Reid Promises Incoming Senator: Cap and Trade is Dead Next Session

[wtmusic]

"This should come as no surprise...According to E&E news ($ubscription required):

There will be no cap-and-trade climate bill considered in the next Congress, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) promised a colleague today. Newly sworn-in Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said today that Reid made a "total commitment" to him that there would be no cap and trade next session. Reid's office confirmed the promise. "Given the election results, there is no chance we can deal with cap and trade," Reid spokesman Jim Manley told E&ENews PM.

New ideas will clearly be needed to make clean energy progress in the next Congress and beyond."

http://theenergycollective.com/breakthroughinstitut/47247/reid-promises-incoming-senator-cap-and-trade-dead-next-session?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=The+Energy+Collective+%28all+posts%29

What "new ideas" are being considered? Nothing sensible like fee-and-dividend which might require responsibility, and limit the amount of Appalachia Senator Manchin's coal financiers can destroy. No, in essence, it's to procrastinate by spending a lot more money that we don't have - to buy time that we don't have. And it seems that Energy Sec/Political Whore Stephen Chu is on board with Innovate First, Regulate Later, which should come as no surprise either (Chu was more than happy to disregard $20 billion of science in support of a nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain for a political favor).

How these people sleep, I'll never know.

[joshcryer]

1. No fucking shit.

We lose the House for two years at the minimum, nothing will be done.

[dkf]

2. Do you all realize this stupid idea puts your energy costs in the hands of traders?

Speculators will love having yet another derivative type vehicle to make humongous profits.

This was a stupid way to control emissions. Just regulate the damned thing.

[MrModerate]

3. For decades we've been told that "just regulate" won't work without . . .

Built-in incentives. You have a solution to that?

[wtmusic]

5. Fee and dividend has built-in regulation and built-in incentives

and would be mind-numbingly simple to implement. So what's the problem?

It takes money away from the corporate power structure, and can be attacked as a "tax" (it's not). Also, it empowers the lower and middle class, so it can be considered "socialism", which in fact it is. But it's socialism of a nearly incorruptible variety, and would require far less administration than cap-and-trade ever would.

Fee and dividend is:

1. A fee is charged at the point of origin or point of import on greenhouse gas emitting energy (oil, gas and coal).
2. The fee is progressive (increases gradually) over time.
3. The fee is returned to the public (divided equally).

[dkf]

6. Just don't let Goldman Sachs make money off it and I'm happy.

[joshcryer]

7. Indeed, it actually pays off the poorer people who by virtue of being poor, have lower energy...

...footprints.

[joshcryer]

4. Cap and trade was the best we could hope for.

A better alternative would've been fee and dividend, but that's the "single payer" of carbon mitigation.

The people who care about the environment here want the latter, not the former. This news report tells us we're getting neither at least for a year, and likely for two.

[hatrack]

8. Uh, Carbon Tax?

Oh, but that contains the word "tax" and must never, ever, EVER be spoken aloud, let alone legislated.

:eyes:

[XemaSab]

9. It's like saying "Voldemort."

:D

[hatrack]

10. Or "Sauron" . . . or "Satan"

Christ, what a country . . . .

:rofl: