I see that Team Soros over at “Think Progress” today provide a glimpse into the games that statists play to advance their dreams of a CO2 (which for the foreseeable future means “energy”) rationing scheme. Controlling the number of emissions ration coupons for energy use provides an unprecedented level of economic control — unprecedented in democracies, anyway – far more than merely taxing energy would.
In the course of slamming McCain economic advisor Steve Forbes for suggesting that a President McCain might see the light on his long-held (since 2000) desire for a cap-and-trade scheme here, TP inaccurately claims:
Contrary to right-wing talking points, a cap-and-trade system is not in fact a tax (or even a “stealth tax”). Critically, cap-and-trade provides “emissions certainty” — ensuring that pollution does not exceed a certain level, whereas a carbon tax would place no such limits.
By right-wing talking points they obviously mean papers by the Congressional Budget Office and economists at Resources for the Future economists, which note that cap-and-trade is indeed a tax — although its inherent gaming, corruption, inefficiencies, and other social costs make it several times more costly than simply taxing the unwanted emissions. No, no, no, they don’t want economic control — their interest is not in restraining the free market: they want emissions certainty.
Well, OK, here’s a bet, then: Europe has precisely such a cap-and-trade scheme in place. Tell me Europe’s emissions next year. What’s that? You can’t? No kidding — anyone who has paid attention to this idea in practice can tell you that.
You cannot accurately predict even the emissions in Europe’s covered ETS sectors, let alone economy-wide as implied by TP. This is a phony distinction hammered out to justify avoiding the political hit that comes with proposing taxes and tighter economic control by environmental regulators. Now that we have three years of ETS experience to prove this, the claim TP repeats here has achieved the status of a flat-out lie.
Nor does cap-and-trade provide “regulatory certainty,” the claim that typically follows the “certainty of emissions” canard. Subscribe to any newspaper out of the EU, or simply pay the slightest attention to their relevant policy or news websites, and you will see the current, raging debate over who takes how bad a hit and when under Kyoto’s next step. And, with the global-warming agenda, there is always the next step. Remember, Kyoto is the “first of 30 steps” according to über-alarmist and Gore advisor Tom Wigley; all proposed schemes proposed so far represent just a portion of the full Kyoto journey envisioned by TP’s fellow-travelers.
Even how they will take this next, bigger hit remains up in the air. All that’s known is that the cap will be tightened, to some extent, and further extended some level, at some point in the near future. Certainty indeed.