The year 1875 is the last time Americans' carbon emissions matched the goals set by the Waxman-Markey legislation. This legislation wants the US to reduce it's carbon emissions to that low level by the year 2050. We will need somewhere to hitch our horses and we can really save on electricity. This is the same level as Haiti currently has. Of course, Haiti is hardly a bastion of environmental paradise. It is a nation swimming in bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A and E, typhoid fever, dengue fever and malaria, with 47 percent illiteracy and a life expectancy of 49 years. No thanks, Al Gore, Barack Obama and Henry Waxman. There is also the matter of the cost. The CBC claims they can not even calculate the actual cost of Cap and Trade legislation. According to the Washington Times:
Their solution is embodied in the momentarily stuck Henry A. Waxman-Edward J. Markey global warming legislation, the goal of which is to banish one of the world's most ubiquitous elements from our lives. Its proponents call it "back to the future." They're not kidding, either.
Nobody understands exactly what the legislation means in dollars and cents - more on this later - but to experience how it would feel to lower your personal carbon footprint to the size this bill proposes, set the flux capacitor to 1875. That's the last time Americans' carbon emissions matched the goals set by the Waxman-Markey legislation.
What, the old DeLorean is up on cinder blocks in the front yard again? In that case you can test drive Waxman-Markey by sailing down to Haiti, because current CO2 emissions are where Waxman-Markey wants America's to be in 2050. Radical environmentalists think such a CO2 level will be heaven on Earth, but the place that has actually achieved it is a nation swimming in bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A and E, typhoid fever, dengue fever and malaria, with 47 percent illiteracy and a life expectancy of 49 years. So excuse me if I remain unconvinced.
Just why anyone beyond reliably liberal politicians and environmental activists would support cap-and-trade is getting harder to understand. It is true that some utility companies that used to be suspicious now embrace it, but probably only so long as they get their free emissions permits.
Others say the bill is only alive because the Obama administration needs the revenues produced by cap-and-trade to pay for its broad expansion of government. The revenue impact is between $646 billion and $2 trillion over the next 10 years, but the longer the legislation lies out in the sun, the less appetizing it becomes.
Now even Democrats are getting concerned that it will damage their districts. One Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee put it this way in a question to former Vice President Al Gore: "What do I tell a single parent, for example, in my district with two children, two young children, making $8 an hour? What can I say to reassure her that she will be able to afford the cost of this legislation?" The vice president didn't know, and neither does anybody else.
Republicans had hoped that the Congressional Budget Office would be able to put a price tag on the bill. But the CBO's analysts finally told us they could not estimate its cost without having access to the actual numbers on permit allocations. A Democratic supporter responded by lecturing that "any witness who is familiar with this can adequately analyze these without numbers."
