Renewable energy debate

In an email from David Robinson down Pickens County Democrat Way

"Cap-and-trade" is one of those obscure, wonkish topics that we just REALLY don't have time to pay attention to. But it affects whether we continue to put off developing renewable energy sources and dealing with climate change, which ("putting off," that is) is always the position of the Party of NO.

Here's a talking point on the Republicans' dishonest blurb about President Obama's budget proposal to use cap-and-trade as a means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. (For background, see "Emissions trading" in Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cap-and-trade.)

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CONservative Spin

Cap-and-trade or, more appropriately, cap-and-tax ... would require energy producers and businesses to pay to emit carbon emissions in the hope of reducing greenhouse gases. According to an analysis by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the average American household could expect its yearly energy bill to increase by $3,128 per year. Using an analysis by Peter Orszag, President Obama's budget director, that number would be closer to $4,000.

PROgressive Response

The right keeps peddling this line even though the author of the MIT study, John Reilly, told the St. Petersburg Times' PolitiFact.com (http://ga3.org/ct/DpMKwHY1_SHp/) that the way they are using the figures in the report is "wrong in so many ways it's hard to begin."

What the report actually says is that the cost per household of a climate bill that would cap carbon emissions and tax polluters for the ability to exceed that cap would be $79 in 2015, Reilly says.

Conservatives say nothing about the potential benefits of such a bill, including greater incentives to conserve energy and competition from other energy sources that would help lower prices for everyone. And some percentage of the revenue from a climate bill could be used to mitigate its impact on lower-income families, in the form of direct subsidies and in helping them lower their energy bill. The details that would actually determine the costs and benefits, such as an energy tax credit to families proposed by the Obama administration, have yet to be hammered out—yet another reason to dismiss conservative claims about what they are mislabeling a "light switch tax."

These right-wing blasts are really arguments to keep the coal, oil and gas industries from having to pay the costs of polluting our environment, and to keep the nation from embracing the new energy future.

Posted via web from jimnichols's posterous