{"id":44243,"date":"2009-11-12T15:54:02","date_gmt":"2009-11-12T20:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.instituteforenergyresearch.org\/?p=4573"},"modified":"2009-11-12T15:54:02","modified_gmt":"2009-11-12T20:54:02","slug":"facts-are-stubborn-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/44243","title":{"rendered":"Facts Are Stubborn Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee voted 11-1 to pass the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade energy tax.\u00a0\u00a0 Some of the Committee\u2019s members wanted to delay that vote until the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) conducts a complete economic analysis of the bill\u2019s expected costs to American consumers and the nation\u2019s economy, but Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer refused to wait, arguing that EPA has already done a \u201cfull-blown analysis\u201d of the legislation.<\/p>\n

Not true, as you can see here.<\/a><\/p>\n

This week Senator John Kerry, the lead author of the legislation, told the Senate Finance Committee that \u201cthe reason\u201d we need to pass his cap-and-trade energy tax is that \u201cover the last eight years, emissions in the United States of America in greenhouse gases went up four times faster than in the 1990s<\/span><\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 Also not true.\u00a0 In fact, he\u2019s off by a factor of 32.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/div>\n

As the video shows, greenhouse gas emissions increased far\u00a0slower <\/em><\/strong>in the 2000s than the 1990s. According to data from the Energy Information Administration<\/a>,[1]<\/a> U.S. carbon dioxide emissions increased by 15.14% between 1990 and 1999, but from 2001 to 2008 carbon dioxide emissions only increased by 1.88%. If Senator Kerry were correct, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions would have increased by 60.5% over the last 8 years, but they only increased by 1.88%.\u00a0 Senator Kerry overestimated U.S. emissions by a factor of 32.<\/p>\n

These are the authors of the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade energy tax legislation.\u00a0 If our leaders can\u2019t stick to the basic facts to support their argument for a national energy tax, and the lead author of the bill is this far off the mark on \u201cthe reason\u201d Congress needs to pass it, Americans might reasonably question the validity of their estimates on how much the bill will cost them and our nation\u2019s already-struggling economy.<\/p>\n

Even more troubling, Senator Lindsey Graham is now working with Senator Kerry on a \u201ccompromise\u201d in which Senators\u2019 would accept the cap-and-trade plan in exchange for \u201copening new areas for offshore drilling.<\/a>\u201d\u00a0 This would have been a bad compromise last year, but given the fact that the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) is now open\u2014and has been since Congress allowed its ban on offshore drilling to expire on October 1, 2008\u2014it appears to be an even worse compromise this year.<\/p>\n

If the compromise is anything like the \u201cGang of 10<\/a>\u201d plan offered last year in the months before the Congressional ban on drilling in 85 percent of the OCS was set to expire, the only thing we\u2019d be compromising is the progress we\u2019ve already made. That\u2019s because the Gang of 10 plan would have created a permanent<\/em> ban on drilling in 78 percent of our offshore areas\u2014areas that are now open.<\/p>\n

But at the end of the day, it doesn\u2019t matter what the compromise may be.\u00a0 The long-term costs cap-and-trade legislation would inflict on our economy and our way of life would be so devastating, that no compromise \u2013 offshore drilling or anything else \u2013 would justify its passage.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> The total includes the row titled \u201cTotal Energy\u201d and \u201cElectric Power Generation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee voted 11-1 to pass the Kerry-Boxer cap-and-trade energy tax.\u00a0\u00a0 Some of the Committee\u2019s members wanted to delay that vote until the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) conducts a complete economic analysis of the bill\u2019s expected costs to American consumers and the nation\u2019s economy, but Committee Chairman Barbara […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}