Regulation of Fuel Costs Will Only Make Things Worse

 


**U.S. Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Prices,03/29/10                                                                                     – U.S. Energy Information Administration


Recent government proposals to regulate and put an annually tightening cap on carbon emissions will add significantly to future fuel costs for consumers. Moreover, regulating emissions would be impractical for two primary reasons: the fact that unilateral climate change legislation on behalf of the United States would have a negligible environmental effect without global cooperation on the matter. In addition, already rising energy prices would rise even higher, which would strangle domestic economic growth and productivity, and therefore put us at a competitive disadvantage internationally.


The above graph indicates that there has been a steady rise in fuel prices over the past couple of years; and this has naturally occurred without government interference. Proposed government schemes such as cap and trade legislation, or the EPA’s greenhouse gas emission regulation power grab would unnecessarily increase energy costs for producers and consumers. Industrial, commercial, and residential energy costs would rise, as well as transportation costs. As President Obama mentioned during the 2008 presidential primaries, “Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket.”


Democratic lawmakers have even acknowledged that cap and trade legislation, or EPA regulation would gradually increase carbon based energy costs for the years ahead. Democratic Senators such as Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson are among those lawmakers that realize the costly and consequently detrimental burden that greenhouse gas emission regulations would impose. In order to prevent these measures from materializing, we must push for the passage of the Murkowski Resolution, which would keep the EPA from jumping ahead of Congress with backdoor regulations on greenhouse gases.