Energy Bill Costs

Unsurprisingly the Democrats weren't very upfront about both the potential costs of this loathsome bill and its potential benefits.

Thankfully, Kenneth W. Chilton in The Detroit News gives a good estimate of both:

The Costs:

Fortunately, a back-of-the-envelope" estimate for the costs and benefits of greenhouse gas reductions provides a pretty clear picture. On the cost side, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that any cap-and-trade bill that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 15 percent could cost the average household roughly $1,600 (in 2006 dollars). Further, "The rise in prices would impose a larger burden, relative to income, on low-income households ...." (Households in the lowest income quintile spend 21 percent of their income on energy-intensive items compared with 4 percent for the highest one-fifth of American households.)

A Heritage Foundation analysis finds that Waxman-Markey would, by 2035, raise electricity rates 90 percent, gasoline prices 74 percent, residential natural gas prices 55 percent and an average family's monthly energy bill by more than $100.

The (dubious) Benefit:

One estimate by Paul Knappenberger, an environmental scientist with 20 years experience as a climate researcher, concludes "by the year 2050, the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill would result in a global temperature 'savings' of about 0.05 degrees Centigrade ... about two years' worth of warming." In short, this legislation creates very high costs for American households and produces NO discernable benefit!

There you have it, every American household can expect to pay lots more for gasoline, electricity, home heating and every single product manufactured or grown that uses energy as an input (Here's a clue - that is pretty much everything you purchase these days).

All to save a measly projected .05 degrees worth of "Climate Change" in 41 years. Any rational person or congresscritter after reading the CBO analysis would have voted no on this abomination. Rationality is always in short supply in politics, but on this bill it it may have skipped town completely or is as scarce as Astatine.

On the other hand the representatives that voted for this bill clearly realized this will increase the cost of both tar and feathers and are trying to avoid people being able to afford both and apply same to their tender hides.