Wednesday, November 11, 2009

The Cap-N-Tax Mistake

Two EPA lawyers produced a video warning of the dangers of Obama's cap-n-tax legislation. They were forced to remove the video from their website, but others have posted it elsewhere since. Heritage doesn't endorse their idea of carbon taxes, but says their analysis of cap-n-tax is 'dead on':



Some related information that might be of interest to you is that the people who created the idea of cap-n-tax admit that it won't control carbon. Also, links to explanations and examples of why carbon credits are nothing but a scam, go
here, here, here, here, and here.

This cap-n-tax legislation is all about 'green jobs', right? Let's look at how that plan has worked for other nations around the world that have tried it:

Our first stop takes us to Germany where think tank Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung just released its study on the economic impacts of the country’s green energy initiative. Commissioned by the Institute for Energy Research (IER), the report finds with per worker subsidies for solar industry jobs are as high as $240,000. Last year, “the price mark-up attributable to the government’s support for “green” electricity was about 2.2 cents US per kWh. For perspective, a 2.2 cent per kWh increase here in the US would amount to an average 19.4% increase in consumer’s electricity bills.” Government subsidies for wind and solar are projected to be over $100 billion from 2000-2010 and, to make matters worse, as the subsidies run out, so do the jobs.

Our next stop on the trip brings us to Denmark, and if you don’t mind a brief layover in Oslo, you’ll receive a complementary Nobel Peace prize. President Obama stresses we should be more like Denmark since 20 percent of the nation’s electricity comes from wind power. But is that really the case? According to a study from the Danish Centre for Political Studies (CEPOS), also commissioned by IER, the road to increased wind power is less traveled for a reason. The study refutes the claim that Denmark generates 20 percent of its power from wind stating that its high intermittency not only leads to new challenges to balance the supply and demand of electricity, but also provides less electricity consumption than assumed. The new study says, “wind power has recently (2006) met as little as 5% of Denmark’s annual electricity consumption with an average over the last five years of 9.7%.” Furthermore, the wind energy Denmark exports to its northern neighbors, Sweden and Norway, does little to reduce carbon dioxide emissions because the energy it replaces is carbon neutral. The study goes on to say that absent of government subsidies, Denmark would be absent a wind industry.

The third and final destination on our green energy tour takes us to Spain, another country Obama says the U.S. should replicate when it comes to energy policy, saying, “they’re making real investments in renewable energy.” But real investments aren’t necessarily good investments. Another IER-commissioned study coming out of King Juan Carlos University in Madrid by Gabriel Calzada found that, for every green job created, 2.2 jobs in other sectors have been destroyed. Furthermore, Spain’s government spent $758,471 to create each green job and used $36 billion in taxpayer money to invest in wind, solar, and mini-hydro from 2000-2008.

The bottom line is that the principles behind cap-n-tax are blown up by every basic economics course. Because of these violations...
...with cap and trade Congress is mandating higher energy prices and killing many more jobs throughout the process. Consumers spend less. Businesses, faced with higher prices, are forced to make production cuts and reduce labor or they will move to another country where the costs of operation are cheaper without cap and trade and renewable energy mandates. Our analysis of the proposed green energy economy will destroy 1.9 million jobs in 2012 and 2.5 million by 2035 – after accounting for the green jobs created.
Reality proves this entire philosophy just doesn't work.

We need to prevent Obama and his Democrats from succeeding in this legislation.

There's my two cents.

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