The Obama administration and congressional Democrats have proposed a major cap-and-trade system aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Scientists agree that CO2 emissions around the world could lead to rising temperatures with serious long-term environmental consequences. But that is not a reason to enact a U.S. cap-and-trade system until there is a global agreement on CO2 reduction.
[…]
The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the resulting increases in consumer prices needed to achieve a 15 percent CO2 reduction — slightly less than the Waxman-Markey [bill’s] target — would raise the cost of living of a typical household by $1,600 a year. Some expert studies estimate that the cost to households could be substantially higher. The future cost to the typical household would rise significantly as the government reduces the total allowable amount of CO2.Americans should ask themselves whether this annual tax of $1,600-plus per family is justified by the very small resulting decline in global CO2. Since the U.S. share of global CO2 production is now less than 25 percent (and is projected to decline as China and other developing nations grow), a 15 percent fall in U.S. CO2 output would lower global CO2 output by less than 4 percent. Its impact on global warming would be virtually unnoticeable.
#1 Agree.
The US must lead the world to prevent humans from shitting in their own bed and polluting the environment we depend on.
Not everything can be reduced to dollars and cents. It will always be cheaper to live as if our generation were the last one. Many, including me have not given up and never will.
I am disappointed in two areas:
(1) The annual cost of keeping military presence in the middle east is NOT added to the cost of a barrel of oil. We need to stop the subsidy
(2) The cost of polluting the environment is still FREE.
Yea, I’m sure if the Americans do it the world will follow. After all they can always pass the cost off to the US market.
“Americans should ask themselves whether this annual tax of $1,600-plus per family”
But, but, but, the Obamaman promised no higher taxes on the average American. You mean he lied?
to #3 Sure all the other countries always line up and do exactly what we want them to do; not!
Let’s be sane for a few moment’s. The developing nations don’t have the cash to blow on stuff like this and that is where CO2 production is going to grow. Some countries are better off because of the warming trend or no worse off.
The other point is off shoring jobs is the fastest, cheapest way to cap CO2 production state side.
Of course the recession is doing a wonderful job of reducing CO2 production by reducing the amount of oil and coal being burned so as long as it lasts everybody is already making a major CO2 production cut. I’d guess that we have already cut CO2 production state side by 10 or 15%.
Anybody see a down side to this?
C’mon Uncky Dave — Drop the Fox News trick and write the proper headline: “Economist says Cap-and-Trade May Have Too High a Cost and Little Benefit”.
They will need to move fast to get this into law. Total global ice coverage is back to pre-2000 levels and temperatures are falling now we are in the longest solar minimum since 1913.
Good article though. It’s interesting to see that the proposed solution is as dubious as the pretext of man-made CO2 actually having a significant effect on climate.
Unfortunately, I can’t see this not being passed across the world. Our governments will need the extra tax revenue to pay-off the astronomical debts incurred from the recent bank handouts.
All sane people know Cap and Trade won’t work.
But for the rest of us, here is an excellent article on another reason it’s a horribly bad idea.
“Two prominent — and iconoclastic — environmentalists argue that current efforts to tax or cap carbon emissions are doomed to failure and that the answer lies not in making dirty energy expensive but in making clean energy cheap.”
It’s a pretty good article.
The best way to reduce CO2 emissions in the third world would be to provide them with energy production technologies that would allow the people of developing world to become producers of clean energy. That would cost a lot less than $1600 a family here in the US, it would create a lot more international goodwill than this carbon trading scheme, in which most of the money will stay in the hands of fat cat’s in the first world, and would serve to free many people from spending 30-50% of their income on Kerosine or wood to burn for cooking, light and heat.
When one of the selling points is how much new revenue the government will be bringing in, you get a pretty good idea that the whole thing is a scam.
#3 I understand that our country is not going to change the world through example. But we are one of the largest importers of foreign goods in the world. The power of the purse can be compelling. The reason I mention China in the original post is to show that one of the worlds major producers of green house gasses (and probably will be the major producer in the future) is tied to us economically.
For those that argue that this debate is all a paper tiger. I ask that you at the very least acknowledge that pollution in various forms has resulted in real world effects and damage (e.g. acid rain, mercury levels in aquatic life, etc.). The debate is a real one that will affect all of us and our children for years to come. We still need to continue to research and debate this issue. But the evidence of the consequences of inaction, I think, is leading us to these types of initiatives.
# 11 TinMan said, “But the evidence of the consequences of inaction, I think, is leading us to these types of initiatives.”
Umm, no. The fact that O’Mama was a member of the board for the Chicago Climate Exchange for 8 years and, stands to make HUGE amounts of $ from this scam is what is driving us toward this fraudulent activity…
ALWAYS, follow the money.
Hey the man’s gota make a buck somewhere. 🙂
Dvorak is right about not reading to far down in the posts they always tend to devolve to flame wars and trolls.
Cause and Effect:
Obama’s Cap-and-Trade tax handcuffs will have the desired effect of cutting polution…
because it will drive manufacturers out of business. Ergo – no more pollution.
