• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

Cap & Trade Will Hurt Everyone

Mike

Well-known member
The coming cap-and-trade tax
hotair.com | March 2, 2009 | Ed Morrissey


Barack Obama insists that his new tax increases will not affect 95% of Americans, who will not pay even a dime more. He may be right about that, at least directly, but Obama has another plan that will hit every single American with a massive cost burden. The George C. Marshall Institute analyzes the potential impact of the cap-and-trade energy system that Obama espouses and finds a big price tag that only gets bigger as we go along.

First, it will depress growth, which almost everyone predicts (page 3):

Estimated GDP losses vary widely, from a 0.3%-0.5% to 3% drop in GDP below the business-as-usual projections in 2015 and a 1% to 10% drop in 2050. The timeframes of new technology development and growth in existing clean sources of energy, availability of offsets (domestic, international), and banking of allowances are likely to account for most of these differences in GDP costs estimates.

Loss of GDP means a retracting economy, less opportunity, fewer jobs, and a decline in living standards. The Marshall Institute offers the question of whether the US wants that as a tradeoff for the questionable effects of limiting carbon-dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, the present administration and its backers won’t acknowledge that as the choice before us, preferring to paint rosy pictures of increased living standards and prosperity while the government chokes off energy production, a contradiction they claim to solve with an explosion of “green energy” from sources that don’t exist at the moment.

How do we know that? Even Europe, which led the “green” movement, has discovered that stopping conventional energy production doesn’t magically produce realistic, mass-production alternatives.

But the bad news gets worse.
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
The great thing about Wind Turbines, is that they take so much land out of production, that carbon based energy, won't be burned to grow crops in those areas.

It's a win/win. If the wind is in the right area though (I think they do about a year of wind current testing), the wind farms are in marginal areas, so you can still run cattle.

Just for example, a moderate size city of a million homes would require 1000 square miles of wind farms. Like in Walla Walla, there is one of the largest wind farms in the world. It had 454 turbines in 2004, spread over 70 square miles, enough to run 68100 American homes, or 136200 European homes (they use half the electricity)

It will be the new "cash-crop"
 

badaxemoo

Well-known member
hypocritexposer said:
The great thing about Wind Turbines, is that they take so much land out of production, that carbon based energy, won't be burned to grow crops in those areas.

They farm right around them here.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
badaxemoo said:
hypocritexposer said:
The great thing about Wind Turbines, is that they take so much land out of production, that carbon based energy, won't be burned to grow crops in those areas.

They farm right around them here.
Or the cows graze right under them....
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
It's a win/win. If the wind is in the right area though (I think they do about a year of wind current testing), the wind farms are in marginal areas, so you can still run cattle.

If on arable land they take the base+ out of production. Last I heard they have to satisfy the NIMBY's also.
 
Top