solution.  In truth, cap and trade does to the market what "American Idol" does to music. Cap and Spend.  As the Senate opens debate on its mammoth carbon regulation program this week, the phrase of the hour is "cap and trade."  This sounds innocuous enough. But anyone who looks at the legislative details will quickly see that a better description is cap and spend.  This is easily the largest income redistribution scheme since the income tax. Washington's Unpopular War on Energy:  With energy prices already skyrocketing, federal lawmakers wreaked more havoc by trying to pass heavy-handed regulatory legislation known simply as "cap and trade."  The legislation would impose stringent emission limits on energy and manufacturing industries.  At the same time, many environmentalists admit that the legislation would have little to no impact on climate change.  However, the bill would greatly increase hidden taxes and costs on consumers.  The poor and middle class would be hardest hit. Going Green = $4 per Gallon.  [Scroll down]  Global warming has been the most convenient threat upon which all of the rhetoric has been based.  What it is really leading to is the creation of a new economy based on trading carbon credits.  Such policy is really nothing more than a massive redistribution of the wealth scheme designed to force industrial nations to make deals with less developed ones to trade for energy credits and get around severe energy use restrictions.  It's what Al Gore trades in order to allow him to claim he has a "zero carbon footprint" — even as he flies around the world in his jets and pays $2000 electric bills on his Tennessee mansion. Carbon pain is priceless.  Kevin Rudd has a plan to cut your emissions that won't work, will hurt and isn't needed.  In fact, if the Prime Minister has any sense, he'll check the soaring prices for oil and coal and say his painful plan has been tried on you already, and has failed, failed, failed. Rudd's carbon scheme chokes.  Co-founder of Access Economics Geoff Carmody warns that Australia's emissions trading model cannot work, that it is misconceived and that it will damage Australia's economy with almost no prospect of solving the global problem.  In an alternative climate change policy document provided to The Australian, Carmody warns that as the Rudd Government's model becomes apparent, "expect the strength of the adverse reaction to multiply". The Global Warming Bubble:  After all the magazine covers, celebrity sermonizing and U.N.-certified-expert hand-wringing, the fight against global warming got a real-world test in the U.S. Senate a few weeks ago in the debate over a proposal to limit carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade system.  After a small dose of the argument, supporters of the proposal couldn't wait to drop it. What's Green and Goes Pop?  The housing bubble has burst only a decade or so after the Internet and tech-stock bubble.  So we may not need to wait all that long to see the next one.  And the most likely candidate is a green bubble, fueled by climate-change alarmism and government subsidies. Simply UN-bearable:  Carbon trading is a modern religious exercise similar to the medieval practise of selling indulgences. … We pay somebody — a nation or say, Al Gore's company — money and they give us permission to drive our SUV or fly to the Amazon as an eco-tourist.  The UN's involved?  Trust me.  Somebody's gonna get real rich and they're going to laugh at us all the way to the bank — which is either in Geneva or the Cayman Islands — and the natural environment won't see anything in the way of improvement. Personal Carbon Credits:  The Trick.  Everybody from the Prince of Wales to liberal newspapers and former Labour ministers now compares climate change to the war.  Baroness Young of Old Scone, head of the Environment Agency, says this is "World War Three".  If it's not breaking the Official Secrets Act, could somebody explain what on earth they are on about?  The notion of a "war on carbon" makes even less sense than the glorious "wars" on terror/drugs/crime/whatever.  No, these evocations of the past appear political rather than practical. Billions wasted on UN climate programme.  Billions of pounds are being wasted in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions, according to two analyses of the UN's carbon offsetting programme.  Leading academics and watchdog groups allege that the UN's main offset fund is being routinely abused by chemical, wind, gas and hydro companies who are claiming emission reduction credits for projects that should not qualify.  