Emissions trading (or emission trading) is an administrative approach used to control pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants. It is sometimes called cap and trade. In other words, your energy costs will go up as this administration tries to go "green" and tax the heck out of what little manufacturing plants are still left in America. All this is a quick scheme to make the government wealthier and you poorer. 

• Newsbusters.org: ClimateGate Totally Ignored By TV News Outlets Except Fox
• Washington Times: Hiding Evidence of Global Cooling
• UK Telegraph: Climategate: the Final Nail in the Coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?
• PowerLine: Global Warming Bombshell
• Wall Street Journal: Global Warming With the Lid Off
• Alleged CRU Emails - Searchable
• American Thinker: Violating the Principle of Science as 'Social Contract'
• Sweetness & Light: Emails Damning To CRU Head, Phil Jones
• Sweetness & Light: Proof That 'Climate Skeptics' Are Right
• UK Register: Treemometers: A New Scientific Scandal. If a Peer Review Fails in the Woods...
• American Spectator: "Climate Gate" Development: CEI Files Notice of Intent to Sue NASA
• Nature.com: Storm Clouds Gather Over Leaked Climate Emails
• Sweetness & Light: Post Your Favorite CRU Email/Docs Here
• IBD Greensheet: Download The Entire Leaked Climate Emails -Joe Weisenthal
• Heritage Foundation: ClimateGate Heats Up Global Warming Debate Before Copenhagen

In trying to minimize the importance of “ClimateGate,” Al Gore sounds like the Wizard of Oz, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"  During a CNN interview, Gore downplayed the meaning of the emails at the center of the controversy by saying, “Well, they took a few phrases out of context. These are private e-mails, more than 10 years old, and they've tried to blow it up into something that it's really not."

Like Dorothy’s dog Toto, the posting of emails and documents on the internet from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit has pulled back the green curtain on the secret world of leading climate scientists, exposing a disturbing pattern of apparent scientific misconduct.

Most concerning, the scientists involved played a key role in the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the body responsible for producing the reports on global warming politicians use to justify mammoth interferences in the free market such as the Kyoto Treaty and cap-and-trade legislation.

These disclosures are a serious blow to Gore and to global warming alarmists at the United Nations and elsewhere.

While it’s easy for Gore to dismiss the significance of “ClimateGate” and continue to skip down the yellow brick road, concerns of scientific fraud in global warming research is an inconvenient truth for the CEOs who have banked on cap-and-trade legislation as a business strategy.

Of the disparate corporate members of the United States Climate Action Partnership – the lobbying coalition of corporations and environmental special interest groups pushing for cap-and-trade – utility companies seem especially vulnerable to “ClimateGate” unravelling the scientific credibility of the IPCC’s man-made global warming claims.

“ClimateGate” poses a dilemma for Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers and Exelon CEO John Rowe, two of the most outspoken supporters of cap-and-trade, because their companies have specifically said they are relying on the IPCC’s conclusion as the scientific basis to call for government-imposed emissions limits.

In testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in October, Exelon’s Rowe said, “We believe that the climate change science is settled …The IPCC has declared that evidence for a discernable warming of the planet’s climate system is now “unequivocal” – and has warned that much larger changes are in store if we don’t begin reducing global emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases and do it soon.”

A Duke report on global warming states, "...our policy positions are driven by the IPCC peer-reviewed science and by our judgment that this science is not only credible, but that it is accepted by the vast majority of public policymakers who will shape U.S. climate legislation in the years to come."

Both Rogers and Rowe have taken a very high public profile in calling for cap-and-trade. In addition to testifying in Congress, these CEOs formed a partnership with the Environmental Defense Action Fund (EDAF) to promote cap-and-trade through TV and print advertising campaigns. The ads, paid for by EDAF, can be found at www.asmarcap.com. Continued...

On 20 November 2009, emails and other documents, apparently originating from with the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.

The authenticity of these emails has been confirmed by most of the relevant parties including the CRU at Univeristy of East Anglia and many of the authors. These emails contain some quite surprising and even disappointing insights into what has been happening within the climate change scientific establishment. Worryingly this same group of scientists are very influential in terms of economic and social policy formation around the subject of climate change.

As these emails are already in the public domain, I think it is important that people are able to look through them and judge for themselves. Until I am told otherwise I have no reason to think the text found on this site is true or false. We provide this information as a curiosity and hopefully as a basis for better understanding of the motivations and behind-the-scenes discussions of a small but influential group of scientists who have apparently taken their scientific work beyond the realm of scientific inquiry and into the domain of political activism. Ultimately, we hope you will be the judge of that assertion yourself. If you have questions, you may email me at eastangliaemails@gmail.com

SEARCH HERE

Copenhagen is preparing for the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough.

On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the "summit to save the world", which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200. "We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," she says. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report."

No surprise to the Right Soup, but 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.

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. The cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

The documents (PDF) were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute and released yesterday.

House Republican Leader John Boehner has estimated the additional tax bill would be at $366 billion a year, or $3,100 a year per family. The Heritage Foundation says that, by 2035, “the typical family of four will see its direct energy costs rise by over $1,500 per year.”

CNET says:

The FOIA’d document written by Judson Jaffe, who joined the Treasury Department’s Office of Environment and Energy in January 2009, says: “Given the administration’s proposal to auction all emission allowances, a cap-and-trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 (billion) to $200 billion annually.” (Obviously, any final cap-and-trade system may be different from what Obama had proposed, and could yield higher or lower taxes.)

Because personal income tax revenues bring in around $1.37 trillion a year, a $200 billion additional tax would be the equivalent of a 15 percent increase a year. A $100 billion additional tax would represent a 7 percent or 8 percent increase a year.
One odd point: The document written by Jaffee includes this line: “It will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.” The Treasury Department redacted the rest of the sentence with a thick black line.

The Freedom of Information Act, of course, contains no this-might-embarrass-the-president exemption. You’d hope the presidential administration that boasts of being the “most open and transparent in history” would be more forthcoming than this.

Cap And Tax will result in windfall profits for GE (also owner of Obama propaganda vehicles MSNBC and NBC), Al Gore and Goldman Sachs (who has been awarded the plum job of making a market for trading carbon credits.)

Cap and Tax passed the House; now it is up to the Senate to stop it. This energy tax will put undo burdens on families who are already strapped due to the horrid economy. We must stand together and say NO to our Senators and Representatives, lest we be saddled with this insanity forever. Once passed, it will place our country under UN climate-change rule, and remove our sovereign governance.

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.

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

A second memorandum, which was prepared for Obama's transition team after the November election, says this about climate change policies: "Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1 percent of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation."

The documents (PDF) were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute and released on Tuesday.

These disclosures will probably not aid the political prospects of the Democrats' cap and trade bill. The House of Representatives approved it by a remarkably narrow margin in June -- the bill would have failed if only six House members had switched their votes to "no" -- and it faces significant opposition in the Senate.

One reason the bill faces an uncertain future is concern about its cost. House Republican Leader John Boehner has estimated the additional tax bill would be at $366 billion a year, or $3,100 a year per family. Democrats have pointed to estimates from MIT's John Reilly, who put the cost at $800 a year per family, and noted that tax credits to low income households could offset part of the bite. The Heritage Foundation says that, by 2035, "the typical family of four will see its direct energy costs rise by over $1,500 per year."

One difference is that while Heritage's numbers are talking about 26 years in the future, the Treasury Department's figures don't have a time limit.

"Heritage is saying publicly what the administration is saying to itself privately," says Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who filed the FOIA request. "It's nice to see they're not spinning each other behind closed doors."

"They're not telling you the cost -- they're not telling you the benefit," says Horner, who wrote the Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming. "If they don't tell you the cost, and they don't tell you the benefit, what are they telling you? They're just talking about global salvation."

The FOIA'd document written by Judson Jaffe, who joined the Treasury Department's Office of Environment and Energy in January 2009, says: "Given the administration's proposal to auction all emission allowances, a cap-and-trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 to $200 billion annually." (Obviously, any final cap-and-trade system may be different from what Obama had proposed, and could yield higher or lower taxes.)

Because personal income tax revenues bring in around $1.37 trillion a year, a $200 billion additional tax would be the equivalent of a 15 percent increase a year. A $100 billion additional tax would represent a 7 or 8 percent increase a year.

One odd point: The document written by Jaffee includes this line: "It will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX." The Treasury Department redacted the rest of the sentence with a thick black line.

The Freedom of Information Act, of course, contains no this-might-embarrass-the-president exemption (nor, for that matter, should federal agencies be in the business of possibly suppressing dissenting climate change voices). You'd hope the presidential administration that boasts of being the "most open and transparent in history" would be more forthcoming than this.

Update 9/16/2009: The Environmental Defense Fund has responded to the documents' release with a statement saying, in part:

Even if a 100 percent auction was a live legislative proposal, which it's not, that math ignores the redistribution of revenue back to consumers. It only looks at one side of the balance sheet. It would only be true if you think the Administration was going to pile all the cash on the White House lawn and set it on fire.

The bill passed by the House sends the value of pollution permits to consumers, and it contains robust cost-containment provisions. Every credible and independent economic analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (such as those done by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the Energy Information Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency) says the costs will be small and affordable -- and that the U.S. economy will grow with a cap on carbon.

Update 9/17/2009: I've written a followup article to respond to erroneous claims from the Center for American Progress.

NYT obtains green strategy memo: Stop use of term 'global warming'! *  WASHINGTON — The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is “global warming.” The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington. Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.” EcoAmerica has been conducting research for the last several years to find new ways to frame environmental issues and so build public support for climate change legislation and other initiatives. A summary of the group’s latest findings and recommendations was accidentally sent by e-mail to a number of news organizations by someone who sat in this week on a briefing intended for government officials and environmental leaders.

I bet you thought that if you bought a house, you actually own it and can, with reasonable exceptions, do with it what you want. You probably think that if you want to live in a log cabin, with wood stoves that belch smoke into the air for heat, and an old washer and dryer that don't have those little EnergyStar stickers on them you can because it's your life and your property. You paid for it with money you earned with the sweat of your brow and what the heck is America anyhow if a body can't live in the home they want furnished with the appliances they want?

Ah, silly you. You didn't reckon on the Democratic Party's desire to control every miniscule aspect of your life. Let me introduce you to a little section of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill called the "Building Energy Performance Labeling Program". It's section 304 of the bill and it says, basically, that your house belongs to the state. See, the Federal Government really wants a country full of energy-efficient homes, so much so that the bill mandates that new homes be 30 percent more energy efficient than the current building code on the very day the law is signed. That efficiency goes up to 50 percent by 2014 and only goes higher from there, all the way to 2030. That, by the way, is not merely a target but a requirement of the law. New homes must reach those efficiency targets no matter what.

But what does that have to do with current homeowners like you? Well, I'm glad you asked. You're certainly not off the hook, no way, no how. Here's what the Democrats have planned for you. The program requires that states label their buildings so that we can all know how efficient every building (that includes residential and non-residential buildings) is and it requires that the information be made public. To that end, the bill suggests a number of circumstances under which the states could inspect a building, including:

(A) preparation, and public disclosure of the label through filing with tax and title records at the time of--

(i) a building audit conducted with support from Federal or State funds;

(ii) a building energy-efficiency retrofit conducted in response to such an audit;

(iii) a final inspection of major renovations or additions made to a building in accordance with a building permit issued by a local government entity;

(iv) a sale that is recorded for title and tax purposes consistent with paragraph (8);

(v) a new lien recorded on the property for more than a set percentage of the assessed value of the property, if that lien reflects public financial assistance for energy-related improvements to that building; or

(vi) a change in ownership or operation of the building for purposes of utility billing; or

(B) other appropriate means.

Pay close attention to (iii), (iv), and (vi) because those hit you right where you live. What that's saying is the state will be empowered to inspect your home if you want to 1) renovate your house in any way that requires a building permit, 2) sell your house, or 3) change the name of the person responsible for any utility bill.

By now, if you haven't swallowed your tongue and are in need of medical attention, you're probably wondering if there's a penalty for not being in compliance with the new efficiency ratings. The answer is no, and yes. Here's where the bill gets really sneaky. So far as I can tell, there is no direct penalty if your house does not meet the bill's target. However, it does require that the number of buildings inspected by the state meet certain percentage targets and if they do not, the state loses out on a significant portion of the money it could get from Washington. In other words, the bill demands certain things from the states, but ties funding for those demands to compliance with the demands.

