Any carbon-reduction policy that includes paying Washington for permits to emit carbon is the wrong way to go. Why? Two words. Social Security.
Washington has no spending restraint. Earmark nation is alive and thriving. Everyone has heard of the Social Security Trust Fund; Al Gore’s “lock box”. Social Security has been running surpluses in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year for a long time. If you think your payroll taxes are piling up for your retirement in a bunker under Washington somewhere, you are sorely mistaken. Our profligate government has been taking the surplus and spending it on everything else, leaving behind “IOUs”. Those IOUs are worth less than the lint behind my dryer because they will never be paid off.
What’s the point? Permit revenue (tax) is supposed to be used for R&D for new fuel and fuel efficiency technologies, energy efficiency and so forth, per these bills. Like social security and the state of Wisconsin’s disaster (see Energy Efficiency Oversight rant), this revenue will be pilfered for any number of other things including, for example, a congressman’s airport, a senator’s library, a study of mating habits of insects, why hog farms smell and so forth.
Instead, the drive to reduce utility-related carbon should come from utility and regulatory administered state programs, where consumers’ money spent to fund the reduction is plowed directly back into energy efficiency and low carbon production of energy. Regulators and consumer advocacy groups ensure consumers get their moneys worth through independent program evaluations.
Yes. I think that is the role of government. To help ensure people don’t get ripped off. If the feds get the money, who is going to watch them? They have a dismal record of self-policing. In fact, they practice bookkeeping methods that would land corporate accountants in jail. Imagine if a corporation took employees’ contributions to their 401ks, replaced it with corporate bonds and called it revenue (ala the Social Security raid). Without this switcheroo (watch the hand), those surpluses from the 1990’s were actually deficits.
Thanks to Wisconsin, we have a case study in failed government takeover of energy programs. Let’s demand to avoid this scenario by ensuring Washington only gets the lint behind the dryer to control carbon.
