Posted on 08/14/2009 4:32:43 AM PDT by IbJensen
Senior policy analyst with The Heritage Foundation believes "cap-and-trade" legislation will increase an already bloated federal government.
David Kreutzer tells OneNewsNow that if cap-and-trade legislation -- sometimes referred to as "energy ration and tax" by opponents -- passes the Senate, it will add more than $8 billion in additional government staff.
"This is not the cost to the economy from the higher energy prices -- that's much, much higher; that will be thousands of dollars per family...$9.4 trillion over the first 24 years," Kreutzer explains. "The eight billion [dollars] is just for the staff in Washington to handle the paperwork."
Proponents of the measure say the legislation is needed in order to curb carbon emissions they believe are causing alleged "manmade global warming."
(Excerpt) Read more at onenewsnow.com ...
Diverse “green collar” jobs?
Here is an excerpt of an interview with The Chronicle:
Q: In your book ... you make the argument that the two most important problems facing the U.S. are radical social inequality and rampant environmental destruction. Can you explain why in your view the solution to this is a caulk gun?
A: We do have these two big problems. But really we have one solution - a green economy ... that really honors the earth but is strong enough to lift millions of people out of poverty through creating what we call green collar jobs. It’s not just the Ph.D.s but the Ph. Dos ... getting people skilled up so they know how to make solar panels and wind turbines. You’re giving people not just a paycheck but a purpose.
Q: You also call out the idea of the eco-elite and the concern over eco-apartheid.
A: If the green economy just winds up being this niche economy, where people can afford to pay a green premium for that extra environmental oomph on their products, it’s going to be too small to actually do very much. And 80 percent of the people who are left out wind up undoing the environmental good of that 20 percent. The next stage in green economics is to figure out how we make the green economy not just a place for affluent people but a place for ordinary people to earn money and for low income people to save money.
Q: In the book, you go into the idea of environmental racism - or what you call “throwaway” communities.
A: There’s this environmental justice movement that talks not just about our sister and brother species but our sisters and brothers who are disproportionately targeted by toxic waste in places like Bayview-Hunters Point, places like Richmond, where the big refinery is. There’s a lot of asthma, a lot of cancer clusters, a lot of negative health impacts. ... It’s low income people, people of color. Now we’re saying we want equal protection from the worst pollution, but we also want ... equal opportunity, equal access to the best (of the green economy).
Q: Given the divided nature of the political landscape, how could a new president or new Congress make the kind of sweeping changes you talk about?
A: I do feel there are some dangers right now because people are just confused. You look at ads on television and you can’t tell whether it’s the Sierra Club or Chevron. Now, the next step is to clarify. When we say a green job, do we want a job at a nuclear power plant where you come out glowing green? Or are we talking about real renewable solutions like solar, wind, geothermal, water conservation? My hope is that there will be a governing majority ... that is bipartisan, built around a new center of gravity that says, we want the U.S. to be the world leader, but not in war and pollution and incarceration rates.
Q: You mention specific solutions discussed by both Sens. Obama and Clinton during the primary race, particularly removing tax breaks for oil companies?
A: Fundamentally we have to stop paying polluters and making the polluters pay. Right now we subsidize pollution. We give a lot of money to big oil, big coal, folks who are adding to the problems of global warming. At the same time it’s free to dump carbon into the air, by the ton... But it’s going cost the whole the planet. That’s called a market failure. We want the polluters to pay because if you put a price on carbon, you send a market signal that the carbon age is over, the oil and coal age is over. It’s now the solar age. We cannot drill and burn our way out of our energy problems. We can invent and invest our way out.
Q: With the economy in such terrible shape right now, how can green be a priority?
A: We just found $700 billion to bail out the bankers. Nobody said that was too expensive. We have the biggest, strongest economy in history of the world. Even on the way down we’re bigger than anybody else. It’s not question of money, it’s a question of priorities. We have a Saudi Arabia of wind in the Plains states, a Saudi Arabia of solar in the Sun Belt. If you build a clean energy grid ... now your energy costs have plunged near zero. ... The U.S. economy will be stronger in ways we can’t even imagine.
Just think of all those affirmative action jobs that will open up. They might run out of affirmative action type people in Washington and have to hire a few caucasians folks.
One never knows.
The government doesn't 'find' money. Their either mug us by grabbing the money from paychecks, or they fire up the presses!
This cap and trade nonsense desperately needs deep sixed quick!
Their=they
What is the status of this legislation? It has not passed yet, has it?
I thought it was dead.
I believe the Democrap-controlled Senate is waiting until no one’s paying any attention so they can ramrod it through.