Did I say the bill gets sneaky? I was wrong. The bill strong-arms the states like a couple mob heavies leaning on a witness in a Rico trial. In turn, the states are going to put the screws to you, so it gets the billions of dollars Washington is dangling in front of them. So while the Federal government won't directly punish you, it will provide the states with lots and lots of rectangular, green reasons to do so.

And it gets worse. The Federal government has graciously offered to help homeowners with the retrofits the states will force them to do through a program called the Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Purposes (REEP). REEP sets aside a pool of money in each state for property owners who have to turn their polar bear-killing buildings into lean, mean, green machines. But, and I'm sure you've guessed this already, there's a catch. Before I get to that, here's the magic formula (and don't read ahead and spoil the surprise!):

(i) AWARDS- For residential buildings--

(I) support for a free or low-cost detailed building energy audit that prescribes, as part of a energy-reducing measures sufficient to achieve at least a 20 percent reduction in energy use, by providing an incentive equal to the documented cost of such audit, but not more than $200, in addition to any earned by achieving a 20 percent or greater efficiency improvement;

(II) a total of $1,000 for a combination of measures, prescribed in an audit conducted under subclause (I), designed to reduce energy consumption by more than 10 percent, and $2,000 for a combination of measures prescribed in such an audit, designed to reduce energy consumption by more than 20 percent;

(III) $3,000 for demonstrated savings of 20 percent, pursuant to a performance-based building retrofit program; and

(IV) $1,000 for each additional 5 percentage points of energy savings achieved beyond savings for which funding is provided under subclause (II) or (III).

If you want to hit that 50 percent savings mark that all new homes have to hit, then you can get as much as $12,200, including inspection, as you scoop all those awards. That's a pretty good chunk of change that should cover most, if not all of the costs of a retrofit on any moderately-sized older house, right? Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy.

Except for that catch and boy is it a doozy.

(ii) MAXIMUM PERCENTAGE- Awards under clause (i) shall not exceed 50 percent of retrofit costs for each building. For buildings with multiple residential units, awards under clause (i) shall not be greater than 50 percent of the total cost of retrofitting the building, prorated among individual residential units on the basis of relative costs of the retrofit.

Did you get that? You'll be on the hook for half of the cost of the retrofit, no matter what. To get the full effect of that part of the bill, I suggest you visit this web page and click the big yellow button right after you finish reading it.

I think Mark Steyn sums it up rather nicely:

I confess I'm finding it harder and harder to see why you fellows bothered holding a revolution. Under this bill, it will be illegal for me to sell my property to a willing buyer without first bringing it into line with some twerp bureaucrat's arbitrary and ever shifting "environmental" regulations originally designed for California, and which have helped turn the Golden State into the foldin' state, but which are nevertheless now to be applied from Maine to Alaska. And no matter what you spend a couple of years down the road the standards will be "revised" and you'll be out of compliance all over again.

And the very worst thing about all this is that it is only one little bit of what the Democrats in Washington want to do to you. Are you getting a little bit upset yet? If not, here are 49 more things they want to do to you in the name of climate change. I'm sure you can find something in there that might give you a reason to contact your Senator today.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that I found the nifty linkable form of the bill thanks to this post by Pat who runs the quite good blog And So It Goes in Shreveport. As some of you know, it's very bad mojo not to like to a blogger who provides nifty and/or useful information. Thank you also to those of you who are sending this link around on Twitter. You make a blogger's heart grow three sizes too large this morning!

If this is your first visit to AIP, feel free to leave a comment to say hello (or groan audibly about Henry Waxman's folly of a bill). While you're here, why not take a couple extra minutes to read some of the other good blog posts. The Morning Conservative Reading List is a great place to start (and a reason to visit every day!). From there you can read about Czar Mania, some strange economic polling, and a David Axelrod fact-check beatdown, just for starters.

 UPDATE 2: Melissa Clouthier, AIP columnist and blogger extraordinaire, asks an interesting question: 

Consider this for a moment. Right now, at this writing, there is a glut of new home supply. Will those homes have to be retrofitted to meet the government's 30% more fuel efficient standards? And how does one magically do this? Already, homes are being built with air-tight windows, special insulation, more efficient air conditioners, etc. What would make it more energy efficient?

 I'll give you a hint: think appliances. Trust me, Section 304 is but a miniscule fraction of the mandates the Democrats want to foist upon you.

Waxman-Markey is part power-grab, part enviro-fantasy. Here are 50 reasons to stop it.

The stimulus bill was the legislative equivalent of the famous cantina scene from Star Wars, an eye-popping collection of the freakish and exotic, gathered for dubious purposes. The Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, known as ACES (the American Clean Energy and Security Act), is more like the third panel in Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights — a hellscape that disturbs the sleep of anybody who contemplates it carefully.

Two main things to understand about Waxman-Markey: First, it will not reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, at least not at any point in the near future. The inclusion of carbon offsets, which can be manufactured out of thin air and political imagination, will eliminate most of the demands that the legislation puts on industry, though in doing so it will manage to drive up the prices consumers pay for every product that requires energy for its manufacture — which is to say, for everything. Second, it represents a worse abuse of the public trust and purse than the stimulus and the bailouts put together. Waxman-Markey creates a permanent new regime in which environmental romanticism and corporate welfare are mixed together to form political poison. From comic bureaucratic power grabs (check out the section of the bill on candelabras) to the creation of new welfare programs for Democratic constituencies to, above all, massive giveaways for every financial, industrial, and political lobby imaginable, this bill would permanently deform American politics and economic life.

The House of Representatives, famously, did not read this bill before passing it, which is testament to either Nancy Pelosi’s managerial incompetency or her political wile, or possibly both. If you take the time to read the legislation, you’ll discover four major themes: special-interest giveaways, regulatory mandates unrelated to climate change, fanciful technological programs worthy of The Jetsons, and assorted left-wing wish fulfillment. We cannot cover every swirl and brushstroke of this masterpiece of misgovernance, but here’s a breakdown of its 50 most outrageous features.  (Too much too post)

When Nancy Pelosi was advising congressmen to back this beast, she said they should not worry about the words of the bill they had not read, but think about four others: “jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.” The legislation offers Pelosi perverse vindication: Waxman-Markey will create a lot of jobs for Wall Street sharps, Big Business rent-seekers, ACORN hucksters, utility-company lobbyists, grant-writers at left-wing organizations, college administrators, light-bulb-policing bureaucrats, and an army of parasitic hangers-on. It’s up to the Senate to stop it.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - 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.

"We'll do it as soon as we get back" in September from a month-long break, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer announced. Earlier this week, Boxer, a Democrat, said her committee had planned to complete work on a bill by early August. A White House spokesman, who asked not to be identified, said, "The administration is continuing to work with the Senate to pass comprehensive energy legislation and believes it's on track." He would not discuss timetables, though.

On June 26, the House of Representatives narrowly passed its version of a bill to cut carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 levels by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. The Senate delay came as Congress was preoccupied with healthcare reform, Obama's top legislative priority, and as senators continued to bicker over how to reduce industrial emissions of carbon dioxide without putting U.S. businesses and consumers at a disadvantage.

At a meeting of the Group of Eight major industrialized nations in L'Aquila, Italy, leaders failed to get China and India to sign onto a goal of cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in half by 2050. Nonetheless, Obama said "important strides" had been made in agreements to limit global warming. A White House spokesman said the president was confident "there was still time in which they could close the gap" with China and India, two large polluters, before December's talks in Copenhagen on a new U.N. climate change treaty.

LEGISLATION FINISHED BY DECEMBER?

Asked if the delay in her committee hurt chances the Senate will pass a bill this year, Boxer said, "Not a bit ... we'll be in (session) until Christmas, so I'm not worried about it." But she did not guarantee Congress will be able to finish a bill and deliver it to Obama by December in time for the Copenhagen meeting. "I want to take this as far as we can take it (before Copenhagen). The more we do the better," Boxer said. Senator Charles Grassley, the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, which also has a significant role in developing the climate legislation, was more pessimistic. "I don't even expect it to come up this year" in the Senate, he told reporters.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he wants the full Senate to debate a climate change bill this fall. But since the chamber could be preoccupied at least through October with legislation expanding healthcare to some 46 million uninsured people, the environmental bill may get crowded out. Even though Democrats control 60 of the 100 seats in the Senate, there are enough moderate Democrats who might not support a climate change bill. So several Republican votes will likely be necessary for passage, according to analysts. Some senators are trying to use the climate change bill to expand U.S. aid to the nuclear power industry, a move that likely would offend some liberals. "I've been working with some of my colleagues ... to strengthen the section of the House bill regarding support of nuclear energy as a clean energy source," Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent, told reporters.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin has said he also wants changes to the House-passed bill, which already contained significant breaks for farmers. Four other committees also will review the climate bill. Asked if he thought the Senate could pass a bill this year, Harkin, with 33 years serving in Congress, said on Wednesday, "My experience here is that these things take a lot of time."

The 8 cap-and-tax Republican turncoats again are:

Bono Mack (CA) (202) 225-5330
Castle (DE) (202) 225-4165
Kirk (IL) (202) 225-4385 (And he’s seriously considering running for Senate!)
Lance (NJ) (202) 225-5361
LoBiondo (NJ) (202) 225-6572
McHugh (NY) (202) 225-4611
Reichert (WA) (202) 225-7761
Smith (NJ) (202) 225-3765

(Phone numbers h/t commenter rightwingmom)

Congrats, congresspeople, you helped the Democrats pass a junk science-based, massive national energy tax. Headed to Disney World now?

We still want to know: What were your payoffs/earmarks?

In case you were wondering, here are the 44 Democrat NAY votes:

Reminder: The two Republicans who didn’t vote: Jeff Flake (AZ) and John Sullivan (OK).

Here’s why: Flake had a “family conflict” (his daughter is reportedly in a beauty pageant in Alabama tomorrow) and Sullivan is undergoing alcohol treatment. As I noted earlier today, Dem. Rep. Patrick Kennedy was pulled out of rehab to cast his vote.

And another reminder that the full roll call vote is here.

HR 2454 RECORDED VOTE 26-Jun-2009 7:17 PM
BILL TITLE: American Clean Energy and Security Act

Time left for the Cap and Tr8tors to change their vote.
It is finally here!It is finally here!04 Days, 11 Hours, 22 Minutes, 07 Seconds.04 Days, 11 Hours, 31 Minutes, 03 Seconds.

1) Click on their link.
2) Select the 'Contact' tab.
Contact their local office as they are not in DC and home on vacation.

Mary Bono Mack R (CA)
Mike Castle R (DW)
Mark Steven Eirk R (IL)
Leonard Lance R (NJ)
Frank LoBiondo R (NJ)
John McHugh R (NY)
Dave Reichert R (WA)
Chris Smith R (NJ)

#capandtr8tors is the Twitter tag to use on this topic.

Tea parties are popping up to rally against Cap and Trade! 

http://teapartypatriots.org/

We are asking everyone to rally at their county courthouse, federal courthouse or capitol building tomorrow, Saturday June 25th or over the next 5 days.
Add Your Event Here
You can find an event by selecting your state in the drop down list above.

The released report is a draft version, prepared under EPA’s unusually short internal review schedule, and thus may contain inaccuracies which were corrected in the final report.

While we hoped that EPA would release the final report, we’re tired of waiting for this agency to become transparent, even though its Administrator has been talking transparency since she took office. So we are releasing a draft version of the report ourselves, today,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman.

CEI notes that: Internal EPA email messages, released by CEI earlier in the week, indicate that the report was kept under wraps and its author silenced because of pressure to support the Administration’s agenda of regulating carbon dioxide.

I’m pleased to say that we have the final report exclusively available here, courtesy of our verified contact at the EPA, who shall remain anonymous. For some background on this contact, developed with the help of Tom Fuller at the San Francisco Environmental Policy Examiner, please read the WUWT story below. The download link is also below.

