Happy Happy Joy Joy Cap-n-Trade Madness

Why do I continue to hammer away at this topic? Because it's that important to the future of our country, at least if we want it to be healthy and prosperous. Read on for more on this disastrous component of the Obamessiah's plans for America:

Our calculations suggest that consumption under the constraints posed by Lieberman-Warner's cap-and-trade regime is equivalent to a constant (in percentage terms) consumption decrease of around 0.8%-1% each year, starting today and continuing to 2050. At first glance, a consumption decrease of one percent may appear trivial. However, as the 1% per year decreases compound, the welfare losses are substantial in the aggregate. ...

We find that a mitigation path consistent with Lieberman-Warner's provisions is equivalent to a permanent tax increase for the average American household. This increase is projected to amount to an additional $1100 in taxes in 2008. Moreover, this cap-and-trade "tax" increases over time in real terms from about $1400 to $2000 during 2015-2030 and approximately $2000 to $3000 in 2030-2050. The de facto tax increase becomes quite significant when one considers the average American household spends about $2500 on food annually....

Cap-and-trade will burden households with higher gasoline prices. Table 8 shows the percent difference between the baseline gasoline price and the cap-and-trade adjusted price. All models and scenarios demonstrate that Lieberman-Warner will increase the price of gasoline above the reference scenario price but with large amounts of variation. The CRA predicts that gas prices rise 145% above the reference scenario in 2015. ...

The assumptions driving the price of carbon allowances also affect employment. A higher predicted carbon allowance price gives producers a tighter margin and they are forced to shed jobs to maintain profit levels. The estimates of job losses range from hundreds of thousands to millions.

Powerline adds this:

The harmful consequences of the Democrats' cap and trade legislation are especially tragic in view of the fact that it will have no perceptible impact on the world's climate. Here are a few facts about the "pollutant" carbon dioxide--the only "pollutant," to my knowledge, that is necessary to human, animal and plant life:

First, do you know that carbon dioxide (CO2) in our atmosphere is
Þ only slightly more than 1/3rd of 1/10th of 1 percent?
Þ just recovering from the lowest level in the history of the earth?
Þ the source of carbon for all life forms, on land or in the sea?
Þ only slightly above the suffocation level for green plants?
Þ a fraction of the level for which evolution designed plants?
Þ so low as to cause some people breathing problems?
Þ increased by 130 times and more when administered to sick patients?
Þ considered, thanks to Al Gore, a pollutant by the U.S. Supreme Court?

The other component here is that, even if the U.S. implements every piece of what the wackos insist, it will still be negligible. Furthermore, even if the U.S. slays itself in the name of green-ness, India and China have made it clear they have no intention of doing so; if you're one of those who believes climate change is caused by man, those are your problem countries, not us. We're very clean in our processing of fossil fuels; they're not.

I want to re-emphasize the most important piece of this legislation: it will shrink the economy. As Hot Air says:

Loss of GDP means a retracting economy, less opportunity, fewer jobs, and a decline in living standards. The Marshall Institute offers the question of whether the US wants that as a tradeoff for the questionable effects of limiting carbon-dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, the present administration and its backers won’t acknowledge that as the choice before us, preferring to paint rosy pictures of increased living standards and prosperity while the government chokes off energy production, a contradiction they claim to solve with an explosion of “green energy” from sources that don’t exist at the moment.

How do we know that? Even Europe, which led the “green” movement, has discovered that stopping conventional energy production doesn’t magically produce realistic, mass-production alternatives.

But the bad news gets worse. Not only will the GDP drop over both the short and long terms, but the increased price of energy will result in substantial costs to all Americans — not just Obama’s 5% at the top

Bottom line: YOU WILL BE HIT HARD BY THIS!

Spread the word, and never let it be said that this is anything other than an Obama/Democrat plan.

There's my two cents.