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It’s often been said that “enviromentalism” isn’t about the enviroment, but more about Socialism.

I would be more likely to believe their concern for the environment is
genuine if they would stop proposing socialism as the solution to
“climate change.”

“Have you stopped beating your wife? Answer only yes or no.”

—–

“And you either accept the realities of the science or you don’t.”

—–

Both make an invalid presupposition. In the first case, of course, the faulty presupposition is obvious. The danger in the second case is that it’s not obvious to many people that the question is without merit. The reality is that there is no reality – at least not yet. The science is too complex, and there is still not enough of a concensus among credible researchers that man’s contributions to destructive climate change are greater than the degree to which nature is able to compensate.

What is truly amazing is that the science behind cap-and-trade is at least as unclear as the climate change science, and the criticism of cap-an-trade as a viable, effective countermeasure is at least as great. Many, many environmental scientists are very skeptical about the system, but their voices are being drowned out by activists and by those who stand to profit monetarily (and immensely so). Cap-and-trade is extremely vulnerable to corruption, especially where carbon sequestering activities occur at opposite ends of the earth as the
carbon “releasing” activities. The costs to implement rugged, verifiable systems on a global scale will be very difficult to contain, and the need to fight ever-more complex corruption schemes will result in ever-increasing costs. No doubt the US and other highly industrialized nations will be expected to bear most of the burden, even as large developing countries (e.g. China) will likely be tempted to skimp on their responsibilities in this arena in order to retain as much capital as possible to fund their industrialization progress.

Ultimately, cap-and-trade will become little more than a tax revenue stream for the US government, since the taxes will touch every sector of the economy dependent on energy (which doesn’t leave out a whole lot). The taxes will be regressive, and will hit the 95% of working Americans even harder than the richest 1% to 2%.

It’s extremely difficult for me to see how this isn’t going to raise my taxes by even a dime.

President Obama, are you listening?

Jeff V