Cap-and-Trade for Idiots

The “American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009” (HR2454) has passed the House of Representatives and is now working its way quickly through the Senate. The Act, in part, controls the emission of green house gasses based on the notion of cap-and-trade. The basic idea behind cap-and-trade can be a bit confusing, so here’s a simple lesson in the way it works. Cap-and-trade requires those businesses who produce a great deal of green house gasses while actually producing things (for example, electric utilities powering all the plug-in electric cars ) to buy “credits” from those businesses that don’t produce much so they don’t produce many green house gasses. Let’s say company “A” produces 50 units of green house gasses (what those units are doesn’t matter; let’s call them death bombs). Meanwhile, company “B” produces 20 death bombs. The government decides that no company, no matter what they produce, can make more than 40 death bombs. So, company “A” must buy 10 credits worth of death bombs from company “B.” Has this reduced the overall number of death bombs? Has this reduced global warming (sorry, climate change – the theory that explains everything)? No, merely shuffled them from one place to another. There are still 70 death bombs being produced.

Here’s the fun part. Somebody has to broker the sale of death bomb credits, just like somebody brokers the sale of orange juice or hog bellies. In this case, the death bombs will be brokered by Generation Investment Management, LLP. The chairman and co-founder of Generation Investment Management is Nobel Prize winner (not Irena Sendler), Al Gore.

Of course, Gore will profit greatly from his good work saving us from imminent incineration because of all the death bombs in the atmosphere. But he’s not the only one.

In June 2007 and again in February 2008 Generation Investment Management contributed $28,500 to the Democratic National Committee.

So that’s cap-and-trade for idiots. Some unkind souls might call it money laundering funds extorted from American businesses for the DNC, but it’s really to Secure us from all the death bombs.