Putting an economy-wide cap on America’s greenhouse gas emissions continues to be projected as a costly initiative. A policy brief recently released by Harvard's Energy Technology Innovation and Research Group concluded that reducing oil imports and greenhouse gas emission levels in the U.S. would be, “Harder than it looks.” More specifically, the study bluntly stated:

Reducing oil consumption and carbon emissions from transportation is a much greater challenge than conventional wisdom assumes. It will require substantially higher fuel prices, ideally in combination with more stringent regulation.

Regarding prices at the pump, the new study concluded that a legitimate decrease in transportation emissions by 2020, 

…may require gas prices greater than $7/gallon by 2020.

These significant increases in gas prices and regulation would need to be accompanied by tax credits in order to subsidize electric or hybrid vehicles. However, in order for these subsidies to exist, increases in government revenues would be required. Translated, this would mean more tax hikes for American consumers. Regarding this subsidy schema, the study notes:

…it is extremely expensive and an ineffective way to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the near term.

Creating yet another tax (an energy tax), and increasing regulations to ensure a decrease in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, is a fusion of what the majority of Democrats in Congress want, and what the EPA is pursuing. While Congress is in the midst of crafting a cap and tax related bill, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is seeking to exercise a backdoor power grab that would place an annual threshold on the amount of greenhouse gases that businesses and vehicles can emit. Both initiatives would financially burden American taxpayers. Given the state of our recession stricken economy, does it really make sense to further increase spending levels, and further increase taxes, especially when the impact on global temperatures is negligible at best?

The proposed Murkowski Resolution, if passed, would foil the EPA’s aggressive regulatory agenda. This resolution, or one of the other proposals is a critical step to shutting down the EPA’s backdoor power grab.

The battle over climate change legislation heats up, as members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee recently held a press conference on the “introduction of the Resolution of Disapproval on the EPA’s carbon dioxide endangerment finding.” The resolution, which is similar to the Murkowski resolution in the Senate, currently has 79 co-sponsors.  As in the Senate, the resolution of disapproval was brought under the Congressional Review Act and aims to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from issuing regulations to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act; a backdoor power grab that would economically burden businesses and households.

The resolution would prevent the EPA from jumping ahead of Congress to impose costly new regulations on the American economy. Many who oppose the EPA’s intrusive plans contend that such regulations would essentially act as a national energy tax. 

U.S. Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), chairman of the House Republican American Energy Solutions Group, was in attendance at Tuesday’s press conference. Regarding the EPA’s proposed initiatives, Pence commented:

Families across America and across the state of Indiana are struggling to pay their bills and the last thing they need is higher energy costs, yet that is precisely what the EPA's endangerment finding would cause. This finding is nothing more than a backdoor national energy tax that will cap growth and trade jobs.

Republican House Minority Leader, John Boehner (R-Ohio), commented:

The American people are asking, ‘Where are the jobs?’  They know the last thing we need in a struggling economy is new regulations that amount to a back-door national energy tax.  This tax will hit every middle-class American family and small business owner when they drive a car, flip on a light-switch, or buy any product made the United States.

U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), commented:

The endangerment finding that EPA put out last year is fatally flawed.

Rep. Barton then proceeded to state:

We want to send a very clear signal that what the EPA has done is wrong and it should be overturned by the elected members of the House and the Senate.

In today’s Politico, U.S. Rep., Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), commented:

The EPA has not only moved away from its mission of being the Environmental Protection Agency, now they are the Economic Punishment Agency.

There are many concerns with the EPA’s attempt to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from our country’s emissions of fossil fuels, which propel the economy’s growth and account for 85 percent of the nation’s energy. The overarching purpose of  the press conference, hosted by the House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans, was to emphasize the economic burden of decreasing emission levels, and increasing energy costs for businesses and consumers. Limiting emission levels rations and therefore limits production, which would only guarantee a further relapse of the U.S. economy.

Republican House Minority Leader, John Boehner (R-Ohio) jointly introduced a new resolution, similar to the Murkowski Resolution, which would prevent a a power grab by the EPA. This resolution concisely points to the lack of validity in the EPA’s endangerment finding and therefore states that the EPA should not jump ahead of Congress with immense plans to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

Sen. Murkowski isn't the only one with a resolution to stop the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases under its endangerment finding.  Like the 41 Senators now backing the Murkowski resolution, a similar bipartisan efforts is now underway in the House:

Two top House Democrats have introduced a measure aimed at blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating pollution-causing greenhouse gases.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson of Minnesota and Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri want to veto the EPA's finding in December that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.

Their resolution, co-sponsored by Missouri Republican Jo Ann Emerson, mirrors one drafted by Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski and backed by 41 senators from both parties.

Call and email your legislators today and ask them to support these efforts.

