Chasing Our Tails Debating Cap And Trade

(CBS)  Harry Fuller founded one of the nation's first TV station Web sites in 1995 as General Manager of KPIX-TV in San Francisco. He was news director at TechTV when it was founded in 1998. In 2001 he become executive producer for CNBC Europe in Europe. Four years, later he became executive editor for CNET's News.com.

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The U.S. needs a national cap and trade for carbon emissions but it won't get one anytime soon.

One reason: fear of the cost to corporate America and thus to customers like you and me. An even stronger reason cap and trade will fail: some Democratic Senators already oppose it. They want re-election. American politics is not about what's good for the nation or those of us living here.

When cap and trade is brought up in Washington, you'll hear the usual "too expensive" nonsense and the predictable lobbyist-fueled tirades from one side of the punditocracy. "Cap-and-trade will destroy Pennsylvania." (Yes, that's the quote.)

As CBS News.com reported this month, the estimated costs of cap and trade are significant. A number like $400 billion annually gets your attention. The estimate is that each household would pay an average of $3,500 more annually for energy. That's a serious number, especially in a recession. So why would anybody propose such a move?

First, that cap and trade total is almost exactly what the United States spends annually to bring in crude oil from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela. Wherever we can get it. And that's not counting one iota of the pollution costs to the planet from carbon emissions to trashing the tar sands of Canada.

TVA's recent avoidable coal ash spill in Tennessee is classic American energy policy: Use the resource and ignore the consequences. Did TVA expect to keep piling up coal ash until the coal deity came along and whisked it away? TVA ended up paying nearly a billion dollars for the clean-up but it was deemed "too expensive" to do any ash abatement beforehand. Ignoring consequences is childish.

Former President George W. Bush publicly declared America's addiction to oil. Unfortunately, he made no intervention. Recently a liberal commentator called us "cheese-eating surrender monkeys." French leaders ignored the guillotine, imposing serious gas taxes.

Then they built nuclear plants. American pols are too chicken for either. Then those embarrassing Danes: they import no Mideast oil whatsoever. They use plenty of renewable energy, especially wind. Addicts? Surrender monkeys? I say we're cowardly brats.

We're acting like 13 year olds with a dirty room. We need to clean it up. The earth is our only room. We humans trashed it and it's time to clean it up. Other people are expected to come along and try to use the same room. Pity 'em.

Haven't you noticed every proposal challenging entrenched profit-makers in America is "too expensive?" Social security, medicare, space program, interstate highways, the existing cap and trade in the Northeastern states, and rail transit in Phoenix? The Goldwater Institute fought light. Now that it's successful and expanding, "We don't dwell." And they still oppose all that public spending. Each was billed by opponents as too expensive.

Can't afford cap and trade? How many more Mideast wars can we afford to guarantee our flow of oil? We tax ourselves to patrol the Mideast but not to produce our own energy? We have the oil flowing and we won't work harder to stop it flowing? We can't imagine saying no to Exxon or big-box stores with huge parking lots that require people to drive long distances to shop there? We can't imagine buying less stuff from low-cost labor markets and then parking it in hundreds of square yards of "self-storage" that we have to drive to? Insulate our homes and not run the air conditioning all night? We can spend but we can't conserve?

Time to clean up the room. And if we don't clean up, neither will the other kids - China. India. Brazil. Oh, by the way, it isn't our room. That room belongs to all

By Harry Fuller
Special to CBSNews.com

[superdem1]

The answer shines down on us every single day. Unlimited energy, more than we could ever use, blows past us and into space while we burn sticks and oil. Solar energy has no by-products, it is completely clean, and completely free. It is criminal that we are not breaking our backs to develop solar energy. Every single shingle on every single building should be a solar collector/battery cell. One side of our moon faces the sun unimpeded every single day. We should have massive collector arrays there, and beam the energy to earth. The solar technologies could provide millions of jobs. Solar energy is so obviously the answer things we could do - but not so long as the oil companies dictate how things are done on earth. Solar energy is some cottage industry/hobby - I have a watch that operates on solar energy - yippee ! This is the crime of the century, some day historians will look back and shake their heads at our ignorance and corruption.

[noloyalisti]

We have to get rid of the oil companies running the media, the military and the Congress. All their greenwashing cannot hide the facts that all they want to do is take over the world for oil. It explains almost our entire foreign policy.

And because they own the media, they can convince a whole bunch of ignorant American morons that global climate change is naturally occurring. Can you imagine the stupidity of ignoring science. Wow!

[doc_holliday76]

"Then those embarrassing Danes: they import no Mideast oil whatsoever. They use plenty of renewable energy, especially wind."
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by cbs4111:
"Wow, how misleading is this?...CBS when did you stop fact-checking?"
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Sorry, but the usual word twisting by the rabid republican'ts just never ends, since they just have an agenda to denigrate all of the corporate media except for their beloved foxnewsus propagandus network!

The words above by CBS certainly did not twist the truth at all, since they import NO MIDEAST OIL and use plenty of RENEWABLE ENERGY, especially wind power.

Personally, I like the Germany story better, since they have vowed to be 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY by 2050, and have added millions of jobs while growing their RENEWABLE ENERGY ECONOMY, and with a smaller population and smaller land mass, they are now the #1 EXPORTER in the world -- ahead of both China and the USA.

