Pelosi's Cap and Trade Plan

On Earth Day we witnessed a lot of meaningless symbolic gestures. One of the more puzzling was the all out push to enact a cap and trade scheme.

In July of 2003 the Congressional Budget Office released a report titled, "Shifting the Cost Burden of a Carbon Cap-and-Trade Program." The report concluded that a 'Carbon Cap and Trade' scheme would be regressive, imposing a greater burden on the poor and would depress government revenues, exacerbating federal deficits.

With the ongoing financial crisis, adding the cost of a carbon tax will be devastating to the economy. Cap and trade will cause an increase in all your energy costs. Some estimate that cap and trade will cost the average family about $4,000 a year. Congressman John Dingell (D-MI), former chair of the House Commerce and Energy Committee said, "Nobody in this country realizes that cap and trade is a tax - and it's a great big one" Dingell had opposed a cap and trade scheme, so Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi replaced Dingell with her own lapdog, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). Waxman enthusiastically supported Pelosi's cap and trade legislation that is moving through the House.

Since the Earth was created there have been at least 18 ice ages that we know of, and between each ice age there was a warming period. During the 1970's, many of the same 'experts' that were claiming that we were headed into another ice age, are now warning of global warming. I remember hearing the similar scare tactics that we hear now.

For example here are some apocalyptic quotes from the 1970's. Senator Gaylord Nelson said, "The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." If the senator was correct we would now be in that ice age now.

We can't forget Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist and author of the 'Population Bomb' when he said, "It is already too late to avoid mass starvation." Weren't we just warned that obese people are causing global warming?

Even Time and Newsweek magazines hyped the coming ice age. The apocalyptic 'Ice Age' panic didn't sell in the 1970's so now the fear mongers are trying to scare you into believing in global warming.

There is no credible scientific evidence that carbon dioxide from humans is causing global warming. New Zealand's Climate Science Coalition chair Bryan Leyland went one step further. Leyland said, "... to my knowledge, carbon trading is the only commodity trading where it is impossible to establish with reasonable accuracy how much is being bought and sold, where the commodity that is traded is invisible and can perform no useful purpose for the purchaser, and where both parties benefit if the quantities traded have been exaggerated. ... It is, therefore, an open invitation to fraud and that is exactly what is happening all over the world." What would you pay for a pound of CO2?

Since humans have not and can not cause climate change, the question remains why are politicians pushing cap and trade of CO2? A one word answer is - power. Once government obtains absolute control over our energy costs, it will give the politicians unprecedented power over the people. Every aspect of your life will be controlled directly or indirectly by politicians and bureaucrats. This is not what our founders had in mind when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.