For those of you who aren’t particularly familiar with what ensued at the recent December 18, 2009 Copenhagen climate change conference, it was unequivocally unsuccessful. The initial goal of the conference was to discuss and hopefully prescribe a pragmatic solution to the globally increasing levels of man-made greenhouse gas emissions; particularly for China and the United States as the number one and two emitters of fossil fuels worldwide. However, without being able to collectively agree on a legally enforced emissions reduction blueprint, Copenhagen’s accomplishments were limited to two things: China reiterating their unwillingness to join the U.S. in accepting legally binding carbon targets, and an acknowledgement that the European Union’s carbon trading market is nothing but inefficient. Reason magazine views this lack of success at Copenhagen as a positive, as science correspondent and climate science watcher Ronald Bailey comments:

The good news for the rest of us is that the Copenhagen collapse provides the world with an opportunity to step back, reassess the political and scientific solutions, and find a better way than the deeply flawed Kyoto Protocol process to address problems associated with a warming planet.

Does this “Copenhagen collapse” mean that the U.S. will find a better way to address “problems associated with a warming planet?” Regarding U.S. energy policy going forward, it would certainly be in the best interest of the United States not to implement a cap and trade based system; the very system that has led to many economically negative, unintended consequences in Europe. Under the Kyoto Protocol, Europe created a carbon market, which Ronald Bailey notes, “…has been riddled with problems.” A cap and trade system in the United States would be similar to the carbon trading market in Europe. Given the economic inefficiencies and failures of the European model, why would President Obama and Democrats in Congress pursue this particular environmental initiative? After all, regarding carbon trading, President Obama noted at the Copenhagen conference:

Kyoto was legally binding and everybody still fell short anyway.

Rather than adopt a costly and unworkable cap and trade program, you would think that President Obama would safeguard the U.S. from the fundamental economic inefficiencies of a carbon trading market. Regarding the carbon rationing approach, Ronald Bailey writes:

Perhaps carbon rationing and higher energy prices will help us avoid a climate disaster. But these measures will increase rather than decrease unemployment. The carbon rationing proposals in Congress are not really jobs bills, a fact that will make them harder to pass.

Regarding what Americans can expect to see if cap and trade were to become law, the Heritage Foundation found the following:

• GDP will drop by an aggregate $9.9 trillion between 2012 and 2035. On a family-of-four basis, this translates to an income loss of over $108,000--a loss of over $4,500 per year.
• In 2014, employment will drop 365,000 jobs below the expected level and will not recover for the period analyzed. For the entire period analyzed, employment will average 1.4 million jobs below the no-legislation level. In some years, the employment deficit will exceed 2.5 million jobs.
• Household net worth will take continual hits. For the average year, it will be $2.1 trillion below baseline. On a family-of-four basis, the cumulative loss in net worth will exceed $40,000 by 2030.
• Gasoline prices will rise by 45 percent.
• Residential electricity prices will rise by 72 percent.
• Relative to the baseline, the higher prices will force families to cut gasoline consumption by more than 12 percent, natural gas consumption by 23 percent, and electricity consumption by 29 percent. But these cuts will not be enough to offset the higher prices completely, and a family of four will see its total energy spending rise by more than $1,000 per year by 2035--a total increase in energy expenditure of more than $16,000 between 2012 and 2035.

On top of the poorly functioning cap and trade in Europe, these economic projections should be a clear sign to cap and trade advocates that the massive new government program would impose significant costs for little or no benefit, particularly if China and other developing nations decline to participate in a greenhouse gas reduction program. Ronald Bailey expresses optimism when he describes the Copenhagen Conference as:

…one that could end up sparing the world from a costly and flawed scheme of global carbon rationing.

Creating a restricted, government enforced carbon market is a strategy that member countries at Copenhagen acknowledged as flawed and unsuccessful. Why then would we, the U.S., choose to implement costly cap and trade legislation that has proven to be inevitably flawed and unsuccessful? Hopefully a solution such as the Murkowski Resolution can stop the EPA from imposing  burdensome new regulations before Congress even has a chance to address the issue through legislation.  In recent months new concerns have been raised in Congress with respect to both the costs to consumers and the economy as well as the underlying science supporting the EPA’s desire to regulate. The resolution introduced by Sen. Murkowski would keep the EPA from making a power grab before Congress can fully vet the issue.

Apparently a mere $10 billion in FY11 isn't enough for EPA Adminstrator Lisa Jackson to finish her diabolical economy crushing plan.  So she trekked up to the Hill this week looking for more taxdollars to pay for greenhouse gas regs.

"I would expect that the needs would continue to grow as we move into a world -- either through legislation, hopefully through legislation, but possibly also with regulation -- of increasing activity on climate change," Jackson told the House Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee.

It's hard to come up with a perfectly apt metaphor here - because it's so awful on many levels.  Jackson wants more money, our tax money, to pay for plans that will take away our money.  That will move jobs overseas.  Raise the cost of energy, life, the universe, and everything.  Cripple industry.  And try to send us all back to horse-and-buggy era emission levels where you'll die of dysentery.  Good times.

If we all have less money and the economy's under the weather, where is this money going to come from?  How to actually pay for these things always seems a bit iffy. And it's hard to see how going greener will save us money, when we're spending what we don't have now. 

