Cap-and-tax will also clobber manufacturing and heavy-industry jobs. Twenty states get 60-98% of their electricity from coal. They form our manufacturing heartland, and every increase in electricity prices will result in more businesses laying off workers or closing their doors, more jobs sent overseas, more homes forced into foreclosure, more families into welfare, and more school districts, hospitals and churches into whirlpools of red ink.
Soaring gasoline and natural gas prices will do likewise.
And for what? Hundreds of climate scientists say CO2 plays little or no substantive role in climate change. They point out that even total elimination of US carbon dioxide emissions would quickly be offset by emissions from China, India and other rapidly developing nations.
Thankfully, sensible Republicans and Democrats are raising red flags about these economy-killing proposals. But a White House/EPA rulemaking would require no congressional vote – and they’re reportedly going to drop that bombshell this month.
On the revenue side, the situation is equally irresponsible. Lock up the best and tax the rest, is the motto. Whether it’s oil and natural gas (onshore or off), coal or coal-to-gas, shale oil or uranium, Congress and the White House are making America’s best prospects off limits. They are imposing punitive taxes and regulations on prospects that aren’t in no-access categories, to curtail development.
That means rejecting trillions in potential bonus, rent, royalty and tax revenues that could help pay for this spending binge.
Developing just our off-limits oil and gas resources in the ANWR, OCS and Rockies could generate over $1.7 trillion in government revenue and create 114,000 new jobs, a recent ICF International study concluded. The petroleum would eliminate one-fifth of the nation’s $350-700 billion annual oil imports bill. Developing all US oil and natural gas resources on federal lands could generate $4 trillion.
The American Energy Alliance and other experts say the benefits would be even greater. And this is just conventional oil and gas revenue. It does not include trillions more in revenues from oil shale, tar sands, methane hydrates, coal, uranium and other deposits that Congress, bureaucrats, judges and green activists have conspired to put off limits to the American taxpayers and consumers who own them.
It does not consider the regulatory stranglehold on coal and nuclear power plant construction – and thus on jobs and revenues that those projects and their energy would provide.
This is Real Energy, Real Revenue, Real Employment. Hydrocarbons and nuclear generate 93% of all the energy that safeguards our jobs, health, living standards and national security. With 90% reliability, they turn on the lights and make America work and prosper.
And they are being closed down – to be “replaced” by pixie dust energy from wind turbines and solar panels that now meet barely 1% of our total energy requirements.
Wind turbines actually generate electricity only 2-6 hours a day, on average. They are built and operated only because of billions in taxpayer subsidies. And they require large swaths of land and prodigious amounts of concrete, steel, copper and fiberglass: 700 tons for each 1.5 MW turbine – plus enormous additional quantities for natural-gas-fired electrical generators that kick in every time the wind dies down.
Solar is even further away from making a perceptible contribution to our energy needs.
Two-thirds of Americans want our petroleum and nuclear energy developed. They want jobs, security, economic recovery, power that works 24/7.
But their rights are being trampled on, by partisan totalitarians whose decrees violate America’s sacred traditions of open, robust debate, sound science and economics, and majority opinion on critical issues. Whatever happened to the cooperation, bipartisanship, ethics and social responsibility voters thought they were electing last fall?
It’s time to say, enough!