Cap and Trade Will Devastate the EconomyBy: Phil Brennan When the world was still flat contemporary maps of the great ocean to the west of Europe showed a distant point offshore and noted "Beyond here there be dragons." That warning well applies to a voyage Congress is about to launch — the infamous cap and trade bill — a peril-laden excursion into a fiscal and regulatory nightmare rife with the fearsome dragons of excess government control and crushing financial burdens on America's families. It is Ballyhooed as a measure designed to somehow "sequester" co2 — though they haven't quite yet figured out how. In order to prevent this life-giving gas, upon which the health of plant life depends, from allegedly contributing to an imaginary warming of a planet that is actually cooling, it would in fact impose economy-destroying costs and tyrannical regulatory restrictions on the backs of the American people. It would take us back to the horse and buggy days and have us shivering in the dark. Essentially, cap and trade legislation would set a limit, or cap, on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use, effectively imposing rationing of coal, oil, and natural gas on the American economy. Aside from the fact that beyond computer models manipulated to produce the results desired by the anthropologic global warming (AGW) alarmists, there is not a shred of scientific evidence that carbon dioxide does anything but keep plant life and agricultural produce healthy. Yet in pursuit of their determination to deal with a non-existent threat, the Obama administration, their allies in congress, and the heavy breathing acolytes of Al Gore are bound and determined to shove this disastrous cap and trade measure down our throats. The annual cost to every American family is estimated to be an additional $3,000. |