Left, Center, and Right Agree: No Stimulus from U.S. Global Warming Plan

It seems that even in our supposedly post-political world it’s tough to find a real consensus on an issue as hot as global warming. But we seem to have found one area of agreement, at the very least, courtesy of the good folks at the Heritage Foundation: The Heritage Foundation recently hosted an event on the economic impacts of cap and trade. Multiple organizations have modeled the effects of cap and trade and found varied results but none of them provided the news you’d want to hear, especially in a recession. Despite repeated attempts to sell cap and trade as a jobs bill, not one scenario of even one presenter (including the three government agencies) projected a net increase in income or employment from cap and trade. The entire debate was over the magnitude of income, consumption and job losses. Speakers included representatives from the National Black Chamber of Commerce, The Brookings Institution, the Energy Information Administration, the Congressional Budget Office, the Environmental Protection Agency, and The Heritage Foundation. The Congressional Research Service’s recently analyzed seven studies on the projected cost (including the National Association for Manufacturers’ study and the Massachusetts Institute for Technology’s study). None of the studies projected jobs or income growth from cap and trade. While these studies differed, they only differed on the magnitude of negative impacts. There was no disagreement on the sign. That is, cap and trade will lead to fewer jobs and lower income. So if we can all get behind the notion that cap and trade won’t create jobs, can’t we all just get along and send the idea to the scrap heap? Can’t we?

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