Green Energy Economics

"Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket" – Barack Obama, 2008

Candidate Obama wasn't kidding when he made the above statement, and now President Obama and the Democrats are preparing to raise consumer energy prices through the roof. It isn't only their cap and trade proposals that will drive up energy costs either. Alternative energies will have the same effect. As the New York Times reports:

experts…estimate that wind power is currently more than 50 percent more expensive than power generated by a traditional coal plant… The cost of solar thermal electricity, made by using the sun’s heat to boil water and spin a turbine, would be nearly three times that of coal and more than twice that of natural gas. (It would be almost double the cost of wind energy, too.)

Carbon dioxide regulations will also drive up the costs associated with producing coal-based electricity, which will be passed along to the consumers as well. Jason Furman, deputy director of Obama’s National Economic Council, has said the annual costs of cap and trade could be $250 billion (other cost estimates are MUCH higher). Government mandates on green energy usage also increase the price. It's no coincidence that California, the state with the highest renewable energy mandates (20%), has the highest energy prices in the nation.

Naturally, those hardest hit by the skyrocketing energy prices will be those among us who can least afford it, the poor and the middle class (but, don't worry, Obama is only raising taxes on the rich ! LOL. Some people will believe anything).

So, what can we do about these skyrocketing future energy prices ?

Not much. You see, our fourth branch of government (and you thought there were only three branches, didn't you ?), the Environmental Protection Agency, has ruled that carbon dioxide emissions endanger public health by causing global warming. This gives the EPA the power to control energy under the Clean Air Act. Our cars, homes, and businesses are all subject to EPA regulations and mandates now. Through either EPA mandate or Congressional legislation, the greenies have us boxed in. As Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) put it, "It is now no longer a choice between doing a bill or doing nothing. It is now a choice between legislation and regulation. The EPA will have to act if Congress does not act." Game, set, and match. Get out your wallets, America. It's a darned good thing our economy is humming along so nicely, isn't it ? I'm sure we'll hardly feel the pinch, right ?

As for those "millions of green jobs" President Obama promised, consider this, from Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK):

“It’s estimated by the Heritage Foundation that if they are successful in their [CO2] endangerment findings in the White House, it will cost us 800,000 jobs almost immediately. The jobs, where would they go? They would go China, India, Mexico. They’d go to places where they don’t have any emissions restrictions.

“Consequently we would have a net increase worldwide in CO2, so it just doesn’t make any sense. But when you’re dealing with the Hollywood elitists, the extremist environmentalists, you don’t have to make sense.”

A Spanish study indicated that there were 2.2 jobs lost for every job created by wind and solar power.

If we're not careful in what we are doing in the energy sector, we could jack up consumer energy costs, jack up taxes, lose jobs, and after all that…HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT ON GLOBAL WARMING.

Other than that, I guess there's no problem.