NASA STS 31 Space Shuttle Photo
For anyone supporting reduction of greenhouse gas emissions: kudos to you. A suggestion; support legislation capable of actually reducing emissions instead taxing them.
A significant idea, offer tax incentives to businesses that create alternative fuels, currently there is no alternative to the fuels we use today. There is nothing to switch over to. The fuels we use today will be needed until there is an alternative. The only thing that will change at all is a 50 to 90% higher cost for energy. Another unintended consequence; the fresh flooding of American business going overseas, and the jobs that go along with them, as business seeks cheaper alternatives from foreign sources not limited by this tax.
Until there is an alternative fuel source, the main theory behind the "Cap and Trade" Tax scheme, is to price fuels, products and services out of your affordability range, to make it so unaffordable, you will have to choose between feeding your family or heating your home in winter. That is this bill's idea of how to reduce emissions.
This is the point, draconian legislation is seriously being considered that stands a very significant chance of failing to meet any of it's stated goals, the height of insanity.
Creating a tax on industry does not help reduce emissions; it is poor reasoning to think that it will. It makes industry just that much more expensive, and that cost is passed on to you.
The government wants the revenue, that’s why they are creating the tax to begin with, to gain revenue from every American regardless of income, economic status, employment status or immigration status. It is a carte blanch tax on nearly every product, service, commodity, and fuel in the United States of America. That is the only thing it will do with any success. Supporting the Waxman-Markley Cap and trade energy bill is the height of stupidity surpassed only by its existence. It can not achieve its stated goals, it is not designed to reduce emissions. It is a Tax.
Cap and Trade has not worked in Europe, it has however cost them a 5 to 10% loss in Standard of Living. In other words, it has made every citizen poorer.
Emissions? They have not changed at all.
EUROPE'S "CAP AND TRADE" PROBLEMS
As U.S. lawmakers work on the details of "cap and trade" carbon dioxide legislation, they need to know what Europeans already know: When trying to slow down global warming, beware of unintended consequences, says Steven Mufson in the Washington Post.
Consider Kollo Holding's (a silicon carbide maker) factory in the Netherlands:
• Managers at the factory say their plant as an ecological standout: They use waste gases to generate energy and have installed the latest pollution-control equipment.
• But Europe's emissions program has driven electricity prices so high that the facility routinely shuts down for part of the day to save money on power, which, contrary to environmental goals, reduces energy efficiency.
• Although demand for its products is strong, the plant has laid off 40 of its 130 employees and trimmed production.
• Two customers have turned to cheaper imports from China, which is not covered by Europe's costly regulations.They aren't the only ones suffering, says Mufson. French cement workers fear they're going to lose jobs to Morocco, which doesn't have to meet the European guidelines; and German homeowners pay 25 percent more for electricity than they did before the caps.
Making matters worse, the rationing hasn't proved successful, says Mufson:
• Because of lobbying by well-connected companies, the EU's limits on emissions ended up being higher than the actual emissions.
• As a result, fewer companies than expected had to buy emissions this year, and the price of carbon allowances, which had topped $30 per ton of carbon about a year ago, crashed to about $1 a ton.
• Germany boasts that it has cut emissions to 18.4 percent below 1990 levels, but nearly half the reduction was because of sagging industrial output in the former East Germany after reunification.
• For the 2008-2012 period, European Union officials sliced 5 percent off Germany's emissions proposal.Source: Steven Mufson, "Europe's Problems Color U.S. Plans to Curb Carbon Gases," Washington Post, April 9, 2007.
The end result of this legislation will be a second Great Depression. The economy as it stands today cannot withstand an assault of this scale. Taxing Carbon is bound to fail all of us.
Comments
Cap & trade is a decent solution to a serious problem that's gonna cost a lot more if we don't address it (cleaning up coal air pollution -- including mercury and radioactive isotopes, fly ash poisoning groundwater, mountain top removal destroying Appalachian streams and rivers, submerging coastlines, droughts, etc.). Not to mention that good (unionized) manufacturing, installation, and maintenance jobs, here in the U.S., will be created if we do address it.
"The American Clean Energy and Sec
Well, I suppose you can be grateful when you can't afford your electricity bill, and have to resort to buying powered milk instead of fresh refrigerated milk. Good for you. Don't whine about it to anyone when it happens or blame it on President Bush. It will be squarely on your shoulders. Buck up camper, change is coming.
Cap and Trade is a Revenue generating Tax. Not a solution.
European cap-&-trade has been a manifest failure as it has not curbed CO2 emission by a single gram (EU CO2 emission actually increased by about 1.1 % in 2007). Now Europeans are inviting the rest of the world to Copenhagen so that the world would buy into this unworkable scheme in order to make the rest of the world pay for EU's high energy cost as the consequence of EU's cap-&-trade scheme.
Jim Welke, killing the U.S. economy is a "decent solution"?! Cap and Trade “would be the equivalent of an atomic bomb directed at the U.S. economy—all without any scientific justification,” said famed climatologist Dr. S. Fred Singer. It would significantly increase taxes and the cost of energy, forcing many companies to close, thus increasing unemployment, poverty and dependence.
Those brainwashed to the point of wanting to destroy the economy to "prevent global warming" are behaving like the most primitive human beings who were duped into believing that human sacrifices would ensure them good weather. Human beings don't have the power to control climate! And killing the economy will not help the environment. Poor countries can’t protect the environment. Just look at Haiti!
Cap and trade represents huge taxes and cost increases, which will hurt mostly the poor and the middle class. Cap and trade will give dictatorial powers to Obama and will further enrich his billionaire friends (Gore, Soros, Goldman Sachs, Obama’s Chicago Climate Exchange friends, GE, etc.) -- all at our expense and at the expense of our children and grandchildren.
More and more scientists and thinking people all over the world are realizing that man-made global warming is a hoax that threatens our future and the future of our children. More than 700 international scientists dissent over man-made global warming claims. They are now more than 13 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media-hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.
CO2 is NOT dangerous. More than 30,000 American scientists have signed onto a petition that states, "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate."
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