Posted on 02/27/2009 5:48:28 AM PST by sickoflibs
WASHINGTON - Potentially one of the most far-reaching elements in President Barack Obama's budget blueprint is its call to combat global warming with a "cap-and-trade" system for reducing carbon emissions from power plants and other industrial facilities. Overall, it would cut total emissions 14 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent below 2005 by 2050.
The plan calls for setting emissions limits on facilities and tightening those limits each year to achieve the overall goals. Then the government would create permits for specific quantities of emissions - and companies would have to buy enough permits to cover their expected emission levels.
Initially, Obama would require emitters to buy permits at a government auction, unlike Europe's cap-and-trade system, which gave a large chunk of its initial permits out for free.
The cost of the permits - which companies could then buy, sell and trade on an open market - would provide an incentive for companies to reduce carbon emissions, especially since emissions limits would tighten each year, boosting permit costs.
The budget estimates those refunds at more than $60 billion a year, which would be 80 percent of the auction revenues.
The proposal is unusually detailed, suggesting that Obama will be reluctant to negotiate with Congress over the specifics of his global warming strategy.
Critics pointed out that, in the short run at least, permit requirements would probably raise costs for industry and prices for consumers. The top House Republican, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, said it would increase taxes "on all Americans who drive a car, who have a job, who turn on a light switch."
The administration argues that action cannot be delayed
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
If we aren’t in a Depression yet, Obama will get us there!
I’m telling you, Obama and the Democrats are LOOTING middle class America, of treasure and God-given rights!
Are you getting the idea yet that is precisely his plan?
Our electric bills are in for a gigantic rate increase in the next 3 months. Taxes are going up too. We live in a runaway train where the conductors are happily grinning their way into a trainwreck.
You see what Obama and media are doing? Keeping the debate on the upper income tax cuts expiring while sneaking through a huge tax increase on every american, middle class, poor, etc. Republican party needs to point out what Obama promised in Speech (see comment #1) and what he is really proposing.
They also need to make Obama own the falling stock market and 401Ks. Ask over and over why democrats dont care about our retirement and want us to eat cat food.
Cap and trade is a tax on everybody that uses energy.
No Kidding ,, my electric costs already went up 25% this year due (mostly) to the doubling of coal costs ... Team Obama can no longer pretend they are doing things for the common good ,, even their supporters are starting to see he is intentionally pushing us into dire straights to get his communism through congress...
this means “government” gets to ration energy by the number of “permits” it decides to sell. the fewer the permits, the more it will cost industry to buy them. nice deal for government.
essentially this nationalizes the energy production industry
and look for “energy production” and govt permits required to use it- to extend into activities america never anticipated.
like air travel, agriculture and even military operations
Call it a huge tax on middle class and a bold Obama lie on every TV show. make it their WMDs.
This while the economy contracted 6.8% last quarter. See my tag line...
The earth’s climate really is strongly affected by the greenhouse effect, although the physics is not the same as that which makes real, glassed-in greenhouses work. Without greenhouse warming, the earth would be much too cold to sustain its current abundance of life. However, at least 90% of greenhouse warming is due to water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide is a bit player. There is little argument in the scientific community that a direct effect of doubling the CO2 concentration will be a small increase of the earth’s temperature — on the order of one degree. Additional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can. It is like putting an additional ski hat on your head when you already have a nice warm one below it, but your are only wearing a windbreaker. To really get warmer, you need to add a warmer jacket. The IPCC thinks that this extra jacket is water vapor and clouds.Since most of the greenhouse effect for the earth is due to water vapor and clouds, added CO2 must substantially increase water’s contribution to lead to the frightening scenarios that are bandied about. The buzz word here is that there is “positive feedback.” With each passing year, experimental observations further undermine the claim of a large positive feedback from water. In fact, observations suggest that the feedback is close to zero and may even be negative. That is, water vapor and clouds may actually diminish the already small global warming expected from CO2, not amplify it. The evidence here comes from satellite measurements of infrared radiation escaping from the earth into outer space, from measurements of sunlight reflected from clouds and from measurements of the temperature the earth’s surface or of the troposphere, the roughly 10 km thick layer of the atmosphere above the earth’s surface that is filled with churning air and clouds, heated from below at the earth’s surface, and cooled at the top by radiation into space.
Well, the last guy to lead the country during a huge depression was reelected three times. So that must be the key. If he causes a depression he can get reelected thrice!
Big deal. The less wealthy will get tax breaks or credits or some offset. The rest of us “energy users” will pick up the freight. Guaranteed.
All he has to do is convince Congress to repeal the 22nd Amendment. I’m sure they’ll get right on that, just as soon as they are done repealing the 2nd.
This is a radical leftwing enviro-facist scheme to redistribute income/wealth from producers in the west to slackards in the third world. It must be stopped.
If course, the so-called "tax cut" becomes a tax increase as soon as the Bush tax cuts expire next year.
No doubt about it. I am sick to my stomach knowing what is happening.The sad part is I don't believe a damn thing can be done about it. We are not organized and have little popular traction. The tax will come in the form of higher prices and inflation beyond anything imaginable. The Kenyan born dirt bag was heard overseas saying that Americans can not continue to live their current lifestyle while others don't. Thus the objective as an elitist collectivist is to reduce the lives of all to a miserable pathetic existence so THEY (yes there is a THEY) can feel superior and have total control over every aspect of the lives of all people. If you don't think they believe they are superior just listen to them, just take them at their word. The anger and rage I feel is frightening.
In Obama's world, it is all ok, because he reimburses the consumers for the added costs. What he forgets to tell the consumer is that every dollar has now been funneled through the federal bureaucracy and, inevitably, forty percent of every dollar stays in the bureaucracy. The more times that dollar passes through the system, the more they retain.
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