Yet Again, The Right Is Wrong – This Time About Cap-And-Trade Costs

Don’t conservatives, ConservaDems, the Republican Party and the rest of the “climate change is a hoax” crowd ever get tired of being wrong?

For several years, business lobbyists along with GOP and other right wing mouthpieces in Congress and on the air have been yowling that the US cannot afford what they claim is the gargantuan cost of various proposals to control global warming. Claiming an end to the world as we know it if any legislation passes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they insist that the cost will bankrupt every man, woman and child of us.

Yet again, the right is wrong.

A new study released by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office calculates the cost in 2020 of cap-and-trade at 18-cents a day per household.

That’s right: 18-cents. Per household. Math was never my strongest subject but I can use a calculator and, by my figuring, we’re talking about $1.26 per week. Most families spend more than this on ridiculously expensive Starbucks or Tim Horton’s or whatever coffee every day.

Put differently, for about $65.50 per year per US household, Douglas Elmendorf of the CBO wrote to Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) of the House Ways and Means Committee, we can create a system under HR 2454, known as The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, that is shown to make a serious dent in greenhouse gas emissions almost as soon as it is enacted.

I’m sure that Camp, the ranking Republican on the committee, was expecting a rather different answer.

Somehow, I doubt the answer he received will shut him – or the other “let the iceberg’s melt” crowd – up at all. Facts never seem to creep into their yammering.