Morning Bell: The Transparent Costs of Cap and Trade » The Foundry

Morning Bell: The Transparent Costs of Cap and Trade » The Foundry:

These excerpts from a study by the Heritage Foundation of the Waxman-Markey Cap & Trade bill, if they are at all rational, should give every American pause. If the United States were to see even half the economic impacts from this study, we would be in dire economic straits. Now if I could only find an answer to my question about the cost of implementing Waxman-Markey, not the economic impacts... which have been studied by many... we'd know something about the direct out-of-pocket costs and the contribution to the deficit.

Based on what I've learned so far, Waxman-Markey is a very bad bill economically for Americans and unlikely to have any effect on climate change. I hope our Vermont Senators will vote against it, but I doubt they will.

"On August 6th, the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis released a report detailing the economic costs of the Waxman-Markey. Since energy is the lifeblood of the American economy, 85 percent of which comes from CO2-emitting fossil fuels, the Waxman-Markey bill’s arbitrary and severe restrictions on the current energy supply and infrastructure will not only have direct impact on consumers’ budgets through higher electric bills and gasoline prices, but also cause unnecessary inefficiencies at virtually every stage of production. CDA estimates that Waxman-Markey legislation would cost the average family-of-four almost $3,000 per year, cause 2.5 million net job losses by 2035, and a produce a cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) loss of $9.4 trillion between 2012 and 2035."

And this:

"Waxman also asked if our model quantified any benefits of avoided climate change. Answer: It didn’t. Because according to estimates based on IPCC data, the Waxman-Markey bill would only impact global temperatures by .044 degrees C (about .09 degrees F) by 2050. There simply are no economic benefits from such a minuscule impact."

Perhaps some group will summarize a side-by-side analysis of the various studies on Waxman-Markey so we can see the range of impacts from various groups who have studied this.