The result is that no genuine pollution cuts are being made…. Carbon's Power Brokers:  An unprecedentedly radical government grab for control of the American economy will be debated this week when the Senate considers saving the planet by means of a cap-and-trade system to ration carbon emissions. … "Cap-and-trade" comes cloaked in reassuring rhetoric about the government merely creating a market, but government actually would create a scarcity so that government could sell what it had made scarce. The great carbon bazaar:  Evidence of serious flaws in the multi-billion dollar global market for carbon credits has been uncovered by a BBC World Service investigation.  The credits are generated by a United Nations-run scheme called the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).  The mechanism gives firms in developing countries financial incentives to cut greenhouse gas emissions.  But in some cases, carbon credits are paid to projects that would have been realised without external funding. They're Launching America's First Carbon Cap-And-Trade Program Today?  While England met its Kyoto goals by 1998, emissions levels began to rise the very next year.  And 2005's were the highest since the country signed the treaty in 1997.  This reality has many environmental groups, including Greenpeace, fighting hard to force further hardships upon the already suffering country.  We revolted against misdirected British tax policies back in 1773.  Are we really about to follow them into the green abyss? Carbon Capper Capers:  [Scroll down]  Each of these complaints was prompted by the same thing:  Europe's "cap-and-trade" scheme of rationing carbon dioxide emissions, in the name of global warming.  Over just three years of operation, this plan has already driven European industry offshore and cost even universities and hospitals massive sums. The hole in Kyoto's 'cap'.  In reality, there is no "cap", either in the Kyoto accord or the "cap-and-trade" markets and carbon taxes it has spawned.  In addition, while politicians like to pretend it's easy to create a cap-and-trade market or institute a carbon tax, nothing could be further from the truth. Wile E. Coyote can't fix climate.  Wile E. Coyote is proof of the wise old saying that a good definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. … The same image came to mind when I heard NDP Leader Jack Layton yesterday praising a "cap and trade" system for pricing carbon, even though Europe's three-year-old cap and trade system, known as the Emissions Trading Scheme, has become a playground for market speculators and hedge funds, while leading to skyrocketing electricity prices and doing next to nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Just plain nuts! Park hands out acorns so guests are carbon neutral.  Recipients of a South Lakes holiday park-themed calendar have been treated to a special eco-friendly gift.  Bosses at Skelwith Fold Caravan Park in Ambleside sent customers a 2009 day planner complete with the seasonal present of an acorn.  They hope each visitor will plant their complimentary nut and that hundreds of oak trees will be grown. Coal-Cap Disaster.  By pulling the plug on half of our current electricity production, cap-and-trade will risk a massive undermining of the American economy, as well as our future economic and national security.  The coal story is so important simply because the U.S. has massively undeveloped coal resources.  With 27 percent of the world's coal reserves estimated at 270 billion tons, the U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal.  And yet cap-and-trade would destroy this critical sector. Carbon Folly:  CO2 Emissions Sources and Options.  The UN demands that the US cut its CO2 emissions by 80%.  Congress is debating Cap and Trade legislation that will require the U.S. to cut its CO2 emissions by up to 80%.  But few are asking, is it possible to cut CO2 emissions by 80%?  Or by any meaningful amount? Hand over your money!  "We are saving you from yourself".  Carbon taxes are the latest example of a punitive sin tax.  They are imposed to punish those who break the rules of environmentalism; the new religion.  They are designed to reduce the amount of CO2 humans put in the atmosphere because we're told it is causing climate change.  It is not and it is unlikely to reduce consumption.  All they do is anger taxpayers and are justifiably labeled another tax grab.  While CO2 is not a problem the government believe it is and they have wasted billions convincing us it is, so they're unlikely to admit error. Climate Reality Bites.  For the most part, the politicians favor cap and trade because it is an indirect tax.  A direct tax — say, on gasoline — would be far more transparent, but it would also be unpopular. … The other reason politicians like cap and trade is because it gives them a cut of the action and the ability to pick winners and losers.  Some of the allowances would be given away, at least at the start, while the rest would be auctioned off, with the share of auctions increasing over time.  This is a giant revenue grab. The Great Cap-And-Trade Scam:  The adage, however, is "follow the money" and here's where we find the greatest supporters of cap-and-trade emissions credits.  