Heres an op-ed by James Hansen which explains exactly why cap and trade will not work for the people, but will for the corporatist ruling class elite. from the NYT- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/opinion/07hansen.html?_r=2 another article by Hansen about cap-and-trade and why it benefits corporate America and not the people- http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2009/20091207_SackGoldmanSachs.pdf I agree with Hansen, cap-and-trade has been designed by Wall St, for Wall St....with the help from Washington. What we need is fee-and-dividend, not cap-and-trade. Thoughts?
I think cap and trade could be the nail in the coffin of our country. I'm majoring in economics, and everyday I learn another reason why cap and trade will smother growth; new ideas like this line the pockets of all the fat cats on the hill, and Wall St. By introducing cap and trade, congress is in effect creating another stock market, except this stock market trades only energy. The only good which comes from this stock market however, is the increase in the price of EVERYTHING. If that isn't bad enough, what's worse is, China, India, etc... won't be paying the super high input costs we will, so the people, in an effort "to find it cheaper" will buy goods from China, India etc etc. further stifiling development, and killing jobs, progress, and our country. Not to mention the fact that global warming is complete bullshit anyways.
I have to respectfully disagree with you on your conclusion. Why do you believe global warming is bullshit? Im assuming that if you believe global warming is not occuring, then you certainly dont believe humans have anything to do with the increase in global warming.
oh for fucks sake, shut up about global warming. Lets stay on topic before this turns into a Sir Elliot, maxrule, and Shade vs. Dickie 420 clusterfuck. jesus.
That was a little over the top, let me restate my opinion a little more throughly. I do think that there is increases levels of Co2 in the atmosphere, and I do believe this, to a small degree, causes the greenhouse effect. Thereby warming our planet. What I don't agree with, is the degree to which our planet is being warmed, nor with the laughable spike Al Gore prognosticates in his Inconvenient Truth movie. (By the way, that graph Gore is famous for was laughed out of the Science community and the climatologist who created it shamed, just months after Gore's movie because it was achieved by grossly manipulating data. ) Here is what I know, we have only .00000085% of the earths weather records, and if there is one constant in the records we have, it is that the weather is always changing. From the mini ice age 400 years ago, to the mid evil warm period 1,500 years ago. Additionally, the climate models touted by the left cannot account for either of these events accurately, nor can it account for, or predict, the El Nino event which strikes the U.S. like clockwork. When the weather people can either tell me, with precision, what the weather will be like 1 month from today, or if they can tell me what the weather was like 1000 years ago to the day, I will be skeptical of all of it because they don't have enough info. It's akin to us sacrificing goats because we don't want to anger the volcano god. We just don't know what we don't know, and there is no sense in taking action when we don't fully understand the situation.
If you want to argue about global warming: http://forum.grasscity.com/science-nature/523247-global-warming-bullshit.html
Well if you were wondering "cui bono?" on the fishy anthropogenic global warming scam, you found it. The cap and traders!
Ah, no. Im not arguing about global warming, im talking about cap and trade. So you can gtfo if you dont want to hear about it. Id rather see a fee that actaully benefits the public and not a handful of wealthy corporate elite sons a bitches who dont give a tinkers damn about you or me or the public.
Cap and Trade is all about putting the brakes on our economy and slowing down America's growth for the purposes of letting the rest of the world catch up. This has everything to do with globalism in my opinion. Just think out it. Over the past few decades Washington has come up with every reason under the sun to move wealth out of the US to someplace else around the world. This is all about driving the up the cost of everything we consume for no other reason than to steal our money. Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. - Obama Hot Air » Blog Archive » Obama: I’ll make energy prices “skyrocket” Are ya better off now than you were four years ago?
Cap-and-trade is a hidden tax. Fee-and-dividend is a non-tax. Yes, the fee collected at the first sales of gas, oil, coal of fossil fuels in the country would increase the price of fossil fuel energy. But 100% of the fee would then be distributed every month to public via electronic deposits to the persons bank account or debit card, all which should only apply to legal citizens. People who use less energy than average will make money. The economic theory of a cap and a fee is pretty much the same, im not arguing that, but cap-and-trade and all its complex parts makes it very easy for special intrests to take over the writing of the legislation. A fee is not complex at all, and is also much more transparent and fair.
So it's redistribution of wealth? It doesn't exactly sound simple either. Consider all of the bureaucracy and administration such a fee would need to be applied as you're talking about. I still don't understand how a fee on industry is supposed to benefit the consumer at large. You said those who don't use much energy will make a money by doing so, but this is already possible in our current system without a new fee, cap or tax and it doesn't involve the immoral practice of coercive redistribution. If people want to save money on their energy bill, or gas... they shop around for better prices or alternatively change their living/driving habits. As for those who do use much energy, they end up paying more than they do now, no? Business and industry also presumably end up paying more, which will then trickle down to the consumer driving up production costs and sales prices on goods and services, regardless of who conserves and who uses. So again, how does this help the consumer?
The dividends would help families as well as providing an economic stimulus. Of course people can look around and shop for what they deem the most efficent way of living, under a fee-and-dividen they would get money back for doing so. Theres nothing immoral about it. If your using more energy you should pay more. If your trying to be efficient by using less energy, there should be some sort of incentive to do so on a large scale. We all know as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest form of energy, their use will continue and even increase. Cap-and-trade is a much, much more complex plan, and its already failed in Europe. Countries will not agree, some will be bribed into it. It wont be successful in the U.S. Fee-and-dividend is a single number, the fee rate that the fossil fuels companies must give at the first sale of the fossil fuel. All the government does is divide the revenue by the number of legal citizens and then push a button to send it out to the public. Its that simple really. No layers and layers of bureaucracy. Just smart policy if done correctly. Also, China would be more willing to place a carbon fee on their fossil fuels. China would never accept cap-and-trade on the otherhand.
If you use more energy now, you pay more. The incentive to use less energy now is to reduce expenses. So... again, how does imposing a new fee on industry production help the consumer. And simply reasserting that it helps the consumer is not an explanation. Redistribution of wealth is fundamentally immoral. If you don't already know this then I don't know what to tell you.