Chasing Our Tails Debating Cap And Trade

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.

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