Huge financial firms such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are betting they can make billions through government mandated programs in which vast amounts of money move back and forth through "climate exchanges" where companies trade their alleged emissions reduction activities for credits, i.e., real cash. Carbon Costs:  Is It Easy Being Green?  Rental cars are now coming with more than just that new car smell.  For only $1.25 extra, some come with carbon offsets, too.  Enterprise Rent-A-Car, along with its sister companies Alamo and National, recently launched its Keys to Green program, which asks customers to pay a little extra to help offset emissions created by its gas-guzzling fleets. … So just where does the money go? Cap-And-Trade Folly:  Legislation pending in the Senate might warm environmentalists' hearts, but not because of potential cuts in carbon emissions.  Their interest is in the heavy economic costs the plans would inflict. … It's no surprise that the most expensive of the three is the Warner-Lieberman bill.  The Environmental Protection Agency reckons it could cost as much as $3 trillion a year in lost GDP.  In an economy of roughly $14 trillion, that's a significant loss. Global Warming Tax Grab:  The Cap-And-Trade proposal would be a huge boon to politicians.  Companies that exceeded their caps could buy credits from companies that had extra.  Commissions would be established. $$  Some politician's cohort would benefit from running that department. $$  Some cohort would be charged with establishing the cap limits.  And of course they would need offices and staff. $$ Cap and Trade Would Stifle Economy, Delay Transition to Cleaner Fuels.  With Congress determined to regulate energy use and perhaps impose caps or taxes on carbon dioxide emissions, the consequences of these actions deserve more scrutiny than they have received.  Much of today's debate is driven by rhetoric asserting a climate catastrophe is certain and the United States is sitting on the sidelines.  Neither claim is true. A Primer on the Economics of Carbon Taxes and Cap-and-Trade Systems.  The trading of carbon credits is troublesome.  It presumes an underlying database of emissions from millions of individual sources and a continuous monitoring of changes to the database.  This would be a huge increase in regulation, and it flies in the face of experience with other deregulations.  Markets are substitutes for regulation, not complements. Follow the money.  [Scroll down] During a Monday afternoon [3/3/2008] political session, the founder of junkscience.com explained GE's double-dipping ability to manufacture and sell windmills while receiving government subsidies for doing so.  And how, under proposed cap-and-trade plans, companies like Alcoa and DOW will be eligible for retroactive carbon credits for emission abatements they've accomplished in the past.  Oh, and who do you suppose owns the exchange where these carbon credits will be traded?  Can you spell Goldman Sachs? Weather Channel Founder:  Sue Al Gore for Fraud.  The founder of the Weather Channel wants to sue Al Gore for fraud, hoping a legal debate will settle the global-warming debate once and for all.  John Coleman, who founded the cable network in 1982, suggests suing for fraud proponents of global warming, including Al Gore, and companies that sell carbon credits.  "Is he committing financial fraud?  That is the question," Coleman said. $100 billion in carbon futures coming soon.  A futures market in carbon emissions trading could be worth several hundred billion dollars, ASX emerging markets general manager Anthony Collins says.  Mr Collins said the Australian Securities Exchange could be ready to launch a futures market for carbon emission permits "within weeks" of the federal Government passing the enabling legislation, expected late next year. Pelosi's Green House:  Carbon offsets are scams that allow gluttonous energy consumers like Gore to ease their conscience while doing absolutely nothing to curb their own energy use.  You buy a carbon offset, giving money to people who will do something like plant trees in Zimbabwe, which supposedly will reduce or absorb carbon emissions by an equivalent amount.  You are then declared "carbon-neutral" while you continue to pollute. The Carbon Footprint of the Rich is Twice That of the Poor.  Rich, well-educated Australians are contributing twice as much to climate change as average households, according to new analysis of consumption habits. The inconvenient truth about the carbon offset industry:  In the concluding part of a major investigation, Nick Davies shows how greenhouse gas credits do little or nothing to combat global warming. BS alert!  BS alert!  