An Inconvenient Announcement

On the same week in which the European Union (EU) admitted that its carbon cap-and-trade system is failing miserably, Al Gore shamelessly equated his latest global warming project with fighting Nazism in World War II, the Civil Rights Movement and the moon landing.

As one might expect, Gore’s proposed solution lies in even more big-government bureaucratic mandates from Washington, D.C. As he told the Washington Post, “the path to recovery runs right through Washington.”

But according to the EU’s website, its cap-and-trade scheme was marred by inherent flaws. Consequently, they were forced to recalibrate emissions limits and the number of credits, and the program proved a miserable failure. Instead of the intended decline in emissions, they have risen approximately 1% each year since the program’s inception.

Lest Al Gore’s devotees dismiss the EU’s miserable failure as an anomaly, Japan’s climate-change scheme has failed just as badly. The home country of Kyoto was itself supposed to reduce its emissions by 6% below 1990 levels, but its emission levels have actually risen steadily as well.

Across the EU, energy-intensive businesses are relocating their operations and employment overseas. Conditions in the EU have deteriorated so badly that the European Roundtable of Industrialists has written the EU to warn that the EU’s Kyoto mandates are eroding businesses’ ability to compete in the world economy.

Ignoring these inconvenient truths, climate change alarmists nevertheless insist that the United States dive into the same self-destructive schemes. The American Council for Capital Formation, as one example, estimates that a cap-and-trade law would cost 3.7 million American jobs, reduce gross national product by 2.6%, increase fuel costs even more and punish the average American household some $1,760 each year.

Hopefully, Americans will prove unwilling to pay this economic price for a scheme that fails to reduce emissions or benefit the environment.

[only if they're aware of these facts - forwarding, anyone?]

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