How does Washington plan to resolve our energy problems and control atmospheric temperatures? Well, how do they fix anything? By proposing a gargantuan boondoggle.

A “cap and trade” bill, one that will supposedly cut 66 percent of our emissions by 2050, is being debated in Congress this week.

To begin with, proponents of America’s Climate Security Act have been misleading the public by claiming that cap and trade is a “market- based” solution. In truth, cap and trade does to the market what “American Idol” does to music.

The idea sounds harmless: government caps emissions, and corporations trade the allotted credits among themselves. Some of the credits will be auctioned off by government. The Wall Street Journal estimates these auctions will net $6.7 trillion for government coffers by 2050.

And those de facto taxes will not be paid by disreputable energy CEOs and their greasy lobbyist henchmen. They will be paid by you.

Environmental special interest groups — willing to do absolutely anything for the environment with your money — will be lining up at the trough to gobble up billions of dollars in pork offered by the Joe Lieberman- and John Warner-sponsored legislation.

One bill has around $190 billion allocated to training for “green-collar jobs” to replace those obnoxious people who produce energy you can actually afford. More than $500 billion is earmarked for “wildlife adaptation.” Another $342 billion would be spent on international aid — because Lord knows we don’t need it here — and billions more for mass transit, nuclear plants, kickbacks to Indian tribes and corporations, assistance to those having trouble paying energy bills (wonder why?) and other knickknacks.

OK, so despite the enormous costs, we’re positive the cap and trade will work, right?

The European Union has a cap and trade scheme in place. It’s generally regarded as a complete failure. The price of credits has plummeted, and countries were unsuccessful in meeting the emissions cap set by the Kyoto Protocol.

So, naturally, proponents refer to the EU cap and trade scheme as a “test run” or a program only in its delicate “infancy.” It just wasn’t executed properly. If smarter folks like Warner and Barbara Boxer could get hold of this hyper-complex initiative, boy, we’re bound to see results.

The Kyoto agreement, incidentally, aspires to slash 175 millions tons of COb by 2012, which, according to professor Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado, would save six and a half days of carbon emission in total.

If delaying six days has been so difficult in Europe, what kind of economic toll would a 66 percent cut have on our economy? (The Bush administration has released a study offering a rosier picture. But since when do we care what it has to say, right? )

Naturally, numerous senators have employed the end-of-world scenario of catastrophic global warming . . . I mean climate change . . . to sell the cap and trade. But of course, few mention a recent study by the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization — the organization behind the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — explaining there has been no warming the past decade.

Scientists explain there could be numerous causes for this temporary slowdown. It’s all very complicated.

What the layman can easily comprehend, however, is that climate is unpredictable, difficult to accurately model and impossible to control.

What we also know is that both John McCain and Barack Obama support some cap and trade scheme. Fossil fuels — which provide 85 percent of our energy — are so yesterday, these guys will legislate it away by 2050 whether a viable replacement exists or not.

Years ago, we might have referred to the rationing of energy credits and massive social engineering as “socialism.”

Now we just call it bipartisan consensus.



Reach columnist David Harsanyi at 303-954-1255 or dharsanyi@denverpost.com.