If idiot celebrities jetting around the world claiming they are "carbon neutral" because they buy carbon offsets understood the Kyoto Accord, they wouldn't bother, considering what hypocrites they already are.  That's because Kyoto doesn't count GHG emissions caused by flying, although it's one of the world's fastest-growing sources of GHG. True cost of carbon cuts:  Here is one scenario.  The first step would be a market-determined carbon price, most likely through selling emissions permits to business.  Economists say the carbon price would need to be about $30 a tonne to have an immediate impact.  This would double electricity bills, with the rising cost spilling over into consumer goods.  Fuel prices would jump significantly. Museum Taps Into Global Warming Guilt.  Chicago's Field Museum, appealing to worries over global warming, is giving its visitors the opportunity to offset the carbon emissions they generate by traveling to the museum.  As a way to help Americans shrink the size, or footprint, of their carbon emissions, the museum says it will sell "carbon emissions offset credits" for $1. Is carbon-offsetting just eco-enslavement?  The details of this carbon-offsetting scheme are disturbing.  Cameron offsets his flights by donating to Climate Care.  The latest wheeze of this carbon-offsetting company is to provide "treadle pumps" to poor rural families in India so that they can get water on to their land without having to use polluting diesel power. … These pumps were abolished in British prisons a century ago. Is carbon offsetting the best way to ease your conscience?  Climate Care's latest enterprise is to provide "treadle pumps" to poor rural families so they can get water on to their land without using diesel power.  The pumps are worked by stepping on pedals.  If a peasant treads for two hours a day, it will take at least three years to offset the CO2 from Mr Cameron's return flight to India. Can you buy a greener conscience?  The Oscar-winning film "An Inconvenient Truth" touted itself as the world's first carbon-neutral documentary.  The producers said that every ounce of carbon emitted during production — from jet travel, electricity for filming and gasoline for cars and trucks — was counterbalanced by reducing emissions somewhere else in the world.  It only made sense that a film about the perils of global warming wouldn't contribute to the problem. … It was a ridiculously good deal with one problem:  So far, it has not led to any additional emissions reductions. Gore's message is more than hot air.  For a man who has just picked up an Oscar for a documentary on global warming, Al Gore is collecting an embarrassing number of Air Miles.  Today he addresses the annual conference of the National Association of Pension Funds in Edinburgh.  Yesterday he was in Copenhagen, speaking to a sell-out conference on the booming market in emissions trading. Carbon credits don't grow on trees.  People who pay to have trees planted on their behalf to clean up greenhouse gas pollution cannot be sure they will get what they pay for, according to research that shows the so-called carbon offset market is vulnerable to profiteering and lacks credibility. California's CO2 Blame Game Vs. Automakers.  California's attorney general should be an outspoken opponent of frivolous lawsuits, not the state's leading proponent of such litigation.  Yet, Jerry Brown continues to pursue the big six automakers, alleging that CO2 vehicle emissions from their products constitute a "public nuisance." Carbon trade puts industries at risk.  The biggest element missing from the public debate on using emissions trading to cut Australia's greenhouse gases is the impact on energy-intensive industries — which use a third of the electricity produced nationally and employ 1.1 million people. Do trees make it OK to drive an SUV?  If you plant some trees, is it OK to drive an Escalade?  The question isn't as silly as it sounds.  People worried about global warming increasingly are trying to "offset" the carbon dioxide — the leading greenhouse gas — they spew into the atmosphere when they drive, fly or flick on a light.  One idea popular with the eco-conscious is to have trees planted for them.  You get to keep driving and flying, but those trees are supposed to suck in your trail of carbon. [Please note:  Water vapor — not carbon dioxide — is the "leading" greenhouse gas.] Carbon 'black market' emerges.  Australia's largest companies are buying carbon credits outside the boundaries of existing government schemes, creating a "behind the scenes" market in emissions trading, Minter Ellison senior associate Scott Singleton will tell the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association conference in Adelaide today [4/17/2007]. Klobuchar bill would establish national greenhouse gas registry.  Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who made the environment a key issue in her Senate campaign last year, proposed a national registry of greenhouse gas emissions Monday as part of an attempt to help reduce such emissions.  