Cap and Trade should be passed by Congress

C1: Trade Wars A) Cap and trade will lead to a trade war with china Will Wilkinson- a Research Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, 09 "Last week, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the U.S. should be open to slapping tariffs on imports from countries that fail to implement their own carbon reduction policies. Meanwhile, China has threatened trade war if faced with carbon duties, which it says are illegal under World Trade Organization agreements. Trade restrictions tend to leave all involved poor, making trade war a frightening prospect during an already immiserating recession. So how did we come to have the Energy Secretary provoking threats of mutually destructive trade sanctions? Here's how. Either all the big, carbon-intensive economies reduce their emissions, or there's little chance of reducing warming. If the climate modelers are right, we'll all be better off if everyone pitches in. But each has an incentive to hold out, since countries that don't pitch in will enjoy lower energy costs and a competitive advantage in international markets. Chu rightly points out that Obama's proposed cap and-trade scheme will put American manufacturers at a relative disadvantage. Cap-and-trade is sure to raise costs for struggling American consumers. But it won't much reduce warming unless countries like China and India fall in line. Yet neither the U.S. nor Europe can just force this to happen. If we try by imposing carbon duties, we'll hurt consumers even more by raising the cost of imports, and possibly start a trade war no one will win. Chu's remarks highlight the fact that cap-and-trade is a costly, risky gambit. But now's not the time. Suffering workers and consumers can't afford to lose again." Dr. Stephen Murgatroyd- PhD Columnist - June 25, 2009 ("Proposed US climate change bill a bargaining chip," Troy Media Corporation, http://www.troymedia.com...) "Buried within the Bill are provisions for a levy on goods imported into the US which come from a country which is not seeking to limit CO2 emissions, as judged by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The idea behind this is simple: once the US regulates greenhouse gases produced by US companies, those companies won't be struggling to compete with foreign companies that have no such restrictions imposed on them. The target of this provision within the legislation is China and India and it can be seen as part of the US bargaining position for the Copenhagen climate change negotiations to be held in December. China is already suggesting that this is an opening protectionist move which will trigger a trade war." B) China and Trade Wars collapse multilateral trade Nader and Heaps – 08 campaign to help broker a successor to the Kyoto Protocol Good intentions to limit big polluters in some countries but not others will turn any meaningful cap into Swiss cheese. It can be avoided by relocating existing and new production of various kinds of CO2-emitting industries to jurisdictions with no or virtually no limits. This is known as carbon leakage, and it leads to trade anarchy. How? The most advanced piece of climate legislation at the moment, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, contains provisions for retaliatory action to be taken against imports from carbon free-riding nations. Married with the current economic malaise, the temptation to slide into a righteous but runaway environmental protectionism -- which Washington's K Street lobbyists would be only too happy to grease -- would almost certainly lead to a collapse of the multilateral trading system. This scenario was presented to the world's trade ministers last December at the United Nations climate talks in Bali by David Runnalls of the International Institute for Sustainable Development. China and India, that have traditionally resisted any notion of a common responsibility to make current polluters pay would do well to enlist in this effort. First, while there is no limit on the downside for missing a hard cap, with a carbon tax you just pay as you go. If a fast-growing country like China accepted an emissions cap and then overshot it, they would have to purchase carbon credits on the international market. If they missed their target by a lot, carbon credits would be scarce, and purchasing them would suck dry their foreign exchange reserves in one slurp. That's why a carbon tax is much easier to swallow and, anyway, through the power of the price signal, it would produce the same desired result as a hard cap. Second, administering billions of dollars of carbon credits in a cap-and-trade system in an already chaotic regulatory environment would invite a civil war between interest groups seeking billions in carbon credit handouts and the regulator holding the kitty. By contrast, a uniform tax on CO2 emissions levied at a small number of large sites would be relatively clear-cut. During the Montreal Protocol talks in the 1980s, India smartly balked at a suggestion to phase out CFCs in certain products and not in others because of the chaos that would result from the ambiguity. Third, key people in China read our newspapers. They see the ominous clouds of protectionism under the guise of environmentalism C2) Cap and Trade Exacerbates Poverty Randanovich 09 "Rural and agriculture communities will be most disproportionately affected by this convoluted catastrophe of environmental regulations. As President Obama said, Energy prices will "necessarily skyrocket", up to 125 percent—forcing local agriculture producers to pay more for seed, equipment, machinery, steel, and other supplies. Recently, 99 Agriculture Groups came out in opposition to this bill—including the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Chicken Council, the United Egg Producers, the Frozen Food Council and the Society of American Florists. Believe me, they have good reason—farm income is expected to drop $8 billion in 2012, and over $50 billion in 2035, while farm construction costs increase 10 percent and gas prices skyrocket 58 percent higher than today's national average. If you like getting your oil from Hugo Chavez, you're going to love getting breakfast, lunch and dinner from him as well. Farmers aren't the only people who oppose a new national energy tax; business mogul Warren Buffet, a Barack Obama supporter, recently denounced the cap and tax scheme as a "regressive tax" that will harm "an awful lot of people." The fact is that there is not one section, provision, line or word in this entire bill that would be beneficial for a healthy economy, let alone our current, struggling economy. In fact, we should be taking a lesson from Spain, the country who has spent the most amount of money on creating a so-called green economy. A recent study by Spanish economics professor Gabriel Calzada found that in Spain, for every "green" job created through environmental subsidies, 2.2 other jobs were lost. The failure of Spain's efforts to manipulate their economy through the creation of green jobs was even recognized by former President Bill Clinton when he said during a conference in Madrid, Spain that Spain's, "commitment to to clean energy has cost many jobs." The bottom line is that the extent to which the American consumer is going to pay for a national energy tax cannot be overstated—it will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars. The weight of the new taxes associated with this bill will break the backs of some families, forcing them out of their homes and into the street. America will lose its competitive edge in our global economy as we regulate ourselves into economic obscurity, allowing countries like China and India to outpace our productivity because this legislation will make it far too expensive to conduct business in America." *My opponent in his above speech gives no empirical analysis to look to. It was all speculation. My evidence outweighs.