Big differences seen compared to EIA estimate.
Documents (link to PDF) obtained from the U.S. Treasury under the Freedom of Information Act by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute were released on Tuesday.
The U.S. Treasury Department admits that a “cap and trade” system for regulating greenhouse gas emissions could cost every household $1,761 a year. According to the CBS News story, “the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent”.
This comes in way over claims that the EIA says:
The Climate Bill Will Cost You Just 23¢ a Day, EIA Analysis Shows. This works out to $83.95 per year. Big difference.
CEI Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy Myron Ebell on the accumulating evidence on the costs of cap and trade:
“The bill’s proponents talk about protecting consumers while intermittently acknowledging that cap-and-trade can only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by dramatically raising the price of energy derived from coal, oil and natural gas.
President Obama said during the campaign last year that ‘under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.’ Dr. Peter Orszag, now head of the White House Office and Management and Budget, testified last year when he was head of the Congressional Budget Office that ‘price increases would be essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program.’”
Even radical warmist James Hansen believes this bill is a Turkey. Wrote and phoned my NH rep Carol Shea-Porter and Senator Jean Shaheen about this bill in August to no avail, total DNC puppets.
Since, from what I could tell, the $1761 per family only accounts for increased taxes and direct energy costs, the real cost will undoubtedly be very much higher. As we experienced last summer and also back in the 70s when energy costs are raised dramatically there is an inflationary ripple effect throughout the economy and the price of virtually everything goes up as well. If history is any kind of indicator, you can probably at least double the figure they’re admitting to, and there is a good chance even that number will be lower than the real value.
“ We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
I ask you: How does Cap and Trade align with the above?
It’s all about ‘carbon taxes’ it never was about anything else. Does anybody think that any of the bills do anything to actually reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, even if it needs reducing?
What if atmospheric trace gas CO2, the stuff of life on earth, is at levels which are now too low. Has anybody thought of that?
Harry Reid is getting cold feet, due to the fact that it looks like he’s going to lose his Senate race in 14 months.
Here’s a surprise for those overseas who may not watch the US political system too closely – I’m betting that the Senate never bothers to even put together a bill that they can vote on. Too contentious, too dangerous for too many Senator’s re-election chances.
And the best part is that if US efforts fall apart, (they will) then everyone else in the world who’s facing hard choices will take that as a cue and their efforts will fall apart too.
Copenhagen could easily turn out to be a sad joke – tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
The stated objective of Cap & Trade is to reduce CO2 emissions by replacing power stations fueled by coal, oil, or natural gas with “renewable energy” (nominally windmills or solar panels of one kind or another.) To emphasize this, during the past year Obama has said he would bankrupt coal companies, and J. Hansen told Congress the CEO’s of coal and oil companies should by indicted for crimes against humanity. Pretty strong language when half our electricity is from coal-fired power plants! So why aren’t answers to the following obvious questions being asked by the public:
Where will the needed power come from at night or when the wind stops, since there are no batteries yet available of the tremendous size needed to fill in during the outage hours?
What happens when an array of solar cells in the southwest dessert is struck by lightning in the summer or covered by snow in the winter?
How far is it practical to send AC power over transmission lines before “IR losses” become prohibitive? (Is it practical to send it from the southwest to the northeast?) What about the environmental impact to prairie dogs, jackrabbits, coyotes, and other denizens of the dessert when many square miles of land are covered with solar panels, DC to AC converters, and high voltage equipment; and to birds and bats when thousands of windmills are placed on mountains? And of course, the bottom line question: even if you are an AGW type, what good would it do to burden the US with such costs when India and China have already indicated they won’t? I smell money and extreme corruption behind all of this. Just as town meetings and tea parties have come on the scene in response to unanswered questions on health care, I expect similar revulsion of the public when the details are known about the impact of the Waxman-Markey bill.
Well look on the bright side. If people see their taxes or fuel costs going up then maybe they won’t vote for politicians who support cap and trade. In fact if they see their taxes go up $1761 per year maybe they’ll run their politicians out of town on a rail.
You are in troubles…seems you sought for them.
Snake oil salesman: Here’s your snake oil. That’ll be $1,761 please.
Average Joe: But I didn’t order any snake oil.
Salesman: Doesn’t matter. Your guvment, in its infinite wisdom ordered it, and now you have to pay for it, but don’t worry: we can do it on the installment plan. How does $4.82 a day sound?
Average Joe: Since I don’t want it, it sounds like highway robbery. Heads are gonna roll.
Salesman: Yes yes, but by then it’ll be too late. Hahaha. Pay up.
My personal feeling is that this number is still much too low. Remember Obama wants to use the revenue from cap ‘n’ trade to subsidize energy costs for the poor, invest in green technologies and fund his Health Care reform. $1761 is not near enough.
