If we take this route, we would eventually have the tools to cut carbon emissions, instead of misguided near-term initiatives like RGGI where an attempt to meet even the modest targets will only disrupt energy markets at great cost to consumers and the economy as whole. Programs to curb other GHGs can proceed such as measures to reduce methane releases from coal mines, but it is absurd to impose any meaningful limits on carbon emissions when so much of our energy comes from coal.
A cap on carbon is a cap on growth.
If our manufacturers leave, whether for North Carolina or China, and they take their greenhouse gases with them, we might not have solved the problem but exacerbated it instead.
Being the only state to have absolute caps on carbon emissions puts California at a competitive disadvantage. [The legislation] will have little impact on global climate change but a severe negative impact on California's economy.
Everybody agrees that carbon limits will force up electricity prices steadily far into the future. The disagreement is over how much the costs will go up….That is unnerving for Massachusetts, which now has the nation's highest electric power bills. However, the bigger impact could be on the cost to industries that threatens the loss of jobs.
But the governors of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Vermont are still in the compact, ready to impose a heavy economic burden on their citizens.
While the states signing on the dotted line will trumpet this proposal, the economic reality ... ought to be a bucket of icy cold New England water. [Now consumers will be] paying even higher prices.
[The RGGI states] are going to be shooting themselves in the foot economically and driving even more of their manufacturing base overseas.
Greens have red underbellies. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, communists needed to find a new vocation, so they embraced environmental issues.
[RGGI is] regulation without representation.
