Risk.net reports:
Proponents of carbon trading schemes in the US have often felt like a bride jilted at the altar. In 2009, they were flush with optimism after the House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey Bill, which would have established a federal cap-and-trade programme to reduce carbon emissions, but their hopes were crushed when the bill failed to pass the Senate. Their hearts broken by the federal government, carbon traders have instead sought solace in the arms of the 10 states that have state or regional trading schemes. These include nine northeastern and mid-Atlantic US states participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), as well as California, which launched its own carbon market last November.
Now, however, the federal government is once again flirting with cap-and-trade. On June 25, President Barack Obama unveiled a plan to combat climate change that would bypass Congress by using the regulatory authority of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Perhaps most significantly, Obama ordered the EPA to craft rules limiting the carbon emissions of existing power plants – the agency is already working on such rules for new power plants – and to do so using “market-based instruments”. That means the agency is likely to create new opportunities for carbon trading as it carries out Obama’s orders, though there are important limitations on what it can do, according to lawyers, academics and analysts specialising in carbon trading…
“The chances are pretty good that we will see additional states using emissions trading as their way of meeting these new federal requirements,” says Franz Litz, a law professor and head of the Pace Energy and Climate Center at Pace Law School in New York state.
Some followers of the EPA’s movements are already using the term ‘ObamaCarbon’ to describe the trading scheme the agency could set up, says Thaddeus Huetteman, president of Power & Energy Analytic Resources (Pear), a Virginia-based consultancy. The term is an allusion to ObamaCare, the widely used nickname for the president’s sweeping 2010 health care reforms…
Howdy Mr. Bell
If there were a genuine reason to control CO2 emissions, cap-and-trade would be a more liberty-oriented concept than a carbon tax. But there’s no viable reason to control CO2 emissions, so cap-and-trade is anti-liberty. We’ve been known to excoriate GW Bush for some of his CO2-related ideas.
As for RomneyCare in Taxachussetts, that was Romney’s biggest barrier to nomination and he had to renounce it as a national scheme to get nominated.
Your commentary grows less honest, or at least less accurate, and less coherent with each thread you join.
First off Romney is a RINO, not truly conservative and RomneyCare is proof of that. Additionally, RomneyCare shows the system does not work.
Second, Cap and Tax is definitely a liberal attempt at wealth redistribution and conservatives will reject it regardless of who tries to force it through. The Dems are doing a very good job of driving us to insolvency so yes, we are trying to stay solvent.