It really doesn’t matter if you believe in global warming or not. The climate-saving pretext of Cap & Trade is simply a diversion, so we should not waste time arguing that issue. Everything in this bill calling for reduced emissions is there for no other reason than to create a huge market for the world’s newest and most valuable commodity: the carbon-offset.

Americans have no idea what a carbon-offset is, and how this new system will work, and that’s the plan: how can we protest something we don’t understand? The point of a carbon-offset, or carbon-permit, is that it allows energy users to go over an allotted emission level, or “cap”. If they stay under the level, then they don’t need any permits, and they can “trade” them.

To understand it better, pretend you could get a “permit” to go over the speed limit by a certain amount. If you like to drive fast, the first thing you’d do is gather up some permits from friends who drive under the limit. Can’t find any? If you are less than honest, you might find a way to get permits issued to licensed people who don’t drive at all, and then use those. So you might end up being able to speed more than ever, only now it’s “legal” because you have the permits!

This simple analogy let’s you see how a carbon-permit is simply a license to pollute that may result in little, if any, carbon reduction. Even though the bill calls for reduced emissions, that does not mean real-world reductions. The reductions exist only on paper, because the carbon-permits let you buy your way out of actually complying with the law. The plan invites abuse and manipulation. This is what has been seen in Europe in the few years the system has been in place, with no reduction in emissions there. So why use it? Why not just tax carbon emissions directly?

That’s the scam: they don’t want us to know it’s a tax. But even worse, these carbon-offsets are now ready to be traded globally on a huge scale. The government will give nearly 90% of them to big corporate polluters for free. That’s right, free. Another bailout for them, utility bills that will double for us! This trillion-dollar market for Wall Street will boom, and see the same kind of complex investment bundling that mortgage-backed securities and derivatives did. It’s their next golden goose, our next nightmare.

And that’s why all these ludicrous rules for reducing emissions in this bill: the guys trading the offsets need users to go over the allowances to really cash in. As emission caps are lowered each year, it will be harder to meet the regulations. But states will have to meet them to receive billions in federal dollars that will be tied in to this bill. So instead of meeting the regulations, states will be forced to buy carbon-offsets to get their federal funds. That will drive the cost of the carbon-offsets up, and someone will make a lot of money in this sneaky new game.

Note the opposition to this bill from true environmentalists like Greenpeace. (If you lean left, check out alternet.org for great info on this.) This bill has actually removed existing EPA limits on carbon emissions. Why? Well, maybe higher emissions could even further enrich those who deal in carbon-offsets. The authors of this bill may end up increasing global warming. Some liberals can see this and are just as outraged as conservatives; nobody is saving the planet here, the rich are just cashing in.

Once you understand the game, you see how truly insidious it is: those selling this big climate scare and its “solution” (not!) are the very ones who will manipulate the capping and trading to profit from it, at our expense. A trillion-dollar market is being created for the benefit of a very few: the traders of carbon-offsets on Wall Street who pushed this bill. Congress is complicit in the fraud. Only when Americans realize the next Enron is at hand will they wake up. (Oh yes, Ken Lay of Enron was an early booster of the carbon trade!)

So please spread the word, and put pressure on your Senators to vote this down. And anyone in Congress who already voted yes on this should be run out of office in 2010!

Thanks