The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is under attack by some of its members for its opposition to the Cap and Trade bill. The Natural Resources Defense Council, through its blogs and through the website whodoesthechamberrepresent.org maintains a running watch on those altruistic companies who have either quit the Chamber or publicly disputed its Climate Change position.

To the NRDC, companies that stick with the Chamber’s anti-Cap and Trade position are motivated strictly by greed, whereas the companies listed above are driven by the purest of altruism.

U.S. CHAMBER CLIMATE CREDIBILITY CRISIS COUNTER:

Quit the U.S. Chamber over climate: Apple, Exelon, PNM Resources, PG&E, PSEG, Levi Strauss & Co, San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, Mohawk Paper.

Quit the U.S. Chamber Board over climate: Nike.

Refused to join the U.S. Chamber over climate: NRG Energy.

Companies that say the U.S. Chamber doesn’t represent their views on climate: Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, Alcoa, Duke, Entergy, Microsoft, Toyota, Royal Dutch Shell, Seventh Generation, Dow, PEPCO, Cisco Systems …

Altruistic? Ehhhhh. Let’s follow the money.

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Since the 1930’s, Louisiana has lost over 2,000 square miles to coastal erosion - an area larger than the state of Delaware. Stabilizing the remaining marshlands requires massive projects, such as plantings, erosion control structures and mass plantings, but more than anything it requires masses of money.

Governor Bobby Jindal thinks he knows who might help foot the bill: you and me, pal, if Cap and Tax gets passed.

It turns out that projects for rebuilding marsh and the delta will score all kinds of points in the Carbon Offset game. If someone wants to build, say, a coal-fired electrical generation plant, they will be required under the Waxman-Markey abomination to purchase Carbon Credits from a “qualified project”.

Scientists working with Louisiana to develop a carbon-credit plan say the river delta is a factor in the greenhouse gas equation. They say the 2,000 square miles of Louisiana marshland lost since 1932 is equivalent to the carbon output of 80 million automobiles driving for one year.

So, you’re looking to keep driving that Suburban? Or using coal-based electricity? We in Louisiana are here to help.

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Erick and Dan both pointed out last week that Cap and Trade legislation was meeting resistance from Democrats. This week, we have some revealing commentary from former Democratic Senator from Colorado, Timothy Worth. Worth was a “climate-change negotiator” during President Bill Clinton’s administration and currently runs the UN Foundation. Worth is a supporter of cap and trade. Let’s let him tell us about it in his own words. From Bloomberg:

“The Republicans are right — it’s a cap-and-tax bill.”

“That’s what it is because they are raising revenue to do all sorts of things, especially to take care of the coal industry, and it makes no sense.”

“What has happened is it’s gotten out of control.”

What? Democrats are using a climate scare as an excuse for government intrusion well beyond the scope of the issue at hand, broadening their power and diminishing that of the private sector and the individual? Come on.

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Soon to be former Governor Palin’s column on cap and trade is in many ways emblematic of her public persona: firmly held free-market/conservative positions, a quasi-folksy style that appeals to some and annoys others, and the ability to make liberals froth about that woman in ways that would impress a Taliban illegal combatant.  Which is probably directly related to her PAC raising an additional 200K after her resignation speech (H/T: Hot Air Headlines): it should be interesting to see how much she brings in when she starts actively stumping for GOP candidates in 2010*.

Moving back to the article, it is itself fairly familiar, to those following the attempts of the Democrats to inflict cap-and-trade on America without having to take responsibility for it afterward.  It takes the reasonable note that, in a situation where we need to put more into the economy, cap-and-trade will take out more from it: more jobs lost, more regulations imposed, more costs to do business:

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Representative Mary Bono Mack (R-California) has been a thorn in my side for years. An RMSP ‘moderate’, she’s been shifting left ever since she took the seat vacated by the late Sonny Bono, her first husband. But now that she’s one of the difference makers for the Cap and Tax bill, suddenly the whole party’s grumbling about her.

Welcome to the club. Have a seat and we’ll catch up to the latest.

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Promoted from the diaries by Neil Stevens

One of the lamest arguments in favor of the passage of Cap and Tax was that it was good “energy policy”.  Rep. John Larson (D-CT 1), among others, went off at length in this direction.  You might suspect from the title that I may take exception with this assessment.

Before we go further, a couple of definitions:

Policy: A governmental plan (contrast with “program”), generally formulated within the executive branch which has the purpose of solving a particular problem facing the nation.

Elasticity: The percent change of the quantity of a good/service supplied or demanded for a unit percent change of price.  This definition can be confirmed in any undergrad microeconomics text.

So we see “energy policy” thrown out there as an argument.  What problem facing the nation does are we trying to solve?  In this case, it is the inelastic demand for fossil fuels (primarily oil) combined with the inelastic supply of the same fossil fuels.  The supply is inelastic in that the nation imports a sizable percent of its oil and thus does not have direct control over supply quantity.

Given the definition of the problem, it seems that there is a two part solution:

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Yesterday, several of us were in on a roughly bi-weekly conference call organized by Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

The main focus of the call yesterday was the recent “center of gravity” in the Energy and Commerce Committee regarding all the “climate change” debris and the various proposals spinning around the tornado of “Cap-and-Trade” (perhaps better described as “Cap-and-Tax”).

Rep. McCarthy brings “guests” to these conference calls - and since the focus of this call was energy, the special guest was Rep. Steven Scalise (R-LA). Rep. Scalise serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee - and, of course, he represents Louisiana…. where energy is a major issue.

Highlights below the fold….

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There is a war brewing between liberals on Capitol Hill and the hardworking citizens of the Midwest, notably those of my home state of Indiana.

It comes in the form of an energy proposal known as “cap and trade” which would cap greenhouse gas emissions from regulated entities and require businesses to acquire permits or “allowances” for their emissions. The bill should actually be called “cap and tax” because it basically establishes a national energy tax. Under the guise of protecting the environment, the bill will increase taxes on every American who uses any form of energy and would have a devastating impact on the Indiana economy and Hoosier taxpayers. Washington politicians love it because they can claim that they are taxing polluters when in effect they are actually taxing middle class American families and workers.

The Wall Street Journal recently editorialized about this proposal, noting the unjust burden this proposal would have on the Midwest: “But the greatest inequities are geographic and would be imposed on the parts of the U.S. that rely most on manufacturing or fossil fuels — particularly coal, which generates most power in the Midwest, Southern and Plains states… Coal provides more than half of U.S. electricity, and 25 states get more than 50% of their electricity from conventional coal-fired generation.”

Indiana, in particular, would be one of the hardest hit states in the nation because it gets 94 percent of its energy from fossil fuels.

Let me be clear: cap and tax is a job killer.

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