Source inside EPA confirms claims of science being ignored, suppressed, by top EPA management

The title page of the final report from Alan Carlin of the EPA reads:

Comments on Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act
By Alan Carlin
NCEE/OPEI
Based on TSD Draft of March 9, 2009
March 16, 2009

Download the final report from Alan Carlin here, link:  Endangerment comments v7b1 (PDF 4MB)

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WASHINGTON – In a triumph for President Barack Obama, the Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed sweeping legislation Friday 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. Republicans were overwhelmingly against the measure, arguing it would destroy jobs in the midst of a recession while burdening consumers with a new tax in the form of higher energy costs. The House's action fulfilled Speaker Nancy Pelosi's vow to clear major energy legislation before July 4, and sent the measure to a highly uncertain fate in the Senate.

Obama lobbied recalcitrant Democrats by phone from the White House as the debate unfolded across several hours, and Al Gore posted a statement on his Web site saying the measure represents "an essential first step towards solving the climate crisis." The former vice president won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work drawing attention to the destructive potential of global warming. On the House floor, Democrats hailed the legislation as historic, while Republicans said it would damage the economy without solving the nation's energy woes.

It is "the most important energy and environmental legislation in the history of our country," said Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts. "It sets a new course for our country, one that steers us away from foreign oil and towards a path of clean American energy." But Rep. John Boehner, the House Republican leader, used an extraordinary one-hour speech shortly before the final vote to warn of unintended consequences in what he said was a "defining bill." He called it a "bureaucratic nightmare" that would cost jobs, depress real estate prices and put the government into parts of the economy where it now has no role.

The legislation would require the U.S. to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020 and by about 80 percent by mid-century. That was slightly more aggressive than Obama originally wanted, 14 percent by 2020 and the same 80 percent by mid-century. U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are rising at about 1 percent a year and are predicted to continue increasing without mandatory limits.

Under the bill, the government would limit heat-trapping pollution from factories, refineries and power plants and issue allowances for polluters. Most of the allowances would be given away, but about 15 percent would be auctioned by bid and the proceeds used to defray higher energy costs for lower-income individuals and families. "Some would like to do more. Some would like to do less," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said in advance of the final vote. "But we have reached a compromise ... and it is a compromise that can pass this House, pass that Senate, be signed by the president and become law and make progress."

One of the biggest compromises involved the near total elimination of an administration plan to sell pollution permits and raise more than $600 billion over a decade — money to finance continuation of a middle class tax cut. About 85 percent of the permits are to be given away rather than sold in a ceoncession to energy companies and their allies in the House — and even that is uncertain to survive in the Senate. The final bill also contained concessions to satisfy farm-state lawmakers, ethanol producers, hydroelectric advocates, the nuclear industry and others, some of them so late that they were not made public until 3 a.m. on Friday.

Supporters and opponents agreed the result would be higher energy costs but disagreed vigorously on the impact on consumers. Democrats pointed to two reports — one from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the other from the Environmental Protection Agency — that suggested average increases would be limited after tax credits and rebates were taken into account. The CBO estimated the bill would cost an average household $175 a year, the EPA $80 to $110 a year. Republicans questioned the validity of the CBO study and noted that even that analysis showed actual energy production costs increasing $770 per household. Industry groups have cited other studies showing much higher costs to the economy and to individuals.

The White House and congressional Democrats argued the bill would create millions of "green jobs" as the nation shifts to greater reliance on renewable energy sources such as wind and solar and development of more fuel-efficient vehicles — and away from use of fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal. It will "make our nation the world leader on clean energy jobs and technology," declared Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who negotiated deals with dozens of lawmakers in recent weeks to broaden the bill's support.

Pelosi, D-Calif., took an intense personal interest in the measure, sitting through hours of meetings with members of the rank and file and nurturing fragile compromises. At its heart, the bill was a trade-off, less than the White House initially sought though it was more than Republicans said was acceptable. Some of the dealmaking had a distinct political feel. Rep. Alan Grayson, a first-term Democrat, won a pledge of support that $50 million from the proceeds of pollution permit sales in the bill would go to a proposed new hurricane research facility in his district in Orlando, Fla.

"This is revolutionary. This is a moment in history," declared Markey, a co-sponsor of the bill.

Republicans saw it differently.

This "amounts to the largest tax increase in American history under the guise of climate change," declared Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.

The number of skeptics is swelling everywhere.

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Credit for Australia's own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence." Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public skepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.

The rise in skepticism also came as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected like Mr. Obama on promises to combat global warming, was attempting his own emissions-reduction scheme. His administration was forced to delay the implementation of the program until at least 2011, just to get the legislation through Australia's House. The Senate was not so easily swayed.

Mr. Fielding, a crucial vote on the bill, was so alarmed by the renewed science debate that he made a fact-finding trip to the U.S., attending the Heartland Institute's annual conference for climate skeptics. He also visited with Joseph Aldy, Mr. Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, where he challenged the Obama team to address his doubts. They apparently didn't.

This week Mr. Fielding issued a statement: He would not be voting for the bill. He would not risk job losses on "unconvincing green science." The bill is set to founder as the Australian parliament breaks for the winter.

Republicans in the U.S. have, in recent years, turned ever more to the cost arguments against climate legislation. That's made sense in light of the economic crisis. If Speaker Nancy Pelosi fails to push through her bill, it will be because rural and Blue Dog Democrats fret about the economic ramifications. Yet if the rest of the world is any indication, now might be the time for U.S. politicians to re-engage on the science. One thing for sure: They won't be alone.

WASHINGTON -- For years, landowners have gotten paid for not farming. Now they may get paid for not cutting down trees. While U.S. families could see their annual energy bills rise hundreds of dollars under a massive climate bill that President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are trying to push through the House, owners of large swaths of forestland -- timber companies, large farms, even foreign countries -- could reap billions of dollars.

The bill is aimed at curbing the gases, largely carbon dioxide from power plants and vehicles, blamed for global warming. But it would allow polluters to buy credits from owners of forestland as an alternative to switching to fuels other than coal and gas or installing expensive equipment to capture the greenhouse gases. The land owners would get the credits because trees suck up greenhouse gases, preventing them from reaching the atmosphere and acting like a blanket to warm the Earth.

The premise is that at some point, the sources of greenhouse gases will find it cheaper to switch to other fuels or install pollution controls than to keep paying for the credits. "In effect, the public is going to pay polluters to plant trees," says Frank O'Donnell of the advocacy group Clean Air Watch. "Does that really lead to a major improvement in global warming? I don't know and I'm not sure anybody knows."

Here's how it works, hypothetically.

Say an acre of forestland sucks up two additional metric tons of carbon after a landowner plants more trees on his land or promises to rotate the way he cuts them down so more are standing at once. If the pollution market created by the legislation is currently trading at $20 a ton, then the landowner could stand to make $40 per acre if he qualifies for the program -- a potentially good investment for owners of large tracts of forest, such as timber companies or large corporate farms.

The legislation would also extend to international forests, promising to pay some countries that agree to slow their harvesting of trees abroad.

The Agriculture Department, which includes the U.S. Forest Service, will oversee the domestic program and develop regulations for verifying whether a forest owner's particular tract of land is actually capturing carbon. Farm state lawmakers had threatened to vote against the bill if the Environmental Protection Agency was given that authority.

Rep. Collin Peterson, the Minnesota Democrat who led the fight to include the offsets for forests and other agricultural programs, said many farmers don't trust the EPA.

The program is not unlike another set of payments that many farmers have been receiving for years -- conservation subsidies that pay farmers not to plant on environmentally sensitive land.

Farmers and foresters are also exempt from the bill's greenhouse gas emission reduction requirements under the bill.

Critics say the program is ripe for abuse and that landowners could reap new rewards for things they're already doing.

Much of the concern revolves around how the Agriculture Department can accurately measure how much carbon is sucked up by a particular tract of trees and the government's ability to enforce penalties against those who collect money for the credits and don't produce results.

Another concern is weather and disease, which can destroy a forest in a short period of time. The legislation takes into account these "unintentional reversals" in carbon absorption, and a landowner may not have to pay back all of the funds he collected if the devastation wasn't his fault.

Kate Horner, a policy analyst for the environmental advocacy group Friends of the Earth, says the international aspect is particularly troubling. It will not be easy for the United States to monitor what is going on in other countries, she says, or to know if the offsets will actually reduce carbon emissions or help save forests.

"What these forest offsets will do is to pay forest destroyers for doing something in a slightly less bad fashion," she says.

Dave Tenny, the president and CEO of the National Alliance of Forest Owners, says the program could help those in the forest industry who have suffered from a slowdown in homebuilding over recent years.

"If someone is able to benefit from that economically, the fundamental question is, 'Is that bad?'" said Tenny, who lobbied for the language.

This is one of the provisions in the Cap and Trade Bill.

Washington, D.C., Jun 18, 2008 - Congressman J. Randy Forbes (VA-04) announced today that he has introduced a New Manhattan Project for Energy Independence to tackle U.S. energy dependence and rising gas prices. The New Manhattan Project, H.R. 6260, calls for the United States to achieve 50% energy independence in ten years and 100% energy independence in 20 years and will award competitive prizes to the first individual or group who can reach any of seven established energy goals.

“The challenges we face in energy as a nation are far greater than one simple solution can fix. We need a bold initiative that challenges the United States to get to the core of our energy problems,” said Forbes. “I’ve introduced the New Manhattan Project for Energy Independence to bring together a new generation of scientists and researchers to overcome a unified national challenge just as we did with the original Manhattan Project in World War II. Like the first Manhattan Project, which was launched to ensure the security of our nation, today our national security depends on our ability to produce reliable sources of energy to fuel our economy and our vital defense efforts. We succeeded then by hard work and dedication to a unified mission, and I believe we can do it again to achieve 100% energy independence.”

To achieve these goals, the New Manhattan Project will bring together the scientists and researchers in the U.S. in a competitive format to reach one of seven energy goals. The project will award significant prizes to the first group, school, team, or company that reaches each goal as determined by a New Manhattan Project commission of scientists. Cash prizes to be awarded to the first person or entity to achieve each of the following goals:

- Double CAFE standards to 70 MPG while keeping vehicles affordable 
- Cut home and business energy usage in half
- Make solar power work at the same cost as coal
- Make the production of biofuels cost-competitive with gasoline
- Safely and cheaply store carbon emissions from coal-powered plants
- Safely store or neutralize nuclear waste
-  Produce usable electricity from a nuclear fusion reaction

In addition, the bill sets aside funding for grants to individual researchers, groups, educational institutions or businesses to help share the cost of work toward achieving the goals.

“These goals are not easy. The processes to reach them are not simple. But if we reach even one of these goals, we will move significantly closer to achieving energy independence in the U.S.,” said Forbes. “I believe in the greatness of the American people, and I believe that coming together with a unified goal to succeed in this national challenge will lead to scientific breakthroughs that will reverse our dependency on foreign oil. While others in Congress are just talking about this issue, the New Manhattan Project takes substantial steps at solving the issue. I encourage the current Majority leadership to move quickly on this legislation to bring it to the House floor for consideration.”    

So the very fact that this horrible, rotten, worthless piece of legislation has to dangle carrots in front of people's eyes is proof positive that none of what this bill seeks to achieve is anywhere around the corner.  Necessity is the mother of invention, and government demanding something is not the same thing as necessity.  But running out of oil? Which we're in no danger of running out of oil anytime soon, ditto natural gas.  What is the thing?  Let's see.  "Make solar power work at the same as coal." Why? All we've got to do is go drill for our own oil if you want to limit our dependence on other people.  But none of this is anywhere near happening.  And just because Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi say, "Hey, here's a prize if you go out and invent some stupid little car that gets 70 miles a gallon and still costs what a car costs today," ha! "then we'll give you a big prize."  Yeah, that's really going to inspire some people out there.  The danger is somebody will claim they've come up with it and stupid politicians will say, "Okay, good," and claim that it works when it doesn't, just to create the image that they have accomplished some miracle.

If you are looking for what to say, here’s a list of facts about how the energy tax would:

1.    Reduce aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) by $9.6 trillion
2.    Destroy an average of 1-3 million jobs, every year
3.    Raise electricity rates 90 percent after adjusting for inflation
4.    Raise inflation-adjusted gasoline prices by 74 percent
5.    Raise residential natural gas prices by 55 percent
6.    Raise an average family's annual energy bill by $1,500 annually
7.    Increase the federal debt by 26 percent, which is $29,150 per person

President Obama stated yesterday that the National Energy Tax is a "jobs bill." He's right. But it's not an American jobs bill. It's a China jobs bill, because that's where our jobs will go. Experts predict that this bill would destroy between 1,105,000 and 2,479,000 jobs on average, every year*. We can't let that happen.

