Putting the lid on cap-and-trade
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Doug Krizner: Legislation on global warming is moving through the Senate. Yesterday, a landmark bill to create a cap-and-trade system on carbon emissions cleared one committee. Here’s a surprise: Powerful business lobbies have started a campaign against it. Sarah Gardner reports from the Marketplace Sustainability Desk.
Anti-Climate Legislation Ad: Climate legislation being considered by Congress could make it too expensive to heat our homes, power our lives and drive our cars. Is this really how Americans want to live?
Sarah Gardner: This Chamber of Commerce ad is airing on the TVs at Washington, D.C.’s main airports — right in the path of traveling U.S. senators. A man in a wool scarf cooks his morning eggs by candlelight, then runs to work instead of driving.
And listen to the Chambers’ Bill Kovacs on what the group plans to tell American workers:
Bill Kovacs: By the way, energy’s going to be far more expensive in the United States. So when your jobs go to China, you can thank the people who gave you climate change.
He means climate change legislation, and specifically cap-and-trade. Big carbon emitters would have to buy credits from smaller emitters, or spend money to clean up their act. Either way, the Chamber argues consumers will end up paying much more for energy.
But a recent McKinsey and Company analysis concludes the U.S. could cut emissions in half by 2030 “at manageable costs to the economy.”
I’m Sarah Gardner for Marketplace.
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