Cap and Trade Cognitive Dissonance 101

Paging Tom Friedman.

There is much in the House cap-and-trade energy bill that just passed that I absolutely hate. It is too weak in key areas and way too complicated in others. A simple, straightforward carbon tax would have made much more sense than this Rube Goldberg contraption. It is pathetic that we couldn’t do better. It is appalling that so much had to be given away to polluters. It stinks. It’s a mess. I detest it.

Now let’s get it passed in the Senate and make it law.

Why? Because, for all its flaws, this bill is the first comprehensive attempt by America to mitigate climate change by putting a price on carbon emissions. Rejecting this bill would have been read in the world as America voting against the reality and urgency of climate change and would have undermined clean energy initiatives everywhere.

So, just because it's the first bill to deal with a problem that might not actually be a problem we have to pass it?

Climate change is a natural part of the global climate since the Earth was created all those eons ago. There were warm periods. There were cold periods. Then, there's the last few hundred years or so when people have been able to take direct measurements of temperature, and the last few decades where satellites can provide global temperature measurements. All of sudden, based on this limited data sample we're told to worry about global warming.

Okay.

We have to stop polluting. I want to see reduced pollution, but the efforts to strangle US business and industry isn't going to affect the global climate, and it surely isn't going to get China or India to suddenly realize that they too have to shut down their polluting industries.

China is the largest emitter of pollution in the world. The air in China is so think you can see it and taste it. Just look at all those photos of Beijing during the Olympics. It was dirty and dingy, despite the government's best efforts to shut tens of thousands of factories and power plants all over China to put the best face on the Chinese Olympic effort. It failed badly, because as soon as the games were over, the government allowed those business to resume their pollution.

Cap and trade is a disastrous policy as all too many countries are already seeing.

If Friedman is so concerned about pollution and cap and trade, how about imploring the New York Times to stop publishing the paper version of its news? After all, think of the trees that could be saved and the forests that could capture all the CO2 that is being emitted.

In fact, Friedman could also shut down his computer and lessen the strain on the power grid, a portion of which requires carbon emissions. He should also give up his trips overseas since the flights release plenty of COx. He should also give up the car.

Instead, he excoriates Republicans, President Obama, and all Americans for why this bill is so poor. Sorry, but that doesn't fly either.

This bill is so awful because it will never do what its authors intend. It will not reduce emissions, will create a new market that can be manipulated in a fashion akin to Enron without suitable regulatory oversight to prevent such manipulation, and will cause shortages of energy all while causing prices of all manner of goods and services to increase as the costs are passed on to consumers.

A Moment of Perspective

Ahmadinejad and his loyal mullahs are busy cracking down against the opposition, and the world's focus is not on the brutality of the regime, but instead on the death of Michael Jackson.

In fact, Jackson's death may have accomplished something that even Iran's Ahmadinejad could have only dreamed of - it reduced Twitter to a trickle.

Twitter crashed as users saw multiple "fail whales" -- the illustrations the site uses as error messages -- user FoieGrasie posting, "Irony: The protesters in Iran using twitter as com are unable to get online because of all the posts of 'Michael Jackson RIP.' Well done." The site's status blog said that Twitter had had to temporarily disable its search results, saved searches and trend topics.

Outstanding! A music legend dies, and it nearly takes down one of the key communications efforts by the opposition to the Islamofascists in Tehran because everyone was rushing to say RIP to Michael Jackson. If only so many people cared for the millions at risk of subjugation in Iran today.

Instead, the media is devoting nearly all of the above the fold coverage to Jackson's death. It's a frakking circus, but I guess the public loves a circus.

They're getting one.

Keep in mind what else should otherwise be above the fold for news coverage because of its importance going forward. Jackson's death happened just as the House is set to vote on the cap and trade tax that will sap the US economy for years to come, and is preparing a health makeover that will undermine the delivery of health care for generations to come. After all, if the government can't even deliver on existing promises of health care to US veterans, why should anyone else think that they'll deliver quality care to everyone else?

The media thinks that Jackson's death will sell papers and move magazines off moribund store shelves, and they're probably right. Of course, the same media which claims that they're supposed to be printing all the news that fits is underplaying the important votes set to take place in Congress that will hike the costs of goods and services for years to come via the cap and trade tax hike.

