In his July 21st article, Carbon-control bill faces steep hill in Senate, Associated Press reporter Charles Babington makes it sound like nothing but good will come from a bill that prices carbon dioxide. Discussing last year’s Waxman-Markey bill Babington writes, “The House voted 219-212 last year for a “cap and trade” energy plan. It would create economic incentives to limit heat-trapping gases from power plants, vehicles and other sources.”

These economic incentives are nothing more than crony capitalist handouts given to large corporations. The incentives are subsidies, loan guarantees, tax credits, and regulations. In the free market, these are not the incentives you want to see. The incentive in a cap and trade system is for people to use less energy by raising the price of it. Knowing that this is a large energy tax that will generate large amounts of revenue, businesses sent thousands of lobbyists to flood the halls of Congress asking for a piece of the “climate revenue” pie. With the majority of the energy tax revenue handed out to large corporations, less will be made available to the public, leaving the American consumer to pick up the costly tab.

The AP also carries no alternative comment to Senator Joe Lieberman’s (I-CT) comment that a cap and trade or any emissions reduction bill will be a “jobs-creation bill.” The Congressional Budget Office recently affirmed that an emissions-reduction bill would kill more jobs than it would create: “Job losses in the industries that shrink would lower employment more than job gains in other industries would increase employment, thereby raising the overall unemployment rate.”