Selling permits brings in cash, this cash is used to offset increases in energy costs. Those at the lowest levels of income (lowest quartile, IIRC) will be offset to the point that their net outlay due to C&T will be negative (cf. baseline).
They still have energy bills, no freebies. It's just an assessment of how after compares to before. Eventually energy companies will be pushed to, firstly, be more efficient and, secondly, to move to better cleaner sources of energy. Same for us as consumers, if those in the quartiles that attract an increase in outlay per year don't appreciate the outcome, being more efficient and reducing energy would be the rational response.
Or not.
What does “god” (NASA’s Jim Hansen, AGW’s ‘creator’) have to say about this? Let us pray:
NASA's Hansen: Obama's Cap-and-Trade Bill 'Less Than Worthless'
Some leaders of big environmental organizations have said I'm naïve to posit an alternative to cap-and-trade, and have suggested I stick to climate modeling. Let's pass a bill, any bill, now and improve it later, they say. The real naïveté is their belief that they, and not the fossil-fuel interests, are driving the legislative process.
The fact is that the climate course set by Waxman-Markey is a disaster course. Their bill is an astoundingly inefficient way to get a tiny reduction of emissions. It's less than worthless, because it will delay by at least a decade starting on a path that is fundamentally sound from the standpoints of both economics and climate preservation.
www.huffingtonpost.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow"> www.huffingtonpost.com...
Say it ain’t so, Jim! We’ve got Copenhagen and Obama to save us, right?
The fraudulence of the Copenhagen approach – “goals” for emission reductions, “offsets” that render even iron-clad goals almost meaningless, an ineffectual “cap-and-trade” mechanism – must be exposed. We must rebel against such politics-as-usual.
…
Governments going to Copenhagen claim to have such goals for 2050, which they will
achieve with the “cap-and-trade” mechanism. They are lying through their teeth.
www.columbia.edu...[url]
You can’t be serious, Jim. Isn’t “:carbon trading” or “cap and trade” the best possible solution?
Cap and trade with offsets, in contrast, is astoundingly ineffective. Global emissions rose rapidly in response to Kyoto, as expected, because fossil fuels remained the cheapest energy.
Cap and trade is an inefficient compromise, paying off numerous special interests
[url] www.guardian.co.uk..." target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow"> www.columbia.edu...[url]
You can’t be serious, Jim. Isn’t “:carbon trading” or “cap and trade” the best possible solution?
Cap and trade with offsets, in contrast, is astoundingly ineffective. Global emissions rose rapidly in response to Kyoto, as expected, because fossil fuels remained the cheapest energy.
Cap and trade is an inefficient compromise, paying off numerous special interests
[url] www.guardian.co.uk...
Now wait a minute Jim. How can we not consider cap and trade; it’s the best possible approach, our leaders tell us?
Other characteristics of the ‘cap’ approach: (1) unpredictable price volatility, (2) it makes millionaires on Wall Street and other trading floors at public expense, (3) it is an invitation to blackmail by utilities that threaten ‘blackout coming’ to gain increased emission permits, (4) it has overhead costs and complexities, inviting lobbyists and delaying implementation.
The biggest problem with [cap and trade] is that it will not solve the problem.
www.columbia.edu..." target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow"> www.columbia.edu...
But we “know” cap and trade works because of SO2 reduction, don’t we?
www.nytimes.com..." target="_blank" class="postlink" rel="nofollow"> www.nytimes.com...
Supporters of cap and trade point to the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments that capped sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from coal-burning power plants — the main pollutants in acid rain — at levels below what they were in 1980. This legislation allowed power plants that reduced emissions to levels below the cap to sell the credit for these excess reductions to other utilities whose emissions were too high, thus giving plant owners a financial incentive to cut back their pollution. Sulfur emissions have been reduced by 43 percent in the two decades since. Great success? Hardly.
Because cap and trade is enforced through the selling and trading of permits, it actually perpetuates the pollution it is supposed to eliminate. If every polluter’s emissions fell below the incrementally lowered cap, then the price of pollution credits would collapse and the economic rationale to keep reducing pollution would disappear.
Ooops.
jw