Please take a minute to call your member of Congress, and urge him or her to vote NO on H.R. 2454.

Here's the link to find their phone number: http://www.americansolutions.com/take-action/call.php?memberid=0038000000aTebPAAS&zipf ull=30043&submitted=D

Yesterday, American Solutions members made over 15,000 phone calls to their Congressmen. It's an amazing number, but we must push harder, because Speaker Pelosi, Al Gore and their left-wing allies are trying to corral moderate Republicans and Democrats to vote for what could be the largest tax increase in American history.

But, Congress is feeling the pressure. Your call - right now - can make a huge difference.

Please take a minute to call your member of Congress, and urge him or her to vote NO on H.R. 2454.

Together, we can stop this, and work towards implementing a real jobs bill, that will grow our economy, provide more energy at lower cost, and strengthen our national security.

Passing President Obama’s “cap and trade” energy program would cost the average Oklahoma family $3,200 a year, Sen. Jim Inhofe said Friday, but he’s confident the measure will be killed in the Senate no matter what happens in the House of Representatives.

The Tulsa Republican, a longtime critic of what he considers “this hoax called global warming,” made his latest statements during a morning stop in Shawnee while House members in Washington were preparing to vote on the controversial issue. “Between the years of 1998 and 2005, I was the only member of the United States Senate who would take on what I call ‘the Hollywood elitists’ and the United Nations on this hoax called global warming and I went through seven years of purgatory on that issue.

“But now I’ve been redeemed and the vast majority of the scientific community has now said Inhofe’s right and the United Nations is wrong and those individuals … have now said ‘no, the science is not there and these are natural cycles.” At the time of the interview Friday morning, he said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was only two votes short of winning and predicted that if she brought the question up for a vote, it would indicate she had found them. Late Friday, the bill was approved in the House on a 219-212 vote.

“It doesn’t matter,” he declared flatly, “because we’ll kill it in the Senate anyway.”

Asked if he was confident that would be the case, Oklahoma’s senior senator said he was “absolutely certain.” He noted that it would take 60 votes to break an anticipated Republican filibuster over cap and trade and predicted the most the Democrats can muster is about 34.

He said all the hubbub in the House was over Pelosi’s desire to attend a conference in Copenhagen and be able to stand up and say, “Oh, we’ve passed this out of the House and we’re going to lead the way in America but it’s not going to pass the Senate.” Inhofe said the bill, if passed, would constitute the largest tax increase in the history of the country. He scoffed at Democratic claims that “cap and trade” doesn’t represent a tax increase at all but instead is a free enterprise solution.

“MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and the Wharton School of Economics came out with an analysis of what this is. They said that the range is between $330 and $350 billion a year. That translates in Oklahoma to $3,200 per family. Everyone who’s reading this story right now, that would be a tax increase of over $3,000 per family. I can give you all the documentation on that.”

Inhofe said Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, tried to “rip me up” on the Senate floor only Thursday night and I said, “In your state of Massachusetts, there’s an innocuous organization called MIT. Are you familiar with that?” Then, he said, he read what the MIT analysis had to say.

He also said Oklahoma would be among the most affected states. “Losing states would be primarily Oklahoma and Texas,” he observed, producing a color-coded map. One of the winning states, he said, would be California. Changing the subject, Inhofe called the vote on what he called the “bailout bill” last fall probably will go down as one of the most egregious votes of all time. “In know this is unpopular to say because my own junior citizen voted for it,” he commented in reference to his fellow Republican, Sen. Tom Coburn.

But, he said, cap and trade will be worse because it would come to the same amount of money every year. He also criticized the Obama administration for moves to integrate gun control with international treaties on grounds that crimes committed in Mexico are done with guns manufactured in the United States.

Inhofe called health care a serious issue but said it’s hard to talk about because there’s no written document on either the Obama or Kennedy plans. Regardless, he said, it’s clear that the proposed changes would put the government between the patient and doctor and would be based on the Canadian system. “That’s about all you can say,” he concluded.

He repeated his intention to vote against the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court but acknowledge that she will be confirmed, quoting Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, as saying Republicans are afraid to vote against her because she’s a woman and she’s Hispanic.

“I’m not,” Inhofe said without hesitation. “I’m going to be voting against her.”

Inhofe said he was in Shawnee as part of a program to “take one day a week when we’re not voting” and stopping in different parts of the state. The interview with The Countywide & Sun was conducted in Bill Ford’s office at Shawnee Mills. After leaving Shawnee, he said, he planned to fly to Ada, Lawton and the Weatherford-Clinton area.

State Representatives Kris Steele of Shawnee and Shane Jett of Tecumseh, both Republicans, were on hand for the interview. Inhofe signed photographs for both.

The House will vote on the cap-and-tax bill today. Make your voice heard. Phil Kerpen at AFP has compiled a very helpful list, which I’m reprinting in full here. Check AFP site for latest updates and alerts.

Ask ‘em how they can ram through this eco-boondoggle with EPA hide-and-seek games on global warming science going on unchecked:

We need your help to stop the cap-and-trade energy tax!

The time has finally come for a vote on cap-and-trade, H.R. 2454. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called a vote just before the 4th of July recess, hoping to use the specter of keeping everyone in DC and ruining their holiday, to force cap-and-trade legislation through.

This is the key target list based on our most recent information. If your Congressman is on an undecided or leaning list below PLEASE click here and enter your zip code to get your representative’s number and talking points on this issue.

EPA plays hide and seek; suppressed report revealed

You can read the entire 98-page document here.

June 26 (Bloomberg) -- America’s biggest oil companies will probably cope with U.S. carbon legislation by closing fuel plants, cutting capital spending and increasing imports.

Under the Waxman-Markey climate bill that may be voted on today by the U.S. House, refiners would have to buy allowances for carbon dioxide spewed from their plants and from vehicles when motorists burn their fuel. Imports would need permits only for the latter, which ConocoPhillips Chief Executive Officer Jim Mulva said would create a competitive imbalance.

“It will lead to the opportunity for foreign sources to bring in transportation fuels at a lower cost, which will have an adverse impact to our industry, potential shutdown of refineries and investment and, ultimately, employment,” Mulva said in a June 16 interview in Detroit. Houston-based ConocoPhillips has the second-largest U.S. refining capacity.

The same amount of gasoline that would have $1 in carbon costs imposed if it were domestic would have 10 cents less added if it were imported, according to energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie in Houston. Contrary to President Barack Obama’s goal of reducing dependence on overseas energy suppliers, the bill would incent U.S. refiners to import more fuel, said Clayton Mahaffey, an analyst at RedChip Cos. in Maitland, Florida.

“They’ll be searching the globe for refined products that don’t carry the same level of carbon costs,” said Mahaffey, a former Exxon Corp. refinery manager.

Prices Seen Rising

The equivalent of one in six U.S. refineries probably would close by 2020 as the cost of carbon allowances erases profits, according to the American Petroleum Institute, a Washington trade group known as API. Carbon permits would add 77 cents a gallon to the price of gasoline, said Russell Jones, the API’s senior economic adviser.

“Because it’s going to be more expensive to produce the stuff, refiners will slow down production and cut back on inventories to squeeze every penny of profit they can from the system,” said Geoffrey Styles, founder of GSW Strategy Group LLC in Vienna, Virginia. “We will end up with less domestic product on the market and a greater reliance on imports, all of which means higher, more volatile prices.”

U.S. motorists, already facing the steepest jump in gasoline prices in 18 years, would bear the brunt as refiners pass on added costs, Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson told reporters after a May 27 meeting in Dallas.

Democrats in the House plan to bring the climate bill to a vote as soon as today. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, stopped short of predicting victory at a press conference yesterday, saying she was making progress in building support for the bill.

Carbon Allowances

“U.S. refineries get 2 percent of allowances to cover any increases in costs they may incur,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Pelosi.

Drivers, airlines and trucking companies would pay an additional $178 billion annually, or about $560 for each man, woman and child in the U.S., according to the API, whose 400 members include Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil and the U.S. unit of Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s largest oil company.

“That kind of price impact would significantly hurt the competitiveness of U.S. refiners versus importers,” said Glenn McGinnis, chief executive officer at Arizona Clean Fuels Yuma, a Phoenix-based company that’s attempting to build the nation’s first new refinery in three decades.

Such estimates and talk of rising imports are scare tactics that oil companies are using to wheedle concessions from lawmakers, said John Coequyt, the Sierra Club’s chief lobbyist in Washington. Refiners are trying to gain relief on carbon- permit costs that’s meant for manufacturers such as steelmakers that are threatened by foreign competition, he said.

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The Spanish professor is puzzled. Why, Gabriel Calzada wonders, is the U.S. president recommending that America emulate the Spanish model for creating "green jobs" in "alternative energy" even though Spain's unemployment rate is 18.1 percent -- more than double the European Union average -- partly because of spending on such jobs?

Calzada, 36, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, has produced a report that, if true, is inconvenient for the Obama administration's green agenda, and for some budget assumptions that are dependent upon it.

Calzada says Spain's torrential spending -- no other nation has so aggressively supported production of electricity from renewable sources -- on wind farms and other forms of alternative energy has indeed created jobs. But Calzada's report concludes that they often are temporary and have received $752,000 to $800,000 each in subsidies -- wind industry jobs cost even more, $1.4 million each. And each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation -- sub-optimum in terms of economic efficiency -- of capital. (European media regularly report "eco-corruption" leaving a "footprint of sleaze" -- gaming the subsidy systems, profiteering from land sales for wind farms, etc.) Calzada says the creation of jobs in alternative energy has subtracted about 110,000 jobs elsewhere in Spain's economy.

The president's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was asked about the report's contention that the political diversion of capital into green jobs has cost Spain jobs. The White House transcript contained this exchange:

Gibbs: "It seems weird that we're importing wind turbine parts from Spain in order to build -- to meet renewable energy demand here if that were even remotely the case."

Questioner: "Is that a suggestion that his study is simply flat wrong?"

Gibbs: "I haven't read the study, but I think, yes."

Questioner: "Well, then. [Laughter.]"

Actually, what is weird is this idea: A sobering report about Spain's experience must be false because otherwise the behavior of some American importers, seeking to cash in on the U.S. government's promotion of wind power, might be participating in an economically unproductive project.

It is true that Calzada has come to conclusions that he, as a libertarian, finds ideologically congenial. And his study was supported by a like-minded U.S. think tank (the Institute for Energy Research, for which this columnist has given a paid speech). Still, it is notable that, rather than try to refute his report, many Spanish critics have impugned his patriotism because he faulted something for which Spain has been praised by Obama and others.

Judge for yourself: Calzada's report can be read at http://tinyurl.com/d7z9ye. And at http://tinyurl.com/ccoa5s you can find similar conclusions in "Yellow Light on Green Jobs," a report by Republican Sen. Kit Bond, ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee's subcommittee on green jobs and the new economy.

What matters most, however, is not that reports such as Calzada's and the Republicans' are right in every particular. It is, however, hardly counterintuitive that politically driven investments are economically counterproductive. Indeed, environmentalists with the courage of their convictions should argue that the point of such investments is to subordinate market rationality to the higher agenda of planetary salvation.

Still, one can be agnostic about both reports while being dismayed by the frequency with which such findings are ignored simply because they question policies that are so invested with righteousness that methodical economic reasoning about their costs and benefits seems unimportant. When the president speaks of "new green energy economies" creating "countless well-paying jobs," perhaps they really are countless, meaning incapable of being counted.

For fervent believers in governments' abilities to control the climate and in the urgent need for them to do so, believing is seeing: They see, through their ideological lenses, governments' green spending as always paying for itself. This is a free-lunch faith comparable to that of those few conservatives who believe that tax cuts always completely pay for themselves by stimulating compensating revenue from economic growth.

