What is cap and trade? Well it's not a society of hat hoarders who get together once in a while and swap toboggans.
Cap and trade is a proposal by the federal government to control the emission of carbon, why they want to do this would call for a long dissertation on fairy tales and why Al Gore and his bank account are bloated.
Cap means that a factory will only be allowed to emit a certain amount of carbon-this number is a secret and is only revealed by a secret ceremony held under a full moon beneath a black oak deep in the swamp. Actually this number will be generated by someone in the government who will remain unknown, like the one who said Ballard's had to close. In other words the government decides who wins or loses. Just wait till they get a hold of your health care.
After this magic number is picked, and it will be so impossibly low that a coal fired electric plant will not be able to meet it, the plant will have to buy credits. If a another plant gets a high number that is greater than their emissions, think wind mill, they will be allowed to sell their excess credits to the coal plant that is emitting too much. This is the trade part, buying and selling credits. This is also how folks like Al Gore make their money, they are in the business of selling credits.
Now for the good part, you will not have to be left out, you get to pay for all this. First your utility bill goes sky high as the power company passes on the cost of the credits they had to buy. Then just to make sure you don't have any change left all the products you buy that are manufactured, or sold in a store with lights, will cost more. Current estimates are that your utility bill may go up $3000.00 dollars a year.
These things have been tried in Europe where the electric bills doubled or tripled and yet the carbon emissions they were trying to regulate went up. The program has also been a disaster in Australia.
Cap and Trade will kill the coal industry and be a disaster for West Virginia. It will also adversely affect gasoline refineries in the USA and instead of increasing production many of them will be reducing capacity and output to avoid the penalties of the Cap and Trade.
If this passes the Senate, it already passed the house, we will be losing more jobs as more factories move overseas to avoid the higher cost of production in this country. Senator Rockefeller says he will vote for this bill, our entire congressional delegation voted against this bill in the house.
