Congress Should Stop Al Gore’s Job Killing, Economy Ruining, Global Warming Tax

Al Gore (Cap and Tax Czar)

Thank goodness for the Chinese. Together with India, China helped guarantee that this week’s G-8 meeting failed to reach any agreement on limiting carbon-dioxide emissions. Ironically, the actions of the People’s Republic should help America avoid going further down the road of over-regulation.

The refusal of China and India to go along with the carbon-dioxide limits should be the death knell for the Cap and Trade bill currently being considered by the Senate. The legislation is a pretty hard sell. Even advocates admit restrictions would only have a small effect — only a fraction of 1 degree Celsius, a virtually unnoticeable .07 degrees — on global temperatures by 2050.

Even if a worldwide agreement made sense, an agreement without China, India and other developing countries can be counterproductive. It could actually mean more, not less, carbon-dioxide emissions. With massive increases in energy costs for the United States, Europe and Japan, energy-intensive manufacturing will move to countries without limits. That would negate some of the carbon-dioxide reductions in countries with limits.

But the problem is worse than that. China, India and other less-developed countries generally use energy less efficiently. That means that any given product built in China or India results in even more carbon dioxide than if it were built in the West. If more energy-intensive manufacturing moves to China and India, the volume of shipping will grow to get those products to consumers around the world. Shipping consumes a great deal of fossil fuels.

Democrats in the House of Representatives partially understood these problems and tried to stop this flight of manufacturing with a provision that would tax imports from countries that don’t regulate their carbon emissions. The Obama administration correctly warned that this provision would lead to a trade war, which would completely dislocate the economy. This week, Senate Democrats, led by Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, announced that they would strip that House provision out of the Senate bill.

Without China and India, Cap and Trade will mean an even bigger loss of manufacturing jobs. Without these other countries on board for the regulation, Americans will suffer punitive energy taxes and still face a possible increase in carbon emissions. From every angle, Cap and Trade is a lose-lose proposition.

The American people are under assault by officials in the federal government. Under the specious guise of saving the planet, they intend to fleece the people to benefit political allies, powerful money interests and a political agenda that is in direct opposition to the American way of life.

By President Obama’s own admission, with a cap and trade scheme like the Waxman- Markey Bill, “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

The Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade bill, also known as ACES (the American Clean Energy and Security Act – HR 2454), is projected to impose annual energy cost hikes in excess of $1,000 per household. The total cost to the flagging American economy is projected at $650 billion to over $1 trillion.

Even if the hotly contested claims of carbon-driven manmade global warming were to be believed, the touted climate benefit of the Waxman-Markey bill is that global surface temperatures will be one tenth of one degree cooler than currently projected in one hundred years.

ACES comes with an incredible price tag and promises no significant short or long-term benefit to either the American people or the global climate. This bill is nothing but another attempt to at a massive power and money grab by Washington’s elite.

To enrich a few powerful financial beneficiaries, like producers of wind turbines, and carbon trading firms such as the one former vice president and climate-alarmist-in-chief Al Gore profits from, Waxman-Markey is poised to decrease our national gross domestic product by $7 trillion dollars or more and cost another 1.9 million jobs, while adding sharply to the average families’ financial burden. Electricity rates could increase as much as 90% (nearly double what you now pay), Gasoline prices could rise 75%.

If this cap and trade scheme prevails, a select group of the rich will get richer on the backs of hard working American families who will literally see no benefit, not even after paying for this scheme for one hundred years.

A vote on this bill could come up in the House as soon as Friday. Call your congressman and senator today. Let them know that you wont stand for this despicable, fraudulent fleecing of America’s honest hard-working families.