Windmills are iconic in the land of Don Quixote, whose tilting at them became emblematic of comic futility. Spain's new windmills are neither amusing nor emblematic of policies America should emulate. The cheerful and evidently unshakable confidence in such magical solutions to postulated problems is yet another manifestation -- Republicans are not immune: No Child Left Behind decrees that by 2014 all American students will be proficient in math and reading -- of what the late senator Pat Moynihan called "the leakage of reality from American life."

Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore’s followers realized how much their man stands to gain?

Earlier this year Gore experienced a notable public relations debacle. The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, a state think tank, revealed that he was an energy hog. Public records show that Gore’s Nashville mansion used in one month more than twice the electricity the typical American household uses in a year: His average monthly electric bill was more than $1,359. Moreover, Gore’s household energy use increased after An Inconvenient Truth, his film about global warming, was released to ecstatic reviews.

Never mind that the scientific community is divided over what causes global warming, how bad it is and how to deal with it. Gore plays Chicken Little to the media’s applause, insisting that the world is warming dangerously and that he has the solution. The ‘Cap-and-Trade’ System

To resolve the “climate crisis,” Gore wants to put a cap on the production of greenhouse gases. He calls for an immediate freeze on U.S. emissions, a ban on new coal-fired power plants, tough new fuel-economy and energy-efficiency standards, renewable energy mandates, carbon taxes and mandatory targets and timetables for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Those emissions consist mostly of carbon dioxide (CO2), the byproduct of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas, which supply 85% of all U.S. energy. Gore’s blueprint to save the planet moves the United States towards a command economy in which government regulators hold sway over what kinds and amounts of energy will be made available to the private sector. His principal regulatory tool is what’s called carbon-credit trading.

Under a so-called “cap-and-trade” system, government places a ceiling or “cap” on private-sector emissions of CO2 and other “greenhouse gases.” Each sector, industry or business is allocated a fixed quantity of carbon credits that allow it to emit specific quantities of greenhouse gases. As an example, one tradable carbon credit might permit the emission of one ton of CO2. If a business emits more tons of CO2 than its supply of credits allows, it has the option to buy surplus credits from other firms -- or it will have to pay a fine in proportion to the amount of the excess emission. By contrast, businesses that emit less than their allocation can sell their excess credits.

This system, which may sound market-friendly, is something only a bureaucrat could dream up. The twist is that the carbon market exists only because the government’s imposition of a cap creates an artificial scarcity in the right to produce energy. In a cap-and-trade system, buyers will purchase their offsets from a broker or through an electronic trading platform. In Europe, carbon trading is already a reality. Since 2005, carbon offsets have been traded electronically on the European Climate Exchange (ECX).

Most carbon cap-and-trade programs also allow regulated entities to earn credits by taking actions that supposedly reduce emissions outside of the firm’s facilities or operations. In one popular version of the carbon-offset concept, firms earn credits by buying seedling trees for planting in less-developed countries. Supporters claim the CO2 intake of the trees will balance out the carbon emissions of the sponsoring firm’s industrial activity. Despite its public relations value, scientists scoff at the notion that it’s possible to plant enough trees to balance out man’s production of CO2. But carbon-offset projects are popular in the environmentalist community.

More Chances to Cheat

However, the most radical environmentalists reject cap-and-trade. They say it allows polluters to continue to pollute by purchasing carbon credits. That is true but irrelevant. A ton of CO2 emitted in Beijing has the same climatologic effect as a ton emitted in New York. The real problem is that every country’s government has an incentive to cheat on behalf of its domestic producers. This has been the European Union’s (EU) experience with the Emissions Trading System (ETS) that the EU established to implement the Kyoto Protocol. In just about every EU country except Britain, the credits allowed exceed the corresponding tons of emissions.

Carbon offsets provide even more opportunities to cheat. For example, some aluminum companies claim they deserve credits just because they recycle aluminum for a living -- recycling being less energy intensive and thus generally cheaper than making the stuff from scratch. The most popular activity for generating offsets is planting trees. But this method of storing carbon takes years and the long-term results are uncertain. If the trees die and decay, or are burned to clear land for agriculture, there is no net emission reduction. The net carbon reduction from tree planting may not materialize for decades, but the offsets are given out now.

To critics on both the free-market right and the environmentalist left, carbon offsets are no more than a marketing gimmick. Some describe the fanciful device as akin to medieval indulgences that were sold in a cleric-run market to regulate the remission of sin.

The truth is that almost every productive human action requires the use of natural resources, and nothing is pollution free. Even something like wind power requires windmills, which, according to environmentalists such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., may visually “pollute” the natural landscape. Kennedy, head of the green group Riverkeepers, says he supports wind power -- except when the windmills are in the waters off Cape Cod.

Whatever its impact on the environment, the cap-and-trade carbon scheme is sure to boost the economic and political prospects of people and groups that are behind it. Before the company collapsed under the weight of financial scandal, Enron under CEO Ken Lay was a key proponent of the cap-and-trade idea. So was BP’s Lord John Browne, before he resigned last May under a cloud of personal scandal. In August 1997, Lay and Browne met with President Bill Clinton and Vice President Gore in the Oval Office to develop administration positions for the Kyoto negotiations that resulted in an international treaty to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The U.S. Senate voted 95 to 0 not to ratify the Kyoto treaty in 1997. But that hasn’t stopped Al Gore.

Gore’s Circle of Business

Al Gore is chairman and founder of a private equity firm called Generation Investment Management (GIM). According to Gore, the London-based firm invests money from institutions and wealthy investors in companies that are going green. “Generation Investment Management, purchases -- but isn’t a provider of -- carbon dioxide offsets,” said spokesman Richard Campbell in a March 7 report by CNSNews.

GIM appears to have considerable influence over the major carbon-credit trading firms that currently exist: the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) in the U.S. and the Carbon Neutral Company (CNC) in Great Britain. CCX is the only firm in the U.S. that claims to trade carbon credits.

CCX owes its existence in part to the Joyce Foundation, the Chicago-based liberal foundation that provided $347,000 in grant support in 2000 for a preliminary study to test the viability of a market in carbon credits. On the CCX board of directors is the ubiquitous Maurice Strong, a Canadian industrialist and diplomat who, since the 1970s, has helped create an international policy agenda for the environmentalist movement. Strong has described himself as “a socialist in ideology, a capitalist in methodology.” His former job titles include “senior advisor” to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, “senior advisor” to World Bank President James Wolfensohn and board member of the United Nations Foundation, a creation of Ted Turner. The 78-year-old Strong is very close to Gore.

CCX has about 80 members that are self-confessed emitters of greenhouse gases. They have voluntarily committed themselves to reduce their emissions by the year 2010 to a level 6% below their emissions in 2000. CCX members include Ford Motor Company, Amtrak, DuPont, Dow Corning, American Electric Power, International Paper, Motorola, Waste Management and a smattering of other companies, along with the states of Illinois and New Mexico, seven cities and a number of universities. Presumably the members “purchase” carbon offsets on the CCX trading exchange. This means they make contributions to or investments in groups or firms that provide forms of “alternative,” “renewable” and “clean” energy.

CCX also has “participant members” that develop the carbon-offset projects. They have names like Carbon Farmers and Eco-Nomics Incorporated. Still, other participant member groups facilitate, finance and market carbon-offset projects to “sequester, destroy or displace” greenhouse gases. CCX aspires to be the New York Stock Exchange of carbon-emissions trading.

Along with Gore, the co-founder of GIM is Treasury Secretary and former Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson. Last September, Goldman Sachs bought 10% of CCX shares for $23 million. CCX owns half the ECX, so Goldman Sachs has a stake there as well.

GIM’s “founding partners” are studded with officials from Goldman Sachs. They include David Blood, former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM); Mark Ferguson, former co-head of GSAM pan-European research; and Peter Harris, who headed GSAM international operations. Another founding partner is Peter Knight, who is the designated president of GIM. He was Sen. Al Gore’s chief of staff from 1977-1989 and the campaign manager of the 1996 Clinton-Gore re-election campaign.

Like CCX, the ECX has about 80 member companies, including Barclays, BP, Calyon, Endesa, Fortis, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Shell, and ECX has contracted with the European Union to further develop a futures market in carbon trading. What’s in it for the companies? They will benefit either by investing in carbon credits or by receiving subsidies for doing so.

Front and Center

Clearly, GIM is poised to cash in on carbon trading. The membership of CCX is currently voluntary. But if the day ever comes when federal government regulations require greenhouse-gas emitters -- and that’s almost everyone -- to participate in cap-and-trade, then those who have created a market for the exchange of carbon credits are in a position to control the outcomes. And that moves Al Gore front and center. As a politician, Gore is all for transparency. But as GIM chairman, Gore has not been forthcoming, according to Forbes magazine. Little is known about his firm’s finances, where it gets funding and what projects it supports.

We do know that Goldman Sachs has commissioned the World Resources Institute (affiliated with CCX), Resources for the Future, and the Woods Hole Research Center to research policy options for U.S. regulation of greenhouse gases. In 2006, Goldman Sachs provided research grants in this area totaling $2.3 million. The firm also has committed $1 billion to carbon-assets projects, a fancy term for projects that generate energy from sources other than oil and gas. In October 2006, Morgan Stanley committed to invest $3 billion in carbon-assets projects. Citigroup entered the emissions-trading market in May, and Bank of America got in on the action in June.

Some environmentalist groups disparage Gore and his investment banker friends. They say the Gore group caters to others who share their financial interest in the carbon-exchange concept. The bulletin of the World Rainforest Movement says that members of a United Nations-sponsored group called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stand to gain by approving Gore’s carbon-trading enterprise. The IPCC has devised what it says is a scientific measure of the impact of greenhouse gases on global warming. In fact, the critics charge, the IPCC sanctions a mechanism that mainly promotes the sham concept of carbon exchange.

The global non-profit organization Winrock International is an example of one IPCC panel member that seeks out groups and individuals with an interest in carbon trading. Arkansas-based Winrock provides worldwide “carbon-advisory services.” Winrock has received government grants from the EPA, USAID and the Departments of Labor, State and Commerce, as well as from the Nature Conservancy (whose chairman used to be Henry Paulson). Winrock argues that cap-and-trade carbon trading is the best way to prevent a climate change crisis. But consider this: When a non-profit group takes money from oil companies and advocates drilling for oil as a solution to energy shortages, it is certain to be attacked as a tool of Big Oil. So far, the groups linked to Al Gore have avoided similar scrutiny.

Then there’s the World Resources Institute (WRI). It was the first nongovernmental group to join CCX as an associate member (a designation for virtuous groups whose greenhouse-gas emissions are negligible). Many of its donors are CCX members or otherwise support carbon exchanges, including the Shell Foundation, Whole Foods Market, the Nature Conservancy, American Forest and Paper Association, and the Pew Center for Climate Change, as well as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford Foundation.

Connect the Dots

In June 2006, the World Bank announced that it, too, had joined CCX, saying that it intended to offset its greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing emission credits through CCX. The bank says its credits would contribute to restoring 4,600 hectares of degraded pastureland in Costa Rica. Somehow, CCX has figured out that this is an amount equivalent to 22,000 metric tons of emission that the bank calculates are created by its activities.

A World Bank blog called the Private Sector Development Blog regularly features items touting Al Gore and the concept of carbon credits. Its articles typically announce corporate “green” initiatives in which carbon credits are said to cancel out “bad” CO2 emissions released by a company’s activities.

In fact, the World Bank now operates a Carbon Finance Unit that conducts research on how to develop and trade carbon credits. The bank works with Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark and Spain to set up carbon-credit funds in each country to purchase emission credits from firms for use in developing countries. In addition, it runs the Carbon Fund for Europe helping countries meet their Kyoto Protocol requirements. These funds are traded on the ECX (half of which is owned by CCX, itself a creature of Al Gore’s firm, Generation Investment Management). Can we connect the dots?

A website affiliated with An Inconvenient Truth invites concerned citizens to personally fight global warming by offsetting their “carbon footprint.” The ways to do that include changing over to fluorescent light bulbs and turning down your thermostat at home. But the website also urges Americans to offset their personal CO2 emissions by “buying” carbon offsets from a native-American-owned company called Native Energy. Native Energy promotes “renewable” wind energy by buying and selling carbon-emission credits and futures for wind turbine projects on Indian reservations.

