Cap and trade is like dead in the water !

[JelenaCD]

This junk science would be like the flat tax and kill the lower income people, Obama would have to say f the lower income people i want to change the world and you are in the way ! do you know what electricity rates will be for the poor under cap and trade in coal states ? dont worry really , it wont happen , obama is already losing steam and in 15 months he will be lame duck when republicans take back power as bad as they have been also , it's like the incompetent VS the socialists , both bad options yet you have to choose , the choice , incompetent capitalists vs hard core socialists , i hate both ,the blue dog dems will join with indies and the republicans to stop obama i think, he has overreached and he is done soon !

[hippifried]

Cap & trade went into effect for sulfer emissions at coal fired power pants decades ago. It worked just fine. Just about everybody has sulfer scrubbers in place now, acid rain isn't killing the Canadian forests anymore, & hardly anybody even knew what was going on.

So, uh... Exactly how is this going to destroy the nation? We have your categorical statement that it will. I'm just unclear how or why.

[JelenaCD]

Sulfer is bad for forests and is a valid pollutant , carbon is good for forests and is not a valid pollutant , if you tax carbon you can tax anyone who exhales , so hold your breath , taxing carbon is a trojan horse to regulate and tax everything and everyone , since carbon is the building block of life and energy , so its not cap and trade its tax trade and life !

[trish]

Actually, Jelena, sulfur too, is a building block of life. It is an atomic component of fats, fluids and bones; i.e. “packaged in the right way it is beneficial, and even essential, to living organisms. However, sulfur in the atmosphere combines with water vapor to create sulfuric acid. Acid rain destroys forests and eats away at marble architectures.

Carbon too, in some forms is beneficial and healthy for living organisms. In other forms it can prove poisonous. Sometimes, as the people in Fargo know, even fresh water can be unwanted, damaging and hazardous. Simply too much of something is a hazard, poisonous or not. You’d sue your neighbor if he intentionally directed all the drainage from his property toward your basement window.

There is nothing wrong with people banding together to create laws that regulate water drainage (on private and public lands), the use of waterways etc., even though water is not a “valid pollutant.”

There’s nothing wrong with regulating the dumping of huge amounts of sulfur into the atmosphere. In fact we do. We use tax policies to provide disincentives and we fine factories that don’t use scrubbers. These laws were not Trojan horses. We don’t hunt down romantic couples who strike matches just in order to have a candle light diner. We don’t hunt down boy scouts who sing songs by campfires. Both activities inject sulfur into the atmosphere, a “valid pollutant,” yet candlelit diners and campfires are not in danger of being taxed.

Likewise, there is nothing wrong with providing disincentives to dumping huge amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. It will not lead to a tax against breathing :roll: . So go ahead and exhale.

[hippifried]

Actually, the scrubbers work well for carbon emissions too. It created a huge market for flyash, which is used as an additive in polymers & cement.

Coal fired power plants really aren't the carbon problem. It's other industries that didn't come under the original regulation & cars. Cars especially in this country. Catalytic converters do some good per unit, but the cumulative effect of the growing number of units negates all that & we're choking ourselves to death.

What really bothers me is all this constant babble that there's no problem. We all know better & I just can't believe that there's really anybody who thinks it's a good idea to fill the air with toxic chemicals. Well... Not till this thread anyway.

[BrendaQG]

I see where she is going. The fact is that many conservatives myself included see green as the new red. Many environmentalist are simply anti capitalist.

Coal is big business, even if technological advances can allow us to harness it's energy with little to no emissions, and relatively inoffensive solid waste.

Nuclear power is big business. The last time I went to an environmentalist talk on nuclear power. It relied heavily on the average persons fear of the word nuclear. They also were anti big business in general.

They see solar and wind as better because they imagine every person being given (not buying) by the government a wind turbine, or solar panels for their roof. Thus destroying the power generation and delivery sector of our economy.

All that would really happen is that we will have less electric generation capacity. Which will drive up prices, and combine with the comming hyperinflation destroy our economy for decades to come.

[trish]

Nothing that hippiefried or I have advocated above would be all that detrimental to "big business."

The giga-wattage of power we require as a nation simply will not be satisfied by roof top solar panels and backyard turbines. There is no danger that these sorts of home projects will "destroy" the big business of power generation. The cheapest and most abundant source of easily accessed energy (by current technology) is coal. And for that very reason, the burning of coal for energy will be a dominate methodology for decades to come, perhaps centuries. Coal is also one of the "dirtiest" sources of energy. So we will have to be vigilant and regulate its use in energy production.

There's nothing wrong with growing big industries (just big monopolies). In the foreseeable future, energy production will be the domain of large power companies burning coal and splitting atoms.

There's also nothing wrong with allowing home producers of power to contribute their excess production to the grid and compensating them for it.

[hippifried]

I see where she is going. The fact is that many conservatives myself included see green as the new red. Many environmentalist are simply anti capitalist.Well that's the lunatic fringe all out of arguments claim, but it's simply not true. It's never been true. Green sells. There's just no investment in production currently.


Coal is big business, even if technological advances can allow us to harness it's energy with little to no emissions, and relatively inoffensive solid waste.

Nuclear power is big business. The last time I went to an environmentalist talk on nuclear power. It relied heavily on the average persons fear of the word nuclear. They also were anti big business in general.We've managed to clean up coal fired plants a lot, but we had to drag the industry kicking & screaming into the process. As a result, those scrubbers have more than paid for themselves & become a source of revenue. Capitalism my ass! These clowns weren't just ignoring their responsibilities as citizens & human beings. They were ignoring the fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders until the government kicked the complacent whining out of them. At the same time that these monopolies were shrieking about the capital outlays for cleaning up their act, they're begging for government subsidies & loans to build more giant nuclear plants, the most expensive way to generate power that's ever been devised. Most expensive plants to build too.

This is an accounting problem. Capitalism is just as subject to the "Peter Principle" as anything else. Big business gets complacent. Monopolies even more so. The market doesn't always make wise decisions. That should be painfully obvious by now.


They see solar and wind as better because they imagine every person being given (not buying) by the government a wind turbine, or solar panels for their roof. Thus destroying the power generation and delivery sector of our economy.Well, I'm one of "They", & I resent the childishly simplistic amateur analysis of my thought process. Nobody's asking for a handout. Just alternatives in the marketplace. You know. Competition. All these techmologies have been available for decades. Try to find solar panels or a single unit sized wind turbine off the shelf at Home Depot. What's up with that? Energy delivery from the grid is a monopoly by necessity. Monopolies are anathema to a free market, so we're starting with a paradox. Energy production & delivery shouldn't need to depend on constant expansion. It's a captive market with a government guaranteed minimum profit margin. Are you really trying to claim that people looking for ways to be more independent & lower their personal costs is some kind of commie plot to destroy the capitalist system or the free market economy? Sorry, but I don't owe the electric company a tithe.


All that would really happen is that we will have less electric generation capacity. Which will drive up prices, and combine with the comming hyperinflation destroy our economy for decades to come.Wrong on so many levels. Generation capacity is overtaxed as it is. There's no clamor to do away with the grid. A chunk of the stimulous is dedicated to bringing it up to date & tying in the new power sources. If power can be generated without burning fuel, all the better. Nobody owes a tithe to the oil companies either. Why should anyone go into a panic over relief of some of the pressure. We've been running up the national debt for 70 years, in an inflationary spiral for 40 years, & the economy is already in the tank. I don't think I'm going to get worked up because there's changes in the system are coming. If the folks who have been running things can't hang, then they need to get out of the way.