Seems as if Germany has proven the constipated conservitards completely WRONG as usual, by increasing the number of created jobs due to a RENEWABLE ENERGY ECONOMY -- not hurt their economy like the delusional republcian'ts would have you believe!

[rocketjl]

Tantrums are not the answer. Americans just don't want to do this alone. Who do you think is all the pollution, America alone?????

[cbs4111]

Wow, how misleading is this? CBS when did you stop fact-checking?

A few numbers from Denmark's energy usage statistics in 2007 (in Tera-Joules)

Oil - 345,000 Tera Joules
Coal - 195,000.
Natural Gas - 171,000.
Wind - 26,000.
Solar - 470.
Firewood - 25,000.

As you can see, almost all of Denmark's energy comes from Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas. The reason Denmark doesn't need to import oil is not because they are so green, Denmark gets a higher percentage of their energy from Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas than the US does. Denmark doesn't need to import oil simply because they pump their own oil from the North Sea. See

http://www.ens.dk/da-DK/Info/TalOgKort/Statistik_og_noegletal/Maanedsstatistik/Documents/energy%20statistics%202007%20uk.pdf

CBS - You're doing a huge disservice to all Americans by promoting the Cap and Trade Bill.

[doc_holliday76]

by cbs4111:
"Denmark doesn't need to import oil simply because they pump their own oil from the North Sea."
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So what? The USA has been pumping our own OIL for decades as well, but we only have 3% of the world's OIL reserves and use a full 25% of the daily worldwide production of OIL, thus import 2/3 of our OIL.

[jimmyc1955]

A link to the article for a few decades of cooling from one of the lead climate modelers for the UNPCCs report.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1212442/The-world-colder-decades--hotter-long-run-expert-predicts.html

Read it - you will find that the models aren't correct. That explains why none of the data in the last 2.5 years have supported the models.

Keep in mind it is the computer models that are the cause of the panic here. It isn't as if the globe hasn't warmed and cooled many times before. It is simply that models aren't accurate and the data for actual global temperatures is very limited and people are jumping to headline grabbing conclusions to gain fame, research grants and tenure.

Please - lets get serious about this. The south pole ice cap is increasing, the north pole cap has increased in size the last two years and is thicking. Polar bear populations are stable in most area's rising in a few and declining in only two.

Global warming is a religion. We are not to question the dogma, we should just kneel and scrape and do as we are told.

[bzzpd]

The earth is melting said the wicked witch.
Well no petunia's it is.

It was melted when dinosaurs were roaming through the Brooks Range in Northern Alaska also. They have tyranasaurus footprints from way up north in Alaska.Lots of dinosaur bones too.

Since Humans were not around then...I suppose global warming from dinosaurs caused the polar ice caps to melt during that period also.

Your theory was written by a bunch of inbred scientific clowns. They bred with something in a petri dish and called it intelligent life.
Wha Lah....a scientist...prognosticator of revelations about the entire planet. Fecal material stinking up the planet with verbal horse manure is more like it.

Which came first......the polar melt down......or the dinosaur?
What caused it....dinosaur methane.....or blind luck?

Man can't have caused everything...he hasn't been here that long.

The glaciers in Alaska have been melting long before the automobile showed up on the scene. in 1861 California only had around 40,000 citizens. There haven't been enough people in the United States to do the damage you have dreamt up, over the last 150 years.

[bciss]

yes more taxes based on dubious and flawed science is exactly what we need. hurry now,, run, run. Whatever you do not examine facts and ALL sides of the most important issues in our lives. you know like good americans. best to spit and sputter at each other over who is a conservative twit or a liberal twit. and yes if you define yourself by either and accept wholesale the lines fed to said groups? sorry, you are in fact a twit. be it fox or cbs. if you do not think our MSM is loaded with propaganda and skewed points of view? well then, never mind continue with your idiotic and pointless frothing at the mouths. you can not help the willfully ignorant.

[Constitionalist]

Why are all the comments at the end repeated?

[anti-global2]

good then China can start paying exactly what we pay or are expected to pay. Also if us consuming their goods is a problem I'm all for cutting off all trade with them. That would revitalize our economy and cripple theirs. I am not inot the global society and I don't care about people in China.
I only care about Americans, and we need to stop carrying the burden of others.

[Constitionalist]

Actually the fact that almost everything we buy is made in China is the biggest reason our economy is in the crapper. All the money flows over there for goods. Since we have no money, the fed has to print more. To cover that money we borrow from China. We then use some of the money we printed to pay interest to China. The rest is put into the economy where most eventually flows back to China. Welcome to slavery, now bow before your chinese masters.

[doc_holliday76]

by anti-global2:
"good then China can start paying..... Also if us consuming their goods is a problem I'm all for cutting off all trade with them."
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Maybe you haven't looked at the labels on the majority of goods here in America, both mom&pop stores as well as the "big box" stores, but that is just plain insanity to spew that nonsense, since we manufacture almost nothing here in the USA today!

Cutting off trade with "Chindia" and the rest of the 3rd world where corporate America has built all their factories, is not happening!

[mav547166]

So how is cap and trade supposed to keep the sun from turning into a red giant and destroying the earth.

[Constitionalist]

Because the sun would dis-incentivized to grow into a red giant through higher taxes.