What the website doesn’t mention is that that the founder of Native Energy, energy industry veteran Tom Boucher, also founded a marketing company called Green Mountain Energy, a CCX associate partner that describes itself as “the nation’s leading retail provider of cleaner energy and carbon-offset solutions. Green Mountain offers residential, business, institutional and governmental customers an easy way to purchase cleaner, affordable electricity products, as well as the opportunity to offset their carbon footprint.” In other words, Green Mountain sells advisory services to energy users, alerting them to opportunities to contribute to or invest in groups like Native Energy.

So it seems banks and investment houses are going green, eager to enter an emerging emissions market. Meanwhile, environmentalists are discovering new ways to get rich while believing they are saving polar bears and rainforests.

Gore’s Non-profit Agitators

In 2006 Al Gore established his own global-warming non-profit group, the Alliance for Climate Protection, a 501(3)(c) charitable organization. The group favors more stringent environmental policy regulations on the private sector and especially wants cap-and-trade legislation so that companies will be forced to lower their greenhouse gas emissions and buy carbon credits.

The alliance CEO is Cathy Zoi, a former environmental advisor to President Bill Clinton. Gore is chairman of the board, which also includes environmental activist Theodore Roosevelt IV, Clinton EPA Director Carol Browner, the President George H.W. Bush’s National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and Reagan-era EPA Director Lee Thomas. Gore has reportedly given the alliance $250,000 and has said he will donate his share of the profits from An Inconvenient Truth to the group.

Last September, the alliance cheered as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R.) signed into law the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. California has the world’s sixth-largest economy and is the world’s 12th-largest source of CO2 emissions. The mandate promises to cut emissions by 25% by 2020. Unlike other state and regional programs to cut carbon emissions and promote alternative energy, the California law is the first to embrace a cap-and-trade program. It has won the support of litigious environmental groups and business and financial groups that want to buy and sell pollution credits.

Force Everyone to Play

This year Congress is considering a slew of cap-and-trade bills to reduce carbon emissions. The bill getting the most attention is sponsored by Senators John McCain (R.-Ariz.) and Joseph Lieberman (ID.-Conn.). It would apply to the entire economy, would reduce emissions in stages (to 2004 levels by 2012, 1990 levels by 2020, and 60% below 1990 by 2050) and would set up a cap-and-trade market for emission credits.

The push is now on to force action from the Bush Administration. On May 14 of this year, President Bush signed an executive order directing federal agencies to craft regulations by the end of next year that will “cut gasoline consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions from motor vehicles.” His “20 in 10” plan to cut gas consumption by 20% in the next 10 years focuses on increasing the fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks and mandating increased use of alternative fuels.

But the President is unwilling to call for mandatory nationwide emissions rules and instead favors voluntary carbon-emission cuts in the private sector. This is deeply frustrating to all the brokers, wheeler-dealers and interest groups that want to jump on the cap-and-trade bandwagon. There are billions of dollars to be made in trading emissions credits. But first the federal government must force everyone to play the game.

 As for Al Gore, the former Vice President brings emotional fervor to his carbon crusade. He travels the country displaying charts and graphs, quoting scientific experts and appealing to philosophers and religious leaders to save the planet from global warming. But he says nothing about his business partners who yearn to trade on the emerging carbon market. And the media pay no attention to the companies offering “carbon advisory services” that will profit from federal carbon emission controls.

Perhaps it’s about time they did.

Though Al Gore failed as a presidential candidate, he has succeeded wildly as a con man, milking millions of dollars out of the global warming hoax:

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore left the White House seven years ago with less than $2 million in assets, including a Virginia home and the family farm in Tennessee. Now he's making enough to put $35 million in hedge funds and other private partnerships.

Gore invested the money with Capricorn Investment Group LLC, a Palo Alto, California, firm that selects the private funds for clients and invests in makers of environmentally friendly products, according to a Feb. 1 securities filing. Capricorn was founded by billionaire Jeffrey Skoll, former president of EBay Inc. and an executive producer of Gore's Oscar-winning documentary film on global warming.

It looks like Gore stands to make $millions more — or even $billions, if the media can keep the hoax propped up long enough.

Thanks to global warming hysteria, the Goracle is able to charge a preposterously greedy $175,000 speaking fee. Already his net worth is well into nine figures. Not all of his riches come from the climate change hoax; he's made a mint from his involvement with left-leaning Google and Apple, which are no doubt grateful to him for inventing the Internet. But if Gore surpasses Warren Buffett at the top of the limousine liberal list, it will be through the clever strategy of using Capricorn to invest in products that his own overblown propaganda will inspire our increasingly authoritarian government to impose.

On a tip from Byron.

Washington, Apr 29 - Rep. Jason Chaffetz is seeking original cosponsors for the Cap-and-Trade Tax Disclosure Act which will require utility companies to disclose and separately itemize the impact of cap-and-trade taxes on each customer’s utility bill. Sound tax policy requires that taxes should be visible to taxpayers and not buried in the cost of items we purchase. With this legislation, every utility customer – residential and business -- will be able to identify the cost of cap-and-trade emissions that the utility is passing on to the customer. As regulated entities, utilities pass taxes on to customers, unlike unregulated companies that can also pass taxes on to shareholders and employees. The cap-and-trade tax is potentially the largest tax increase ever imposed. According to the Administration’s own budget document, the cost will be at least $646 billion over an eight-year period. No matter where you stand on the issue of cap and trade, both sides can agree that full disclosure and transparency are good public policy.

Democrats in the House of Representatives said on Tuesday they were still working to pass a climate change bill by year’s end as they scrambled to get enough of their fellow lawmakers to support the initiative.

But in an important procedural move, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman said he would leapfrog a subcommittee and have the controversial legislation voted on by the full committee before his end-of-May deadline for the panel to act. Citing the approaching self-imposed deadline, Waxman said it “requires that we go right to full committee and bypass the subcommittee.” Environmentalists who want quick passage of the bill to reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions have noted the measure would have an easier time getting through the full committee, where opposing viewpoints would be diluted by broader support.

Waxman and other Democrats on the committee met with President Barack Obama to discuss the climate change bill. “We are determined to pass a bill by this year,” Waxman said. But it is proving difficult to craft a law that can attract enough Democratic support and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said there is “not a consensus” on the issue.

Representatives Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA) modified their global warming proposal from the draft version published on March 31. For the most part, the changes focused on the distribution of the allowance revenue--the equivalent of tax revenue.

There was also a slight easing of targeted emissions reductions for 2020, which resulted in a marginally lower economic impact. However, the new distribution of allowances created a less efficient pattern of government expenditures and more than offset the gain from the lower cap for 2020.

The economic impact of the new draft varies from that of the original draft in several major ways:

• Compared to no cap and trade, real GDP losses increase an additional $2 trillion, from $7.4 trillion under the original draft to $9.6 trillion under the new draft;
• Compared to no cap and trade, average unemployment increases an additional 261,000 jobs, from 844,000 lost jobs under the original draft to 1,105,000 lost jobs under the new draft; and
• Peak-year unemployment losses rise by 500,000 jobs, from 2 million under the original draft to 2.5 million under the new draft.

Though the proposed legislation would have little impact on world temperatures, it is a massive energy tax in disguise that promises job losses, income cuts, and a sharp left turn toward big government.

Ultimately, this bill would result in government-set caps on energy use that damage the economy and hobble growth--the very growth that supports investment and innovation. Analysis of the economic impact of Waxman-Markey projects that by 2035 the bill would:

• Reduce aggregate gross domestic product (GDP) by $9.6 trillion;
• Destroy 1,105,000 jobs on average, with peak years seeing unemployment rise by over 2,479,000 jobs;
• Raise electricity rates 90 percent after adjusting for inflation;
• Raise inflation-adjusted gasoline prices by 74 percent;
• Raise residential natural gas prices by 55 percent;
• Raise an average family's annual energy bill by $1,500; and
• Increase inflation-adjusted federal debt by 26 percent, or $29,150 additional federal debt per person, again after adjusting for inflation.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/wm2450.cfm

Democrat Henry Waxman, primary sponsor of the radical cap&trade/national eco-tax bill in the House, can’t answer basic questions about the legislation’s details. And his speed-reader wasn’t around to bring old Waxy up to speed in time to rescue him from this gasbaggy gaffe.

According to the report, Global Warming’s Six Americas 2009: An Audience Segmentation Analysis, each group represents 33, 19, 12, 11, and 7 percent of the population, respectively.   And a greater number within each group, from the most to the least climate concerned and every stratum in-between, strongly oppose than strongly support a national cap-and-trade market.

At the time of this survey, nearly twice the number of Americans strongly opposed cap-and-trade (23%) than strongly supported it (11%) -- and the total number in opposition was 47%.  But according to the 57% voicing contrariety in last month’s Zogby Poll, things have changed dramatically.  This implies the nearly eight-month-old figures are likely biased somewhat to the support side.  And last month’s Rasmussen poll reported that the lowest number of voters ever polled -- one-in-three -- believe that global warming is caused by human activity, a complete reversal from the prior year when that same ratio attributed long-term planetary trends.  As 28% of the Concerned, 60% of the Cautious and 72% of the Disengaged revealed they could easily change their minds, it’s logical to assume much of the shift came from within their ranks, further suggesting still stronger current contravention to cap-and-trade.

Still, while the ideological divides may have repositioned, the Yale paper provides great insight into just how broadly the opposition transcends them.

To be sure, whereas these disparate groups share a common distaste for cap-and-trade, their motives couldn’t be any further apart. The Alarmed likely adhere to NASA’s James Hansen’s concern that cap-and-trade is only “a minor tweak to business-as-usual” and will interfere with green dreams of wholesale wealth redistribution realized through centralized energy rationing.  After all, they “tend to be moderate to liberal Democrats” and 62% of them agreed that “the world would be a more peaceful place if its wealth were divided more equally among nations.”  Imagine that. 

Of course, we “Realist” types recognize it for what it is – a stealth carbon tax scheme that will have no impact whatsoever on climate, yet is sure to raise energy prices, drive American businesses overseas and further disrupt the economy – all at a time when we can least afford it.  Those belonging to the “in between” groups may oppose it for the same reasons as either extreme, or for any number of compelling reasons.  Perhaps simply because lacking any viable alternative energy sources, it’s likely to drive up consumer energy costs while having little or no impact on either utilities’ bottom lines or the tonnage of fossil-fuels burned annually.

Unfortunately, the cap-and-trade-heavy Waxman-Markey Bill (the 648-page American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009) passed the Democrat-controlled House Energy and Commerce Committee last week, despite the pleas of virtually all Republicans and a pack of Blue Dog House Democrats to shelve it.  Hopefully, the absence of strong support from voters on either side of the global warming issue will play a significant role as the Bill moves forward through additional committees and perhaps an ultimate full floor vote.

And should it somehow survive the House, it will still require the support of 60 US Senators bold enough to ignore dwindling constituent approval, particularly in coal and energy-producing states and those in the Rust Belt.  And they’ll be forced to champion policies all but identical to those which have failed miserably overseas and rely heavily upon the cooperation of increasingly uncooperative developing nations.

And there’s no denying that economic realities are quickly trumping green fantasies abroad, where EU anti-pollution directives force coal-fired power plants to close in favor of unprepared (or non-existent) renewable alternatives.  Energy costs are skyrocketing, blackouts are becoming more prevalent and an uncertain green tax future is causing already cash-strapped companies to leave for non-greener pastures.

Earlier this month, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd came down from his haughty high horse just long enough to announce the postponement of his country’s own costly emissions trading scheme, purportedly until the global economic slowdown has ended.  Of course, you can read that to mean until after the next parliamentary election.  The move divulged neither wisdom nor nobility, as acting otherwise would have amounted to political suicide – a lesson certainly not lost on our own power-hungry leaders.  After all, it being an honorable undertaking, how many of our Senators do you suppose possess the virtues requisite to occupational hara-kiri?

In a similar admission of green fiscal incongruity, Germany announced plans on Monday to prevent green-policy-driven runaway energy costs from driving energy-intensive companies out of the country by reimbursing them for the cost of cap-and-trade that utilities are pricing into their power bills.  Once again, the burden will be left to smaller businesses and individual households.  Exactly the problems Republicans have been predicting cap-and-trade would inflict on this side of the pond. 

