From light bulb laws to world hunger, what’s not to like about Cap&Trade?

posted at 7:02 am on July 2, 2009 by Pundette
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Cap and trade is completely mental. Pat, who is actually reading the bill, reports the following:

And how will this bill affect you? It has regulations on every single aspect of your daily life. There are light bulb restrictions (no more than 60 watts in your candelabra); in fact there’s a whole section that deals with lamps. If you decide to build a new home, it must meet new and specific energy requirements. If you decide to sell your existing home, a federal inspector must inspect your home, determine it’s energy rating, and if your home is found to be unacceptable then you must retrofit and make changes before you will be able to sell.

There’s an entire section on planting trees including guidelines on “scientific based measurements outlining the species and minimum distance required between trees planted…in addition to the minimum required distance to be maintained between such trees and building foundations, air conditioning units, driveways and walkways…”. Do we really need the federal government telling us where we can plant trees?

There’s a section dealing with outdoor lighting in which you are given instructions about landscape lights, lights in your swimming pool, lights on artwork and other architectural lighting. The federal government is going to tell you what wattage that light can be and how many you can have. In some cases the lights must be capable of producing two different light levels (100 and 60 watt).

There are new government regulations for water dispensers, hot tubs and other appliances. They’re going to regulate water usage, and regulate wood stoves. Any wood stove that does not meet regulation must be “destroyed and recycled.”

Pat has written a follow-up here. Some are calling C&T “dead in the water,” but Michelle Malkin tells us to gird our loins because this monster will take some killing. If we don’t call our senators the dead thing in the water will be us.

More details on what’s inside this creature from Stop the ACLU, who intersperses chunks of the bill (too long to copy here, so please go read) with the following comments:

They’re coming after your TVs, your furnaces, your blenders, you name it. And there is a requirement that CO2 output be part of the labels on appliances. More cost.

They’re coming after your water usage. They’ll bombard you with Nanny State ads about your water usage. They’re coming after your dishwashers and washing machines, your faucets, your toilets, vis a vis “performance standards.” They will also push to make sure that only professionally licensed people work on everything water. Costs go up.

They’re coming after your fireplaces.

Trips to the dentists will be more expensive if you want Nitrous Oxide, or, maybe dentists will just do away with it, due to the certain coming cost of maintaining the paperwork. If Los Federales allow dentists to even keep it. And notice that last part. the Administrator can designate whatever he wants as a bad gas. Sulfer hexafluoride has many applications, and regulation will drive your costs up. Nitrogen trifluoride is used in flat screen displays. Perfluorocarbon’s have many medical uses, as well as in electrical devices and cosmetics. Cost. Go. Up.

Please go read it. The writer finishes up with this recommendation:

. . . any Congress Critter who voted for this should start to live the life, get rid of any vehicle that gets below 40mpg, and should have to buy and drive those micro-mobiles, if not walk or take a bike to work. Or, take the DC Metro. No drivers for them, no limo’s. Fly coach, or, better yet, take the train or bus, home.

Keep dreaming. None of these restrictions will apply to them, just as ObamaCare won’t apply to the Obamas. But while we’re fantasizing, read this from Doug Ross: Cap and Trade for Congress.

That anyone voted for this terrible bill speaks volumes about the US Congress.

Even if you set aside the following –

• C&T proposes to fix a problem that doesn’t exist
• C&T would have no effect on fixing that problem
• C&T would actually hurt the environment
• C&T would deal a body blow to every major aspect of the economy, killing businesses and jobs and increasing prices on everything

– the provisions in this bill would impose an extreme, unprecedented level of micromanagement and control over our everyday lives.

And this critical issue has been completely ignored: C&T could seriously tamper with the world’s food supply, resulting in “starvation among poorer populations.” How’s that for an unintended consequence? Robert Zubrin writes:

If you tax carbon, you tax fertilizer and pesticides. If you tax these things, you tax food, and by no small amount. A $15/ton CO2 tax would increase fertilizer production costs directly by about $60/ton, with the cap-and-trade bill’s increased transport costs inflating the burden still more. That’s enough to make many farmers use less fertilizer, and less fertilizer means less food.

To get a sense of what it would mean for farmers to abandon fertilizer, it is only necessary to go to the supermarket and compare the price of the “organic” produce, grown without chemical fertilizer, to the regular produce, which, while just as nutritious, typically costs less than half as much. It is one thing for wealthy organic food buffs to voluntarily pay such high prices for their food — that is their right. But to impose such costs for basic groceries on everyone else, and particularly the poor, as part of a largely symbolic effort to try to change the weather, is self-indulgent in the extreme.

But the self-indulgent elites who ride around in private (or military) jets and limousines and pay double for groceries are the guys passing and signing the laws.

Cross-posted here.

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