Will Congress Read the Cap and Trade Tax Bill?

House Democrats are absolutely positively going to pass the massive cap and trade tax scam today, and to do so without the slightest scrutiny as to the massive ill-effects it will have on the economy.

I didn't expect them to read it yesterday, when I said that I doubt that they'd read the 1,092 pages of the original bill, but it goes without saying that they'll absolutely avoid reading the 300+ page amendment that sponsor Henry Waxman (D-MI) attached this morning prior to consideration by the House.

I can generally read about 100 pages an hour in a good page turner like Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, but when you're dealing with the minutia of legislative changes, that page slows down considerably. In fact, it slows to a crawl, primarily because of the multiple amendments, effective dates, and the time it takes to comprehend and assess the changes being made.

House Democratic leaders want this bill pushed through today, so it goes without saying that few if any of those voting on the measure have actually had the time to read it.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air notes that this bill smacks of a snake oil salesman in the way that it engages in delusional economic pandering as though the costs imposed on energy producers and emitters will somehow magically disappear. They will, of course, be passed on to the consumer, as such costs are always passed on. It's basic economics, and I doubt that Democrats in Congress have read up on that either.

In fact, Australia is preparing to kill its previously enacted climate change bill because of growing doubts over the underlying science.

UPDATE:
The House passed this atrocity and it was a bipartisan effort. 219-212, with eight Republicans voting for this mess. Kudos to the 44 Democrats who voted against, which tells you all you need to know about the Democrat numbers. Pelosi could afford to allow that many to vote against since she had these GOPers.

Quote of the day:
Never have so few stolen so much from so many to achieve so little.

I wonder about just how likely this bill is going to die in the Senate. The Democrats have the numbers again, and the GOP can't exactly filibuster. It would be close, and if it passes the Senate, President Obama will sign it into law - without reading it of course.

That's the new DC way.

UPDATE:
A further thought about all those Democrats who voted against this mess. Kudos to them. It was a bow to the financial and political realities of 2010. Voting against this was the only way that many of those Democrats would be able to save themselves from the inevitable attack ads in conservative districts. They'll still be on the defensive, but this vote was a strategic one on their part.

UPDATE:
Here's the breakdown regionally, courtesy of the New York Times.

The Cost of Cap and Trade

The Obama Administration is going to get cap and trade, and it's going to cost Americans dearly. Just how badly things are going to work out remains to be seen, but this graphic demonstrates that the negative effects are going to be widespread with a few curious exceptions.



Nearly everyone in the country will be hit with higher costs for everything they do, even in the states that reflect that they will have a surplus allowances for power generation - because energy costs are going to be passed on to the end user - the consumer. It's impossible for those costs not to be passed on because that's how economies work. Businesses are not going to eat the costs, because that would cut into profits, and this is a back door tax.

It will adversely affect the economy and will hit everyone, even if you think that global warming is caused by carbon dioxide. That means nothing if you're now without a job because your company lays you off because higher taxes and a moribund economy has caused business to drop off with no recovery in sight.

UPDATE:
Even the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett opposes cap and trade because it is nothing more than a hidden tax on business and consumers.

Taxing All Americans Through Cap and Trade

President Obama and his eco-nuts would rather you didn't pay attention to what they have in store for your wallets and pocketbooks.

They're fully intent on imposing a massive new and unneeded taxing scheme called cap and trade.

What will that mean? You know those vaunted claims that Obama will not raise taxes on 95% of all Americans? It's utter nonsense. I'd use stronger language than that, but this is a PG blog.

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.

Any tax on a producer will be passed on to the end consumer. It's basic economics, and yet the Administration and an incurious media either ignore this, or choose to omit this salient fact when discussing their grandiose plans for reworking the economy.

Never mind that raising taxes into the teeth of a recession is destructive and slows any recovery, but this plan will also hit people in the lowest income tax brackets hardest. You read that right too. Those in the lowest brackets will use a larger percentage of their income to cover the higher costs imposed by cap and trade than those in higher tax brackets.

This is voodoo economics, and the intent to fundamentally alter the US economy will have disastrous results. And yet, that appears to be the Administration's goal.

UPDATE:
Hot Air has much more. Ameripundit also weighs in.