‘Cap and Trade’ More Like ‘Bait and Switch’

Andrew Price at Commentarama has the best summary of this fiasco I have seen anywhere:

Why did they do this?

Short answer: they don’t like you. Longer answer: Environmental theologians, like Al Gore the Prophet, believe that carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping “greenhouse” gas, is the primary cause of global warming.

They note that carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of oil, coal, and natural gas constitute about 80% of all man-made greenhouse gasses in the United States. Moreover, they note that man-made carbon emissions have increased worldwide more than 70 percent since 1970, and are now 40-45% higher than they were at the start of the Industrial Revolution. And they want this stopped. The Democrat’s cap and trade system, supposedly, will cut those emission, which will reduce the amount of greenhouse gas in the air, and will therefore prevent global warming.

So will it work?

Many people think it will. Indeed, a full 63% of Americans believe that human activity is the greatest source of carbon-dioxide emissions. But then, a 2006 survey found that 70% of Americans couldn’t find Iraq on the map, despite that whole war thing, and 33% couldn’t find Louisiana, despite that whole Katrina thing.

Perhaps we should ignore uninformed opinion and instead look at some facts? And here is one: human-caused carbon emissions come to a grand total of 3.27% of all carbon emissions. That’s right, 3.27%. The rest are caused by the decay of “biomass” (i.e. dead trees, leaves, etc.) or are released through volcanic activity. Thus, cap and trade will only affect a maximum of 3.27% of the problem.

Can reducing that 3.27% solve this problem? No. Ask yourself, if you are ten feet under water, with an additional foot of water being added every minute by a waterfall and an additional inch of water being added by your friend with a bucket, do you really think you can solve the problem by asking your friend to switch to a smaller bucket?

(For our congressional readers, we have a crayon-ready picture version of this last paragraph available upon request.)

But wait. . . there’s more!

They’re not even trying to fix the full 3.27%. No, indeed. Why? Because the Kyoto treaty, which is what Obama is trying to implement through this cap and trade scam, excluded developing countries (i.e. real polluters) from having to cut back their own emissions. Thus, China and India don’t need to make any cuts at all. Guess which country is the world’s biggest polluter? If you said China, then you’re too smart to be a Congressman. China accounts for 28% of the world’s pollution, and is growing rapidly.

So now we’re not even talking about fixing the 3.27%, we’re talking about fixing some portion of about twenty percent of that 3.27%.

Think of it this way: your neighbors’ cars belch out black smoke all day, but we’re going to “fix” the air quality problem in your neighborhood by making you drive your new Prius 10% slower.

Ok, what’s this going to cost?

The Democrats have been pimping a cost figure produced by the Congressional Budget Office that found that this legislation will cost the average household only $175 a year by 2020. Or as Ed Markey (D-Twilight Zone) claims, this will “cost less than a postage stamp a day.” Of course, that’s a lie.

The CBO study looked only at the cost of operating a trading program, it did not examine “the potential decrease in gross domestic product that could result from the cap.”

In other words, it only counted what the government will spend administering the program, it did not count how the program will affect the rest of us. This is like me claiming that I can reduce your grocery bill to $120 a year if you pay me $10 a month to buy groceries for you with your credit card. See the problem? If not, send me your credit card.

There’s a lot more there, so be sure to check it out.

Also, National Review’s Iain Murray is fed up with lawmakers not reading the bills they vote on.  His new site, called Just Read the Bill, Already! calls for a constitutional amendment that would require congressmen to certify that they have read legislation before they vote on it.

Rep Mike Pence started the debate yesterday morning by pointing out that the House leadership had dropped a 300-page amendment to the already 1200-ish page Waxman-Markey energy tax bill at 3:09 in the morning. Clearly, debate started before anyone had had a chance to read it properly, but the House leadership just didn’t care. Then, mid-afternoon, Reps Louie Goehmert (who did a splendid job all round) and Energy & Commerce Ranking Member Joe Barton (who clearly couldn’t believe what was going on) raised a series of Parliamentary Inquiries as to whether there was a copy of the amended bill anywhere in the House for members to read. Chairman Markey was dismissive, saying there was a copy on the wesbite, which, Rep Barton pointed out, was not much help to members on the floor of the House actually, you know, debating the bill. Eventually the Chair, who was very fair throughout the afternoon, admitted that the Clerk was in the process of integrating the amendment into the hard copy in the House. So for most of the day the House was debating a bill that didn’t actually physically exist, never mind having had a chance to read, digest and consider it.

Let me just state this as simply as I can: this is a gross abuse of the Parliamentary process and represents nothing less than contempt for the people of the United States of America.

One of his readers had a good comment:

I say “Amen”. Some would complain that this would slow Congress down, allowing only for a few bills to be passed per session. To which I say “Amen”, yet again. It’s like putting money in the bank and making even more with compounding interest. One good things leads to more good things with this.

Is this really too much to ask?

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