All the more reason to support the Murkowski resolution and keep the EPA at bay.

An urgent call to action from Brendan Steinhauser:

Get more information about Cap and Trade and the Murkowski Resolution in this week's FreedomWorks podcast. Listen here!

Recently, a number of corporations, associations, states, and congressmen filed suit against the EPA, as they all shared grave doubts about the legitimacy of the science backing the EPA’s 2007 “endangerment finding.” This controversial finding has also led to a congressional investigation by the Minority Staff of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which recently issued a report scrutinizing “key documents and emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit”  which was instrumental in developing the UN’s report on climate change. Ultimately, the Minority Staff report concludes that scientists from the CRU have committed a certain degree of scientific impropriety. According to the report,

The scientists involved in the CRU controversy violated fundamental ethical principles governing taxpayer-funded research and, in some cases, may have violated federal laws.

The emails and documents that have been discovered cover a span of 13 years; from 1996 to November 2009. According to the report, the emails that were discovered show the following:

• Obstructing release of damaging data and information;
• Manipulating data and knowingly using flawed climate models to reach preconceived conclusions;
• Colluding to pressure journal editors who published work questioning the climate science “consensus”; and
• Assuming activists roles to influence the political process

This scientific corruption on behalf on the CRU is an important and relevant issue because, according to the report, the CRU’s scientific findings are linked to the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; the international body whose scientific work “serves as the key basis for climate policy decisions made by governments throughout the world, including here in the United States.” Regarding the scientific collaboration of the CRU and the IPCC, the report indicates;

…scientists at the center of the scandal were participants in drafting IPCC assessment reports. Nearly all of the scientists worked at the highest levels of the IPCC, shaping and influencing the content of the assessment reports that form the international global warming “consensus.

The fact that the CRU and the IPCC have worked in conjunction with one another implies that the IPCC’s findings are at least in part, a product of the CRU’s scientifically tainted research. Therefore, U.S. cap and trade legislation, which the report indicates is scientifically justified on the basis of IPCC findings, should therefore be re-examined. If lawmakers, bureaucrats and climate change activists are going to continue advocating the need for a cap and trade system, then it is only fair that their argument not include a scientific argument.  The new Minority Report and the evidence that it contains are clear indications of uncertainty and unanswered questions regarding climate change, and it would be imprudent to rush to pass a costly cap-and-trade bill.  It also demonstrates the importance of the Murkowski resolution, which would keep the Environmental Protection Agency from leapfrogging Congress to impose a massive new program to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

The New York Times reported yesterday that Arizona is pulling out of a cap and trade program called the Western Climate Initiative that includes seven western states and four Canadian provinces. 

Citing financial worries, the State of Arizona has backed out of a broad regional effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions in the West through a cap-and-trade system.

In an executive order issued last week, Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, said a cap-and-trade system — which would impose mandatory caps on emissions and allow pollution credits to be traded among companies — would cripple Arizona’s economy.

Arizona now joins California in having second-thoughts about cap and trade.  Could Utah be next?  Heritage has the story here.

Utah's House Legislature joined Alaska Sen. Murkowski in urging the EPA to hold it's plans to regulate greenhouse gases under last year's endangerment finding. 

Specifically, the resolution “urges the United States Environmental Protection Agency to halt its carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs and with its “Endangerment Finding” and related regulations until a full and independent investigation of the climate data conspiracy and global warming science can be substantiated.

Most state representatives are not only questioning the scientific consensus but also the economic implications of cap and trade or similar carbon dioxide regulations. “I’m afraid of what could happen to our economy, to our rural life, to our agriculture, if such a detrimental policy continues to be pursued for political reasons,” said Rep. Kerry Gibson.

In a story that could never, ever happen here because our cap and trade would be better and no one would ever try to rip off the government, I'm sure, hackers have stolen millions in carbon credits from the German Emissions Trading Authoriy and resold them.  

Credit card numbers are so passe. Today’s hackers know the real powerhouse data to steal is emission certificates.

...

Under environmental cap-and-trade laws, there’s a limit to the greenhouse gases companies can emit. Companies that exceed this limit can purchase so-called carbon credits from entities that produce fewer greenhouse emissions than the limit provides them.

The scheme has produced a robust market for the trade of credits. More than 8 million tons of CO2 emissions worth $130 billion were traded in Europe last year.

According to the BBC, it’s estimated the hackers stole 250,000 carbon credit permits from six companies worth more than $4 million. At least seven out of 2,000 German firms that were targeted in the phishing scam fell for it. One of these unidentified firms reportedly lost $2.1 million in credits in the fraud.

The credits were resold for an undisclosed sum.

This is a not entirely shocking turn of events.  In fact, we totally called it in our Top 10 Reasons to Oppose Cap and Trade.  Up there with killing jobs, global competitiveness disadvantages and a few other reasons this is a bad idea is No. 9: "It opens the door to massive fraud and corruption."