But it will have no impact on Global Warming.
The longer we put it off, the worse it will get. Is it better to spend $1600 per family this year, or double that maybe five years down the road?
#2 totally agree!
“If governments had read the fine print of the crucial chapter 5 of IPCC AR4 (Humans Responsible for Climate Change) they would have realised that it is based on the opinions of just five independent scientists…whose computer models have not been able to accurately predict the cooling that has occurred since 1998….”
# 15 ArianeB said, “Is it better to spend $1600 per family this year, or double that maybe five years down the road?”
Don’t be naive. If this passes, I guarantee you’ll be paying at least double in five years. No matter what happens to the climate…
I wonder if the Office of the President is going to have a cap on it’s CO2 emissions? That last datenight in New York besides costing more than $20,000 must have generated several tons of CO2 from that jet and those 2 helicopters he took along with him.
Be kind to the environment. Stay home and watch a DVD.
The name itself implies a cap, in essence a cap on first world CO2 emissions, while making second and third world emissions shoufalls relative to their population an actual commodity. Ignored in the whole thing is basically no cap on emissions by China, India, and Russia.
Cap and trade is just a money scheme unless there is real emissions reductions BY EVERYONE.
#11, In the interest of the debate then, lets agree that CO2 isn’t pollution. CO2 causes none of the damage you mention to any life on earth. And further CO2 is required by much of the life on earth to survive.
I would caution you about equating CO2 with pollution because we want to eliminate pollution completely. Even the ardent global warming advocates only want to ‘control’ CO2, not turn it into pollution that should be eliminated.
CO2 is not pollution.
US 25% emissions?
http://www23.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=CO2+emissions
US has 6 Bill t CO2/yr of 15 Bill t CO2/yr total
so reducing to 5 Bill t CO2/yr would amount to a 7% reduction in overall CO2 output – how is that “insubstantial”?
I stand corrected:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_of_China
shows that wolframalpha left China off the list (quite an omission) since they equal US in CO2 output.
But I still don’t buy the “It’s too big for anybody” argument (we did, after all, back out of the Kyoto accords).
Answer: Yes.
You just have to remember, for greenies, it’s not the reality that counts, it’s the appearance.
“Solutions” don’t have to actually work, but you gain religious faith by doing them and especially by forcing others to do it.
This is why green zealots will pay $20,000 for solar cells that will generate less power than the interest on the $20K, much less the capital and maintenance. And they want you do be just as green, no matter how much it costs you.
Lets see, CAFE adding about 1,300 to car prices and 1,600 to be green. Yep, movin on up. Change in America!
#10, Bingo.
#15, The longer we put it off, the worse it will get. Is it better to spend $1600 per family this year, or double that maybe five years down the road?
Do you realize that $1600 is 3.2% of the average household income in this country?
12% of the country lives below the poverty line. Assuming a four person family made EXACTLY the poverty level in income, that $1600 comes to 13.8%. 13.8%!!!
If you are making $250,000/yr, this is only 0.6%.
Who said Democrats were friends of the poor and middle classes?
So this is the solution to pollution? Force the poor to live in tents and ride bikes everywhere?
If Obama signs this legislation, there should be pitchforks and torches in the streets.
>But I still don’t buy the “It’s too big for anybody” argument (we
Well, if CO2 is going to cause a 4.5 degree increase in temperatures, then having the US adopt an 80% reduction will still lead to a 4.1 degree increase in temperatures. Even if Europe and the rest of OECD90 join in, you still only stop 20 percent of this warming.
The developing world is fast increasing its emissions numbers, and most of the the recommended treaties ignore them. The various global warming activists even set up a website to promote hurting the US – climateethics.org.
Hmmm save the Earth by essentailly killing humanity. Yeah, that’ll work.
The average person breathes out 300 lb of CO2 per year. There are over 1 billion people in India and over 1.3 billion people in China. You do the math on how much CO2 is produced just by breathing in those two countries alone. If you want to do anything with regard to CO2, try sending birth control pills to India and China.
If you believe this CO2 nonsense, then just plant 5-6 trees, that will negate your 300 lb CO2 contribution.
Those dumb Europeans have spent over 100 billion euros on CO2 trading. The countries that they traded with are primarily China (which doesn’t give a damn about this stupid CO2 nonsense) and Russia (which is playing games with Europe’s natural gas supplies).
I want nothing to do with cap and trade, its nothing more than a money transfer scheme. The biggest greenhouse gas is water vapour, not CO2. Hard to believe people that people believe the lies of Al Gorge.
The earth goes thru natural cycles of heating and cooling and short of all out thermonuclear war, man really can’t affect the planet that much. It has been warmer in the past and significantly colder in the past, people have adapted and survived. They will do so in the future.
I have had it with climate alarmists.
Don’t think that the rich tyrants hate this idea. It allows them to retain dirty polluting plants in poor neighborhoods while they make neat, clean low polluting plants in rich neighborhoods.
Remember, the wealthy always drink from the taxpayer trough first.