Klobuchar's legislation, which she dubbed a "carbon counter," would help track greenhouse gases as a prelude to legislative efforts to limit emissions through a cap-and-trade or other approach. High cost of carbon plan:  Australians can expect steep increases in the price of power and petrol as the nation prepares for carbon trading within as little as four years. Voluntary = Mandatory :  While the carbon trading scheme that Bush proposed Thursday [2/15/2002] might start out voluntary, there isn't a serious person inside the beltway who believes it could stay that way over the long run if it were to be implemented. Cutting carbon:  When you donate money to build a new windfarm, you don't take any of the old, polluting power offline; you increase the supply of power, reducing the price until others are encouraged to buy more carbon-emitting power.  On the margin, it may make some difference, since demand for electricity is not perfectly elastic, but nowhere near the one-for-one equivalence that carbon offsets would seem to suggest. Creators of carbon credit scheme are cashing in on it.  There's an elephant in global warming's living room that few in the mainstream media want to talk about:  the creators of the carbon credit scheme are the ones cashing in on it.  The two cherub like choirboys singing loudest in the Holier Than Thou Global Warming Cathedral are Maurice Strong and Al Gore.  This duo has done more than anyone else to advance the alarmism of man-made global warming. Industry caught in carbon 'smokescreen'.  Companies and individuals rushing to go green have been spending millions on "carbon credit" projects that yield few if any environmental benefits.  A Financial Times investigation has uncovered widespread failings in the new markets for greenhouse gases, suggesting some organisations are paying for emissions reductions that do not take place. Don't copy Gore's carbon credits use.  A rich, conscience-afflicted guy buys carbon credits from his profiteering broker, who takes his commission and pays a polluter somewhere in Musialstan to cut his pollution output in an amount equal to whatever the party of the first part needs to relieve his conscience.  You tell me just how this is going to reduce global warming.  The first guilty party is too rich to be bothered with altering his lifestyle — or too busy, being important, famous, powerful or inspirational, like Al Gore. The Carbon Folly:  Policymakers have settled on 'emissions trading' as their favorite global-warming fix.  But it isn't working. Welcome aboard, dupes.  A number of companies are now offering consumers carbon offset options.  Delta Airlines, for example, is taking advantage of the celebrity cachet of carbon offsets to offer them for a fee to passengers who want to mimic the private jetsters Gore and Heinz-Kerry Kerry at a price even a peasant can afford. … Promoting this program may be shrewd advertising but buying carbon offsets is generally stupid. Limousine Liberal Hypocrisy.  Sure, you can pretend you're offsetting Western greenhouse pollution by supposedly cleaning up a dirty coal plant in China.  But China is adding a new coal plant every week.  You could build a particularly dirty "uncapped" power plant, then sell hundreds of millions in carbon credits to reduce it to a normal rate of pollution.  The result?  The polluter gets very rich.  The planet continues to cook.  And the Gores of the world can feel virtuous as they burn up the local power grid. Senate Hearing on State, Regional, and Local Perspectives on Global Warming.  Since Kyoto is the only cap and trade program that is under way, it's worth asking — how well is that program working?  Of the 15 original EU countries, only two will meet their targets — Sweden and Britain, and Britain only because it eliminated its coal industry in the early 90s.  And like most signatories, Canada and Japan won't meet their targets either. How Gore's massive energy consumption saves the world.  Al [Gore] buys his carbon offsets from Generation Investment Management LLP, which is "an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 and with offices in London and Washington, D.C.," that, for a fee, will invest your money in "high-quality companies at attractive prices that will deliver superior long-term investment returns."  Generation is a tax-exempt U.S. 501(c)3.  And who's the chairman and founding partner?  Al Gore.  So Al can buy his carbon offsets from himself. Zoning rules thwart Gore's solar dreams.  Zoning rules in Al Gore's upscale Tennessee neighborhood have prevented the former vice president and environmental activist from installing solar panels on his roof.  Gore bought his multimillion dollar home in 2002 in Belle Meade, an exclusive city encircled by metropolitan Nashville, and he has embarked on an ambitious renovation.  