Cap and trade? Chilling possibility

Inter Lake editorial

Forget, for the moment, the scientific debate over climate change. And oh yes, there is still a debate, regardless of proclamations from Al Gore and Newsweek magazine that the debate is over.

Instead, let's simply consider the outlandish costs that come with the Lieberman-Warner "cap-and-trade" bill being debated in the Senate this week. It has been described as the biggest expansion of the federal government since the New Deal, funded by what amounts to a huge tax that will further inflate energy prices, guaranteed.

That's right, a tax. Capping carbon emissions from American industry and energy producers, as we've said before, amounts to an increase in the cost of doing business. And those costs are most often handed off to consumers.

The bill would establish a new bureaucracy to govern emissions and a new economic sector allowing emission credits not only to be traded, but to be auctioned off by the government.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Lieberman-Warner bill would effectively create an energy tax costing Americans $1.2 trillion in the first seven years. Similar estimates have been developed by other government agencies and private think tanks, all projecting a shrinking gross domestic product, lost jobs and higher costs for consumers.

To address this problem, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., has stuffed the bill with an array of subsidies to soften the impacts, including $800 billion for consumers "in need of assistance related to energy costs."

So there is some screwy method in the madness: create the tax, the bureaucracy and the economic burden, then provide government assistance to help those most impacted by the burden, thereby creating new constituency group dependencies on government.

Those most impacted, of course, would be lower-income Americans with a substantial percentage of their budgets going to energy costs.

Fortunately, there are indications that senators on both sides of the aisle are starting to wake up and smell the economic and political costs of Lieberman-Warner.

"Many Democrats across the ideological spectrum foresee a public relations disaster looming, given that whip counts show that not even a majority of senators - less than 45 by most aides' counts - are likely to vote for the legislation, Roll Call magazine reported Tuesday.

Roll Call also quoted a staffer with a national environmental group: "There is a political concern, with people asking why are we doing this now, gas prices are $4 a gallon, we're at the beginning of the summer driving season, why are we doing this when the opposition is going to say we're [hurting] the American consumer?"

So the bill may go away for a while, but it will likely come back.

In the meantime, Americans should dive into the world of scientific "consensus" on climate change, and with just a little research, conflicting opinions will be discovered. Citizens can decide for themselves on that debate, and just how much actual environmental benefit can be bought with a cap-and-trade scheme.

The true developing consensus is that the Lieberman-Warner bill bears enormous and unsustainable costs for the U.S. economy.