Cap-and-trade bill isn't the solution

As the debate over climate change has waged in Washington, I've followed the back-and-forth with great interest. Despite the questions raised by the recent e-mail scandal, most scientists believe global warming is occurring, and that mankind has some role in it. Some scientists dispute this. I've reviewed the science to the best of my ability and have reached one firm conclusion: I don't know if man is causing global warming or not. I suppose you could say I'm a climate change agnostic. But in some sense, what I believe about the science doesn't really matter.

The reason it doesn't matter is because, at root, we're not debating the science of climate change in Congress. What we're debating is legislation purported to address climate change. Cap-and-trade is a legislative proposal, not a scientific treatise. While I am not a scientist, I am a policymaker. I acknowledge that this old history teacher isn't qualified to evaluate the science of climate change, but, after two decades in politics, I feel I am at least somewhat qualified to understand and evaluate legislative proposals. And when it comes to the policy "solution" to climate change, I can say with no hesitation that cap-and-trade legislation will not work.

First of all, it represents financial disaster for this country. Over 23 years, cap-and-trade legislation would slash $9 trillion from GDP and kill 2.5 million jobs. It would hike gasoline prices by nearly 60 percent, or $1.40 a gallon. Home electricity rates would soar 90 percent. All told, cap and trade could cost families more than $1,700 a year in taxes. And no, these aren't estimates cooked up by anti-cap-and-trade activists. These are the White House's own estimates. Taxpayers will have to pony up as much as $200 billion a year in new taxes, the equivalent of raising taxes by roughly 15 percent.

Secondly, while climate change believers contend that passing cap-and-trade legislation will reduce man-caused climate change, in reality their cap-and-trade bill will do virtually nothing to effect global temperatures in the future. Jim Manzi, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, recently wrote of the House-passed energy tax bill, which has a less-stringent cap than the Senate bill, "If the law works precisely as intended, in about 100 years we should expect surface temperatures to be about one-tenth of one degree Celsius lower than they otherwise would be." In other words, even if it is worth the job losses and enormous cost to the American economy, the legislative "solution" to climate change will be almost completely ineffectual.