And, cap and trade is such a complicated beast that the government can tweak things to adjust revenue and the average Joe will not recognize it as a tax adjustment. Obama promised a transparent administration. This is about the least transparent means imaginable of funding government programs.
Waxman-Markey sets a cap at 2005 emissions levels and posits a reduction of ~2% per year from that cap through 2050.
The elephant in the room is not the direct taxes or fees, but rather the investment which would be required to actually reduce US carbon emissions by ~2% per year. I have estimated that investment at ~$700 billiion per year through the period. Assuming that the investors who provide the capital would expect a return of ~10% on that investment, the ROI alone would be ~$70 billion in year one and would grow by ~$70 billion each year, adjusted for depreciation of the relatively long lived assets. That suggests that energy costs, direct and indirect, would increase by ~$600 per household per year over the period. That piece of the puzzle gets us to $1761 per household within ~3 years, with no end in sight.
The above assumes that the requisite technology is actually commercially available at approximately the projected costs. That is a huge assumption.
U.S. Treasury: The Costs of Cap and Trade, $1761 per year per household.
And of course, $1,761/year is only for starters; it’s the base line from which C&T taxes will inexorably ratchet up year after year. All it takes is a simple majority vote.
So to paraphrase Joe Wilson: They lie!
‘price increases would be essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program’
This would be crazy in a time of recession.
Tomlama,
I donno. Sounds to me like it needs more cowbell…
Mike
Nogw (11:51:48) : Drink your “soma” and do not worry.
And don’t forget your hypnopedia! You can find it on ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, planet green, PBS, RealClimate, and in An Inconvenient Truth. 😉
simply an attempt to Cap our liberty and Trade our freedom
Can’t we all just get along? 😉
Europe has clashed with the US Obama administration over climate change… key differences have emerged between the US and Europe…The treaty will be negotiated in December at a UN meeting in Copenhagen and is widely billed as the last chance to save the planet…News of the split comes amid mounting concern that the Copenhagen talks will not make the necessary progress…Ban Ki-moon….said the leaders held in their hands “the future of this entire humanity”. …..yawn ;-)…..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/15/europe-us-copenhagen
wws (13:43:04) : Harry Reid is getting cold feet, due to the fact that it looks like he’s going to lose his Senate race in 14 months….I’m betting that the Senate never bothers to even put together a bill that they can vote on. Too contentious, too dangerous for too many Senator’s re-election chances
It could be too late for Harry Reid anyway. A recent poll showed that 46% of people think that you could put your finger randomly in a phone book and come up with 535 people that could do a better job than the ones in the House and Senate now.
It’s all about the redistribution of poverty because redistribution of wealth never succeeded. 🙂
Everybody will be green/yellow of hunger/cold. Got it take pictures of that event!
Nogw (13:56:18) : I don’t think that many of sought these troubles . Unfortunately , most of the people in the US have the victims of misinformation . If they “sought” troubles , it was through apathy and/or the idea that it wouldn’t really happen .
Michael J. Bentley (14:23:13) : Sounds to me like it needs more cowbell
QOTW! 😉
In Australia at the last election the then opposition leader, Kevin Rudd, was quoted on the media saying that cost to the public for his proposed ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) would ‘only be a dollar a day’. Subsequent costs from analysts have been suggesting closer to $3,000 per annum and of course now Prime Minister Rudd will not commit to any figures. Hopefully our legislation will fail again. An expensive solution to a problem that can’t be properly defined.
Tom_R (12:31:44) : wrote:
[So the Treasury Dept. hid this knowledge until forced to release it under the Freedom of Information Act? I guess they expected it to be buried long enough to rush the bill though congress. Scum!]
I have read through the pdf report FOIA. There is no smoking gun in there. It only mentions about a 200 billion cost.
The interesting part is what is not being talked about in the benefits of the climate bill.
The NYU study finds that finds that the benefits outweigh the costs by 9:1 .
Based on a middle-of-the road estimate, potential benefits add up to about $1.5 trillion over the next 40 years.
Conservative attacks on the high costs of a clean energy bill are off-base. Analyses of Waxman-Markey consistently show modest costs.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that on average, consumers will face the cost of about the same as a postage stamp per day.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimates even lower average costs between $98 and $140 from 2010 through 2050.
The Energy Information Administration predicts families could spend up to $114 annually by 2020, or less than $10 per month per household.
Low-income consumers would receive $40 per year in 2020.
This $1761 doesn’t include the cost of loss of jobs from the hit to the GDP because of monies redirected out of the GDP to those “necessarily skyrocket”-ing energy costs.
If ‘pro’ and ‘con’ are opposites are ‘progress’ and ‘Congress’ opposites ?