I believe the Democrap-controlled Senate is waiting until no one’s paying any attention so they can ramrod it through.
Hiccup?
Cap ‘n tax, like so many other leftist wet dreams will wreck this economy and kill tens of thousands of Americans who can’t afford heating or air conditioning.
When I voiced my opposition of this bill with my (useless) representatives, I didn’t mince words and told them that they would be held responsible if energy costs rose as high as the CBO predicted and people died because they couldn’t afford to turn on the A/C in the summer (in the South) or the heat in the winter (in the North).
I haven’t had a reply from any of my elected representatives about that, but I’m pretty sure i made some government watch lists. I don’t care, What we have today is NOT what I, my brother, sister, uncles, father, grandfathers and great grandfathers going back generations bargained for when we each served our country.
Wow, talk about "environmental schizophrenia"!! Let me parse this.
" . . . the carbon age is over, the oil and coal age is over." Environmentalists dearly want to believe this and are desperately trying to replace so-called "fossil fuels" with biofuels. Biofuels have been found to be substantially worse for the climate than the "fossil fuels", but we don't want to confuse the environazis with "inconvenient" facts.
Then, we have the "solar age". Solar and wind power may be renewable, "nonpolluting" forms of energy, but that doesn't make them sustainable forms of energy. But, here's where the environuts begin to discredit their own argument. Because the environuts have finally discovered that the big ball of light in the sky during the day is the sun and the sun produces heat that, in their warped world, adds to the problem of AGW. So, to help mitigate the effects of the sun, there has been a proposal lately to send something like a million "mirrors" into space to provide us some shade from the sun's rays and, as a result, some relief from the heat the produces in addition to its light.
So, if the author being interviewed believes that we are now in the age of solar, how does he/she reconcile the disparity between switching to solar as our primary source of energy, and trying to shield the earth from (at least) some of the heating effects of the sun by sending mirrors into space???
This is nothing but environmental schizophrenia.
Imagine all of the employees that businesses will have to hire to deal with all of these bureaucrats.
curb carbon emissions they believe are causing alleged “manmade global warming..
—
Last year I heard that there was a bill being sponsored to tax ranch cows called flatulence tax. Is this the type stupidity included in this bill?
8 billion to create how mahy staff members? 3? 4? Oh well, its all in the name of creating jobs, right?
Why the Waxman-Markey bill will kill the US with energy outsourcing and refining issues...PDF
http://www.api.org/Newsroom/upload/ENSYS_W_M_Briefing_Report_2009_8_20.pdf
“”Refining, energy security, jobs, physical security, economy, a decent life....
The United States will be more dependent on imports of gasoline and other petroleum fuels while U.S. refining production would be shifted overseas if a climate change bill passed in the U.S. House of Representatives becomes law, a study shows.
An analysis by global consulting firm EnSys Energy of the impact of the “American Clean Energy and Security Act”, which passed by a narrow 219-212 vote in the House in June, on the U.S. refining sector showed that investment in U.S. refining capacity could plummet because the cost of doing business could soar. Production at U.S. refineries would drop while production at refineries in countries that do not limit their own greenhouse gas emissions would rise. The impact on global refinery greenhouse gas emissions would be minor as reductions in U.S. emissions mostly would be offset by increases in emissions in other countries.
“This study clearly shows the devastating impact this legislation could have on U.S. jobs and U.S. energy security,” said API President and CEO Jack Gerard. “Climate legislation should not come at the expense of U.S. economic and energy security. Congress needs to analyze carefully the impact of any climate policy on ordinary Americans, American jobs and American companies. A deep decline in U.S. refining activity would have a ripple effect throughout the economy, affecting jobs in sectors beyond the oil and gas industry. Steelworkers, construction workers, even the shop keepers, school teachers and waitresses working in communities where refineries operate would feel the pinch.”
The House climate legislation drives up individual and business fuel costs because it inequitably distributes free emission “allowances” to various sectors. Refiners are held responsible for 44% of emissions, including the refinery emissions (about 4%) as well as consumer emissions from planes, trains, automobiles, heating oil, and other petroleum use. Yet refiners are allocated only 2.25% of allowances. In contrast, some other sectors receive free allowances that match or exceed their obligation.
According to the EnSys study, commissioned by API, the U.S. would need to increase its imports of petroleum fuels in order to meet as much as nearly one-fifth of U.S. refined product demand in 2030 if the House climate bill becomes law, double what imports would have been.
U.S. refining throughput, a measure of productivity, could plummet by as much as 25% (4.4 million barrels per day) and investment in U.S. refining could “
It Wants Your Wallet! Beware the Cap and Trade Monster
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2323369/posts?page=29#29
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