Thursday, May 27, 2010

Climate Change - Cap and Trade Legislation/Regulation

I have been attending political functions at the local and state level and have spoken to several candidates with the specific question of what they know about the sustainability philosophy and Agenda 21. Not too many are familiar with it, which absolutely frightens me. Cap and Trade is being discussed right this very minute in Washington. If it passes, the result will be immediate "pricing" on carbon credits. What this means is, since May13th's mandate passed down by the Environmental Protection Agency to limit CO2 emissions by power plants, landfills, and larger industrial plants to no more than 100,000 tons per year, if these plants exceed this limit, they will be required to purchase carbon credits to offset their excessive emissions. Once the pricing is established, carbon credits will be bought and sold at exchanges (with transaction fees charged by these exchanges). Countries, corporations and individuals will be purchasing these carbon credits to be exchanged between each other as needed. At the outset, many carbon credits will be given or subsidized to less developed countries as incentive to NOT develop their country's infrastructure, such as no deforestation, energy production, manufacturing, landfills, etc. This will result in keeping poor countries poor (except for the money they make on selling their "free" carbon credits) and in the developed countries such as the USA the cost companies will have to pay to buy these credits will be reflected in your energy bill, probably as a single line item, but also on everything you buy that is manufactured. Even the President said that energy costs would necessarily skyrocket as a result of this cap and trade program. Estimates show the increase would be about 70% on your electric bill alone. Please let everyone you know check out this information and fight this bill! Everyone with a junior high school education knows that CO2 is NOT A POISONOUS TOXIN! And if they were really worried about poisoning the planet, wouldn't they try to ban CO2 emissions altogether instead of  figuring out a way to make money on the deal? Just saying...

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