Today’s excerpt from CEI’s film, Policy Peril: Why Global Warming Policies Are More Dangerous Than Global Warming Itself, is on cap-and-trade.  

What is cap and trade?

Cap-and-trade is Al Gore’s (and the environmental community’s) leading “solution” to the alleged “climate crisis”–the centerpiece, for example, of the Kyoto Protocol climate treaty.

There are many technical  issues in the design and implementation of a cap-and-trade program, but the basic idea is as follows. 

The government establishes a legal limit–a “cap”–on the total quantity of greenhouse gases that regulated (”covered”) entities may emit. Each covered entity must acquire one federally-created or -certified allowance (permit,…

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Most media coverage of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act  of 2009 (ACES), focuses on the bill’s cap-and-trade program and the free rationing coupons (emission allowances) that the bill’s co-sponsors, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA), had to hand out to utilities and other interests to secure their support for the legislation.

But the cap-and-trade program occupies only one of four of the bill’s main sections (”titles”).  Other titles contain a host of mandates and “incentives” (carrots and sticks) to…

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The National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) today released a study by Charles River Associates (CRA) on the economic impacts of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACESA), the regulatory climate bill sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA).

The results aren’t pretty, and they generally get worse over time as the Act’s emission caps tighten. Relative to baseline levels, ACESA would:

Reduce employment by 2.3 million jobs in 2015, 2.7 million jobs in 2020, 2.5 million jobs…

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