Democrats want to take us back to 1875
George Will, commenting on President Obama's flailing attempts to regain his mojo, incidentally mentions why Waxman-Markey (Cap and Trade) is an economically unfeasible pipe dream.
I broke it up into smaller bites to make it easier to follow. Follow it through to the end and you will see how this crazy scheme requires the nation to reduce its per capita carbon dioxide level to what it was back in 1875. We cannot do this and survive economically.
George Will, commenting on President Obama's flailing attempts to regain his mojo, incidentally mentions why Waxman-Markey (Cap and Trade) is an economically unfeasible pipe dream.
I broke it up into smaller bites to make it easier to follow. Follow it through to the end and you will see how this crazy scheme requires the nation to reduce its per capita carbon dioxide level to what it was back in 1875. We cannot do this and survive economically.
That legislation is a particularly lurid illustration of why no serious person nowadays takes seriously Washington's increasingly infantile bandying of numbers.
The point of cap-and-trade is to impose a ceiling on the nation's greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions—primarily carbon dioxide. The legislation endorses the goal of holding the global carbon--dioxide level to a maximum of 450 parts per million by 2050. That. Will. Not. Happen.
Steven Hayward and Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute do the math.
Waxman--Markey endorses the goal of reducing all of this nation's GHG emissions 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.
In 2005, the United States' carbon-dioxide emissions were 6 billion tons, so an 83 percent -reduction would permit about 1 billion tons—what America's emissions were in 1910, when the population was 92 million and the economy was one twenty-fifth of today's.
But by 2050, the population probably will be about 420 million, so per capita carbon-dioxide emissions would have to be 2.4 tons—one quarter of 1910's per capita emissions.
Today France, which generates approximately 80 percent of its electricity by nuclear power, and Switzerland, which generates most of its electricity by nuclear or hydropower, have per capita emissions of 6.59 and 6.13 tons, respectively.
To see the original AEI article Will cites, go here. Is is long but full of hard facts and detailed explanations.
The Democrats want to cut our per capita emissions to one-third of nuclear-powered France, and not one stooge in the press has asked them how we get there from here without destroying our economy.Further Reading:
Pethokoukis
WaPo - CBO Estimate
4 comments:
Allow me to play devil's advocate on behalf of all deranged greenies everywhere:
Don't think of our green agenda as 'destroying the economy. It's more like 'right sizing' the economy.
We'd prefer not to look at our goal as returning to the Stone Age, but rather as a return to the good old days, when one could breathe the clean, fresh un-carbonated air, and where everyone lived in harmony together, all 877 of us. (NOTE: the additional 6 billion of you go somewhere else, we don't care where. Mars, maybe).
Thanks Fredd. You actually did a pretty good job. That was scary...
To a degree I am all for clean air. I used to live in a large city where the pollution was so bad that you couldn't see the sky anymore, but there should be some limitations.
The Democrats want control of everything, including the air we breathe.
"The Democrats want to cut" our throats and our wrists and our oil pipelines and our cash flow. Just so long as cash flows to them.
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.