Now, Liberals generally love waving European “success stories” in American’s faces, even when the “success” is actually anything but (can you say National Health Care?).  Yet these polls suggest that many in their ranks are finally absorbing the domestic ramifications of the European disaster story entitled cap-and-trade. Perhaps the specter of unavoidable energy inflation (even in the face of proposed “common man” rebates), especially in these hard times, has prompted all but the most ardent believers to question the efficacy balance of their sacrifice.  Particularly considering that developing nations have understandably made clear their intentions to continue industrial development, and thereby their greenhouse gas emission escalation.  That actuality recently prompted Berkshire Hathaway Inc. CEO Charlie Munger to call the very idea of instituting a subsequently futile national cap-and-trade "almost demented."

And he’s quite right -- China continues to demand that the “rich countries” supposedly responsible for current atmospheric CO2 levels shoulder the entire burden of “cleaning up the mess.”  I won’t even get into the blatantly false dilemma their position represents, but even among those who adamantly believe that mankind’s emissions remain in the atmosphere for centuries and that rising temperatures follow rising CO2 levels, the “If America takes the lead they will follow“ promise must ring hollow. 

Just last Thursday, China insisted those “rich countries” cut emissions a whopping 40 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels while contributing at least 0.5-1.0 per cent of their annual economic worth to greenhouse gas reduction and global warming adaptation schemes of poorer countries before Beijing will even consider taking any action of its own.  To give you an idea just how inane that demand is, the awful Waxman-Markey Bill would attempt to cut US carbon emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.  And that’s not nearly enough for the United Nations.

At December’s upcoming Battle of Copenhagen, greenies worldwide hope to hammer out a U.N. treaty to succeed the 2012 expiring Kyoto Protocol to cut carbon emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.  And China refuses to budge unless the world doubles even that ridiculously lofty goal.  Add the extortion money the Reds demand and it should be obvious to even the most naive that the rapidly developing (and now number one CO2 emitting) China is merely raising the bar beyond the scope of achievement and has no intention of ever mitigating its emissions.

So while the Alarmed (and perhaps some of the Concerned) believe it’s insufficient sacrifice, most everyone else has figured out that it’s way too much sacrifice and for too little or no gain.  According to an MIT study, Waxman-Markey “could cost the average household more than $3,900 per year.” A similar Heritage Foundation study predicted “cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) losses of at least $1.7 trillion that could reach $4.8 trillion by 2030 (in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars).”  Others predict between 3 million and 7 million manufacturing jobs either driven overseas or lost entirely.  And I’d certainly be remiss were I to neglect to add my usual reminder that it’s all for naught as warming stopped in 1998 and there’s absolutely no proof whatsoever that any actions of mankind might influence global temperatures 1°C -- in either direction.

Yale claims there are six unique audiences within the American public on the subject of global warming.  And 92% of one -- the Alarmed -- told researchers that they trust Al Gore as a source of information about global warming, compared to a surprisingly high 2% of another -- the Realists.  But the report also revealed many philosophical similarities within in each group extending far beyond their climate beliefs.  For instance, 53% of the Alarmed feel they’re more a citizen of the world than a citizen of a country.  Only 13% of the Realists share similar feelings.  And while 68% of the Realists strongly believe that people should be allowed to make as much money as they can, regardless of any inequity it may create, only 9% of the Alarmed agreed.  Fascinating.    

But perhaps of most significance is that while 100% of the Alarmed, 89% of the Concerned, 59% of the Cautious and 55% of the Disengaged want the U.S. Congress to do more to address global warming, only 14% of the Doubtful and not a single member of the Realists concurred.

And yet, there’s one thing they all agree they don’t want the U.S. Congress to do -- make carbon cap-and-trade the law of the land. 

Broadly speaking, the Waxman-Markey bill was meant to clean up the U.S. energy mix and start curbing emissions of greenhouse gases, and at the same time convince China and India to play ball on climate change by showing the world that America “gets it.”

What if the bill does neither?

HSBC, the big investment bank, is gloomy about the “watered-down” bill that made it out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. That gloom applies both to what the bill could do for clean energy in the U.S. and for international efforts to finally craft a global climate-change deal. Some tidbits:

Importantly [the bill] falls a long way short of Obama’s election promises on most scores: the [renewable-energy standard] , CO2 emission reductions and allocations. The expected price of carbon will therefore in all likelihood be too low (USD13-17) to really drive the change that’s needed, resulting in no clean energy fund versus the USD150bn fund that we would have expected to have been raised from 100% auctioning of permits. This in our opinion makes the clean energy mandates ever more important. This is an area which, despite some progress, remains weaker than initial expectations.

That doesn’t bode well for international climate talks in December. Even the normally diplomatic United Nations was crestfallen with the Waxman-Markey bill, HSBC notes:

[M]ore importantly, if the best that the US can bring to the negotiating table ahead of the talks on a new post-Kyoto emissions treaty, is a 3% cut in emissions versus 1990 baseline, then this may not be enough to tickle out an agreement from China and India.

With Democrats controlling the White House, House, and Senate, HSBC notes, this really is as good as it gets for aggressive action on energy and climate change. Is the current Waxman-Markey bill the high-water mark for “greening” U.S. energy policy?

(CNSNews.com) -  The congressional Democrats’ cap-and-trade plan  to tax carbon emissions could cost every American family as much as $3,100 a year and is equivalent to a “declaration of war on the Midwest,”  Republican lawmakers told CNSNews.com this week.  But Democrats disputed the Republicans’ cost figure and said the plan can be accomplished without imposing a net cost on the American people.  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. “We are going to increase costs on every American with this plan -- and the other thing we need to keep in mind is the millions of American jobs we are going to put at risk if we impose this new tax on American industry when our competitors around the world will not,” House  Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told CNSNews.com  in a press conference on Thursday. “It’s pretty clear.” Both Pence and Boehner have said they estimate that, in total, the Democrats’ cap-and-trade legislation could cost each American family up to $3,100 a year. While lawmakers are still finalizing a cap-and-trade bill, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) recently introduced the draft of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. 

It's just another inconvenient truth: If Americans want any of the government remedies that would supposedly save a planet allegedly imperiled by global warming, it's going to cost them.

Just how much it will cost them has been a point of contention lately. Many congressional Republicans, including members of the GOP leadership, have claimed that the plan to limit carbon emissions through cap and trade would cost the average household more than $3,100 per year. According to an MIT study, between 2015 and 2050 cap and trade would annually raise an average of $366 billion in revenues (divided by 117 million households equals $3,128 per household, the Republicans reckon).

But on March 24, after interviewing one of the MIT professors who conducted the study on which the GOP relied to produce its estimate, the St. Petersburg Times fact-check unit, Politifact, declared the GOP figure of $3,100 per household was a "Pants on Fire" falsehood. The GOP claim is "just wrong," MIT professor John Reilly told Politifact. "It's wrong in so many ways it's hard to begin."

According to Politifact, Reilly's report included an "estimate of the net cost to individuals" that "would be $215.05 per household. A far cry from $3,128."

Running with Politifact's report, bloggers at Think Progress called the GOP's claim a "deliberate lie," a "myth", and an "outright lie". On April 1, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann said that cap and trade's "average additional cost per family six years from now would be 79 bucks, minus the amount foreign gas prices would drop based on decreased demand, and minus lowered health care costs, because of the cleaner atmosphere. Thirty-one bucks, 3,100 bucks, it's all the

From Politifact to Think Progress to MSNBC, Reilly's rebuttal of the GOP cap-and-trade estimate made its way to the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives. During an April 2 floor debate, New Jersey Democrat Rob Andrews criticized Republicans for citing a study that "the author claims is just being blatantly misrepresented," and the staff of the House energy committee chairman, Massachusetts Democrat Edward Markey, wrote that the figure was "more fuzzy math from Republicans."

The falsity of the $3,100 per household cap-and-trade estimate became a well-established fact among members of the press. News outlets that reported Reilly's criticism of the GOP's figure included not only liberal outlets like The New Republic and The Washington Independent, but mainstream publications like Congressional Quarterly, The Hill, Politico, McClatchy, and the Wall Street Journal.

Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann faced harsh criticism after citing the $3,100 figure in an April 7 Minneapolis Star-Tribune op-ed. "Bachmann: I, Too, Know More About Climate Change Than MIT Scientist," sneered one headline at the website TPM. "Whether Bachmann is ignorant or dishonest is unclear," wrote The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen.

When the Star-Tribune's opinion page editor Eric Ringham was contacted about Bachmann's use of the figure, he apologized for letting her include it in her column. "It wasn't on my radar. I'm embarrassed to have let it go unchallenged," Ringham told Think Progress. "You can rest assured this study is never going to be represented in the paper again . . . without confirmation it's being accurately portrayed."

Senators have voted on two side-by-side amendments to the concurrent budget resolution (S.Con.Res. 13) dealing with future climate change legislation which would impose a new cap-and-trade system on businesses. This all centers around an amendment offered by Senator John Thune (R-SD) which would “prohibit the collection of funds from any future cap and trade proposal if that proposal would increase electricity rates and gasoline prices for American households and businesses,” per a press release.

Here is the bill text on climate change legislation:

(b) Climate Change Legislation- The Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Budget may revise the allocations of a committee or committees, aggregates, and other appropriate levels and limits in this resolution for one or more bills, joint resolutions, amendments, motions, or conference reports that would invest in clean energy technology initiatives, decrease greenhouse gas emissions, or help families, workers, communities, and businesses make the transition to a clean energy economy, by the amounts provided in such legislation for those purposes, provided that such legislation would not increase the deficit over either the period of the total of fiscal years 2009 through 2014 or the period of the total of fiscal years 2009 through 2019.

Specifically, the Thune amendment would add the following text after the word “economy” in the text above: “without increasing electricity or gasoline prices.” Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) offered a side-by-side amendment which would modify the Thune amendment by adding that cap-and-trade provisions should not increase the overall burden on consumers.  This would be accomplished by using revenues from the newly created system.  It was adopted by a vote of 54 to 43.

So the basic thrust of the argument between the two amendments is that Senator Thune and Senate Republicans don’t believe that revenues from the cap-and-trade proposal will go to American consumers but instead to fund additional federal programs.  They refer to the idea as a national energy tax. The Thune amendment was also adopted by a vote of 89 to 8.  Senate Democrats were free to support it after the Boxer language was successfully added. I’m a little fuzzy as to what the adoption of both of these amendments now means, but essentially it seems like a wash. Several Senate Republicans, however, see the Boxer language as a loophole to allow for increases, at least temporarily, in energy prices as cap-and-trade provisions are implemented.

Update: The AP clears things up a bit. They note that passage of the Boxer amendment detailed above signals that the Senate has “endorsed using revenues from controversial cap-and-trade auctions of permits for emitting greenhouse gases to help consumers pay higher gasoline and electricity prices.”

The Obama administration has said unequivocally that all money raised by cap-and-trade would be used to offset the increase in utility bills as a result of the cap-and-trade program. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid backed away Tuesday from his suggestion last week that the government should use the revenue from President Obama's cap-and-trade program for health care reform, the president's number one priority.

That's because the Obama administration has said unequivocally that all money raised by cap-and-trade would be used to offset the increase in utility bills as a result of the cap-and-trade program. Because Obama would impose a new tax on all emissions, utilities suddenly would have to pay huge sums to continue doing what they do now for free, especially those who use coal, which generates half the entire nation's electricity.

Obama concedes increased costs will be passed on to consumers. An impartial analysis from MIT makes clear the price will be substantial: more than $300 billion in new taxes every year. Some say it's less and others say it's more. And in states relying the most on coal, it could be a lot more. But whatever it is, Obama and his aides say all but a small portion of those revenues should go to consumers to soften the blow of higher utility bills for both individuals and businesses -- until cheaper, clean energy alternatives can replace coal and other fuels. And supporters of cap and trade say that is the only way to pass it.

"Unless we take care of, to the best of our ability, the people and businesses in states that will be asked to do the most to help us stop global warming, this bill is not going to pass, and it shouldn't," said Sen. Joe Liebermann, I-Conn. If the money is diverted to health care, it's unlikely any lawmaker from the Midwest would support the program. It would either have to be scrapped or drastically changed.