But his contractors ran into a legal barrier last summer when they sought to apply for a permit to install solar panels on the roof. Edwards Claims His Mega-Mansion is Carbon Neutral.  Call it "Dancing with the Stars":  Global Warming Edition.  Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards showed his best dance moves trying to avoid questions about how energy efficient his 28,000-square-foot mansion really is and how much the power bill costs each month. Volcano 'building up energy'.  Indonesia's deadly Mount Kelud billowed thick smoke on Monday [11/05/2007] amid signs of major eruption, while another volcano nearby sent clouds of ash raining down on towns and villages. The Editor says... All the "carbon credits" in the world won't offset this eruption, if and when it happens. You could be in debt to carbon loansharks for life.  Global warming, blah blah blah, greenhouse gases, blah blah blah, no more patio heaters for you, Johnny Middle Classes.  The plan so far is that every still-not-citizen of this country would be issued with carbon rationing cards, much like supermarket loyalty cards, from which points would be deducted for every carbon-bearing purchase. Architect of Denver's Global Warming Plan Seeks to Benefit Financially.  Multi-billion firm, CH2M HILL, is a major donor of Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. EU Carbon Market Crashes.  The European emissions trading scheme (ETS), launched with great fanfare last year, has been a rollercoaster, with prices of permits reaching record highs of more than €30 per ton before collapsing to below €9 on May 12.  The idea seemed wonderful in theory — a "market-based" way to reduce emissions — but in practice it has proven chaotic. Killing Jobs to Save the Climate.  The price of European emission permits is rising so rapidly that German companies are threatening to leave the country.  Thousands of jobs could be lost. And the environment may, in the end, be no better off. Carbon-Offset Cowboys Let Their Grass Grow.  Last year Sun Ranch became the first ranch in the U.S. to cash in on a program that pays rangeland owners to help fight global warming.  The ranch received a $30,000 check for the carbon dioxide its grasslands have been absorbing from the air. The Editor says... It sounds like this rancher is being paid to watch the grass grow.  But if I stop mowing the grass in my yard, I'll get fined by the city. Obama's Grand Experiment: Global Warming Cap-and-Trade Policy.  The prospect that President-elect Barack Obama may keep the Bush tax cuts until 2011 has some clinging to hope he will postpone his liberal ideas for the economy's sake.  There's little chance of that when it comes to global warming, however, an issue on which Obama puts his ideology first and the nation's economic growth second. Obama's Cap on Carbon Pollution Is A Huge Tax Increase, Republican Lawmaker Says.  In his speech to Congress Tuesday night, President Barack Obama "committed himself to the largest annual tax increase in the history of America," warns a Republican congressman.  The implementation of a cap-and-trade system, something Obama favors, would raise $300- to $330-billion a year, said Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.). Carbon Trading to Raise Consumer Energy Prices.  The cost of energy for consumers would be driven higher in President Barack Obama's proposed budget by a carbon cap-and-trade system that is projected to raise about $80 billion a year starting in 2012. ... The budget assumes a starting price of $20 per ton for carbon emissions, an amount that Mr. Obama's aides says is conservative and would likely rise. Presidential Bait-and-Switch.  Mr. Obama pledged "no tax hikes on any families earning less than a quarter million dollars."  What he didn't draw attention to was $600 billion in higher energy taxes he wants to impose through a cap-and-trade system on carbon emissions.  These taxes will hit everyone who drives, flips a light switch, or buys anything manufactured, grown or shipped. Cap and Trade:  Wall Street's Latest Scheme.  One sector is immune from the economic downturn:  global warming lobbyists. ... It can be assumed that this lobbying bonanza will only increase in scope since President Obama, in his February 24 speech to Congress, asked for "...legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America." Much more material about carbon dioxide can be found on the page about Greenhouse Gases and the Kyoto Protocol. Nothing on this page shall be construed as an attempt to influence any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office or any political party. Back to the Global Warming Intro Page Jump to the Kyoto Protocol Jump to the Greenhouse Gases Section Back to the Home page

Document location http://www.akdart.com/warming71.html Updated November 19, 2009.  Page design by Andrew K. Dart  ©2009