Curbing emissions will come at a price, something CNN surprisingly admitted on Earth Day.
As CNN’s Poppy Harlow explained, “We could all be paying more folks, if this energy bill that is currently moving through Congress gets signed into law and the head of the EPA, the Secretaries of energy and transportation right now testifying on Capitol Hill.”
Harlow cited new EPA estimates that cap and trade provisions in the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES) would cost average families $98-$140 per year, but she noted that “assumes that we would all get a lump sum government rebate from the money that is raised through the cap and trade system. If that doesn’t happen it’s gonna cost us all a lot more.”
Heritage’s Senior Policy Analyst in Energy and the Environment Ben Lieberman wrote, “the reality is that any carbon capping plan is a costly energy tax in disguise—raising energy prices and unemployment with little, if any, environmental benefit. A global warming tax could generate as much as $1.9 trillion in tax revenue over eight years, which amounts to an annual tax of [1]nearly $2,000 on every American household.”
The bill calls for a 20 percent reduction in emissions by 2020 and an 80 percent reduction by 2050.
But
Myron Ebell, Director of Energy and Global Warming Policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said that the bill “would permanently limit economic growth at best and produce perpetual stagnation and decline at worst.”
“It would destroy tens of millions of good-paying jobs,” Ebell continued. “Beyond these enormous economic costs, Waxman-Markey [ACES sponsors] would put big government in charge of how much energy people can use.”
CEI Senior Fellow Iain Murray also criticized the bill for paving the way for “carbon protectionism” which could spark a “carbon trade war.”