Posted by
Average Voter on Wednesday, June 04, 2008 12:13:38 AM
Op-Ed columnist Robert J. Samuelson had a great article yesterday in the Washington Post, calling out the Warner-Lieberman Bill that will create a new way to collect taxes without calling it that.
The chief political virtue of cap-and-trade -- a complex scheme to reduce greenhouse gases -- is its complexity. This allows its environmental supporters to shape public perceptions in essentially deceptive ways. Cap-and-trade would act as a tax, but it's not described as a tax. It would regulate economic activity, but it's promoted as a "free market" mechanism. Finally, it would trigger a tidal wave of influence-peddling, as lobbyists scrambled to exploit the system for different industries and localities. This would undermine whatever abstract advantages the system has.
Regulation, taxation, and opening the possibility of corruption. That is all this bill is. The Kyoto treaty was basically a failure and this will be as well. And we the consumer will end up footing a bill that will gain us little if any real decline in CO2 reduction. Of course the idea that CO2 is causing global warming or humans are causing it or whatever, is still up for debate in the real world.