Reid explained Tuesday that his earlier suggestion to use cap-and-trade revenue for health care reform was only an observation of the coincidence that the energy revenues would be about the same as the cost of health care reform; not that one would be used to pay for the other. But Reid kept the controversy alive, saying, "We're going to have to pay for it. And I don't know how we're going to do that, but we're going to do it. We're going to pay for it."

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.

AP

Politicians love cap and trade because they can claim to be taxing "polluters," not workers. Hardly. Once the government creates a scarce new commodity -- in this case the right to emit carbon -- and then mandates that businesses buy it, the costs would inevitably be passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices. Stating the obvious, Peter Orszag -- now Mr. Obama's budget director -- told Congress last year that "Those price increases are essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program."

Hit hardest would be the "95% of working families" Mr. Obama keeps mentioning, usually omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat "unless you use energy." Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work, groceries or home heating.

The Congressional Budget Office -- Mr. Orszag's former roost -- estimates that the price hikes from a 15% cut in emissions would cost the average household in the bottom-income quintile about 3.3% of its after-tax income every year. That's about $680, not including the costs of reduced employment and output. The three middle quintiles would see their paychecks cut between $880 and $1,500, or 2.9% to 2.7% of income. The rich would pay 1.7%. Cap and trade is the ideal policy for every Beltway analyst who thinks the tax code is too progressive (all five of them).

But the greatest inequities are geographic and would be imposed on the parts of the U.S. that rely most on manufacturing or fossil fuels -- particularly coal, which generates most power in the Midwest, Southern and Plains states. It's no coincidence that the liberals most invested in cap and trade -- Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey -- come from California or the Northeast.

Coal provides more than half of U.S. electricity, and 25 states get more than 50% of their electricity from conventional coal-fired generation. In Ohio, it totals 86%, according to the Energy Information Administration. Ratepayers in Indiana (94%), Missouri (85%), New Mexico (80%), Pennsylvania (56%), West Virginia (98%) and Wyoming (95%) are going to get soaked.

Another way to think about it is in terms of per capita greenhouse-gas emissions. California is the No. 2 carbon emitter in the country but also has a large economy and population. So the average Californian only had a carbon footprint of about 12 tons of CO2-equivalent in 2005, according to the World Resource Institute's Climate Analysis Indicators, which integrates all government data. The situation is very different in Wyoming and North Dakota -- paging Senators Mike Enzi and Kent Conrad -- where every person was responsible for 154 and 95 tons, respectively. See the nearby chart for cap and trade's biggest state winners and losers.

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. The deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, Jason Furman, is giving us a glimpse at the real number, telling Senate staff the energy tax scheme would actually raise “two-to-three times” the budget’s official $646 billion revenue estimate. Dow Jones reports that 5 people at the meeting confirmed the statement—we can be pretty sure he said it.

It make sense, because the budget estimate was only half the official score from the Congressional Budget Office for last year’s Lieberman-Warner bill, even though the Obama version is designed to have much steeper costs because it requires steeper emissions cuts. If Furman is right that the real tax hike would be two or three times the official budget estimate—and it’s likely still a lowball—that would mean the actual tax hike would run well into the trillions, roughly between $1.3 trillion and $1.9 trillion between fiscal years 2012 and 2019 by Furman’s own estimate.

The White House claims that this massive gusher of new tax revenue would be dedicated to tax relief, but judging by the budget that’s just a PR gimmick. More than 42 percent of the “tax cuts” in the Obama budget—according to its own official estimates—go to people who don’t pay taxes. Call it a handout; call it a welfare check; call it social spending; don’t call it a tax cut, though, because it means the burden of the federal government on people who actually work, save, invest, and build wealth will be higher than ever before.

Remember that these staggering costs of $1.3 to $1.9 trillion are for just the first 8 years of a 40 year program that gets much more expensive over time. This would be the final knock-out blow for a wobbly U.S. economy, and we can only hope that as people learn the facts they’ll oppose it strongly enough to force Congress and the White House back to the drawing board.

Heritage.org 

America's Climate Security Act of 2007 (S. 2191), sponsored by Senators Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA), is the latest and fastest-moving "cap and trade" bill introduced in Congress this year. All such climate change measures warrant careful scrutiny, as they would likely increase energy costs and do considerably more economic harm than environmental good.

A Costly Proposition

These measures would set a limit, or cap, on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use. The effect of such a cap would be to impose rationing of coal, oil, and natural gas on the American economy. Each covered utility, oil company, and manufacturing facility would be given allowances based on past emissions or some other formula. Those companies that emit less carbon dioxide than permitted by their allowances could sell the excess to those that do not; this is the trade part of cap and trade. Over time, the cap would be ratcheted down, requiring greater cuts in emissions.

Each proposal differs from the others on specifics: the stringency of the cap, the number and type of companies covered, the ground rules for allocating and trading allowances, and other details. S. 2191 is, in several respects, more stringent than other cap and trade bills. Its requirement that emissions decline to 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020--even in the face of a growing population and rising energy demand--sets a very difficult target.[1]

Measures like S. 2191 that target carbon emissions aggressively will be costlier than those that give the economy more time to adjust to the energy constraints. For example, over the long term, energy companies may find ways to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions underground, rather than emit them into the air, or switch to lower-emitting alternative energy sources as they are developed. But most experts see these advances as taking decades--much longer than the initial targets in S. 2191 allow. In fact, these targets may actually complicate the development of longer-term innovations, as they will divert resources to near-term fixes.

Carbon dioxide is the unavoidable byproduct of fossil fuel combustion, which currently provides 85 percent of America's energy. Thus, it will be very costly to move away from this preferred energy source, and especially doing so as expeditiously as S. 2191 requires. A study by Charles River Associates puts the cost (in terms of reduced household spending per year) of S. 2191 at $800 to $1,300 per household by 2015, rising to $1,500 to $2,500 by 2050.[2] Electricity prices could jump by 36 to 65 percent by 2015 and 80 to 125 percent by 2050.[3] No analysis has been done on the impact of S. 2191 on gasoline prices, but an Environmental Protection Agency study of a less stringent cap and trade bill estimates impacts of 26 cents per gallon by 2030 and 68 cents by 2050.[4]

Even these cost projections may underestimate the true costs, because they assume no unpleasant surprises. But the world has already witnessed many unpleasant surprises with Europe's ongoing efforts to impose a cap and trade program under the Kyoto Protocol, the international climate treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In fact, European efforts have racked up significant costs while failing to reduce emissions.[5] Nearly every European country participating has higher emissions today than when the treaty was first signed in 1997. Further, despite ongoing criticism of the United States from Kyoto parties for failing to ratify the treaty, emissions in many of these nations are actually rising faster than in the United States.

The European experience also shows the problem of cap and trade fraud.[6] None other than Enron's Ken Lay was a strong supporter of carbon cap and trade when the idea was first floated in the 1990s, saying that it could "do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative." These carbon allowances that will be bought and sold have a value estimated at $50 billion to $300 billion annually, and the trade in them would be a huge new business.[7] Enron may be gone, but others ready to take advantage of cap and trade--often at public expense--are not.

The actual cost of S. 2191 is difficult to estimate--as America has never had to deal with such severe energy constraints--but would likely be very high.

A Regressive Tax

By limiting the supply of fossil fuels, S. 2191 would raise the cost of energy. For consumers, cap and trade means more expensive gasoline and electricity as well as net job losses in energy-dependent sectors. Senator Lieberman himself concedes costs into the hundreds of billions of dollars. And as the Congressional Budget Office has noted, such energy cost increases act as a regressive tax on the poor.[8]

Lost Jobs

The net job losses from S. 2191 are estimated by Charles River Associates to be 1.2 million to 2.3 million by 2015.[9] Some of these jobs will be lost for good, due to the impact of higher energy costs on economic activity. Others, chiefly in the manufacturing sector, will be sent overseas. In the very likely event that S. 2191 significantly raises domestic manufacturing costs and that developing nations refuse to impose similar restrictions, the American economy could experience a substantial outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to those nations with lower energy costs.

Little Environmental Gain

While the costs of aggressive cap and trade proposals are substantial, the environmental benefits are suspect. This is true even if one fully accepts the claim of man-made global warming. The most ambitious measure to date is the Kyoto Protocol, but even if the U.S. were a party to this treaty and the European nations and other signatories were in full compliance (most are unlikely to meet their targets), the treaty would reduce the Earth's future temperature by an estimated 0.07 degrees Celsius by 2050--an amount too small even to verify.[10] S. 2191 would at best do only a little more.

Indeed, a number of economists, including many who are far from global warming skeptics, warn of overly aggressive cap and trade measures imposing costs exceeding the benefits.[11] In other words, the costs of implementing such measures would be higher than the value of the global warming damage that they would prevent.

The Slippery Slope

It is a near certainty that the first climate bill enacted will not be the last one. In fact, most major environmental organizations have already criticized S. 2191 and other pending global warming bills as inadequate, or as at best "a good first step." The economic impacts of S. 2191, though substantial in their own right, could be a mere down payment toward costlier subsequent measures.

Conclusion

Cap and trade bills are nothing short of a government re-engineering of the American economy. And S. 2191, with its aggressive targets to reduce emissions from fossil fuel use, would put the nation on a path of serious economic harm not justified by any benefits.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers began wrangling on Tuesday over a climate change bill aimed at reducing carbon dioxide and other pollutants, with Republicans arguing the legislation would burden the economy with higher energy costs. The House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee dug in for several days of debate over the Democrats' bill, which now takes up 946 pages. Chairman Henry Waxman has predicted his panel will have enough Democratic support for approval this week before lawmakers leave for their Memorial Day holiday.

Republicans are first expected to try to surgically remove the heart of the proposal -- the establishment of a "cap-and-trade" system that would gradually reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that utilities, steelmakers, oil refineries and other companies could emit. Republicans are expected to lack the votes to kill cap and trade. Representative Joe Barton, the senior Republican on the committee, has warned Waxman, "You are about to embark on an episode of putting the entire American economy, which is the world's largest, through an absolute economic wringer."

In a party-line vote, the committee voted 36-23 against a Republican-sponsored amendment to end the U.S. cap-and-trade system if China and India did not adopt a greenhouse gas emissions reduction plan at least as strict as what the United States would have. President Barack Obama has put climate-control legislation high on his agenda. He would like to see significant progress by December when world leaders meet in Copenhagen to consider coordinated steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is unclear if Congress can finish a bill by then.

Obama on Tuesday called the legislation historic, saying it would help ease U.S. dependence on foreign oil, prevent the worst consequences of climate change and build a clean-energy economy. With its mandate to reduce emissions 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels, Waxman said the bill would shore up the U.S. economy by encouraging new high-tech jobs while avoiding ecological disasters linked to global warming.

Republicans predicted energy costs would skyrocket under the bill and have reportedly prepared hundreds of amendments to try to modify the Democratic bill. Obama's Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday the Democratic bill would protect consumers from big increases in utility bills.

'GET GOING'

Illustrating how long it may take to get through the bill, the committee spent more than an hour debating the first amendment offered to the legislation, which was sponsored by a Democrat. The adopted amendment would create a "clean energy" bank within the Energy Department to provide direct loans and government loan guarantees for projects that use clean energy technology. The committee also adopted a "cash for clunkers" program, which gives consumers vouchers worth $3,500 or $4,500 toward the purchase of a fuel-efficient vehicle if they turn in their cars and trucks that burn more fuel. The new vehicles would have to be purchased or leased by March 31, 2010. Consumers would not have to pay income taxes on the vouchers.

Under cap and trade, an ever-decreasing number of carbon pollution permits would be available, and companies that still lack the technology to meet the lower pollution requirements could buy more permits from companies that no longer need their full quotas. about 85 percent of the emissions permits would be given away under the bill, with the rest auctioned off. That is far less than the 100 percent auction for the permits the Obama administration proposed initially, although it has indicated some flexibility on the issue.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Tuesday the free permits were a "necessary part of allowing the United States to make this transition from where we are today to a cleaner economy." "I know that there are some people who say it's not as strong as it should be, but I for one am of a different opinion. I think you've got to get this thing going," Chu said.

If the bill clears Waxman's committee, the House Ways and Means Committee will also take a stab at the legislation. Democratic leaders want to bring the bill up for a full House vote by August. The legislation would then be sent to the U.S. Senate, where there is much stronger opposition. The full Senate may not take up the bill until sometime next year.