Morning Bell: The Futility of Cap and Trade

Conn Carroll / September 23, 2009

Yesterday, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hosted a climate summit in New York designed to improve the chances that the December U.N. Copenhagen Climate Conference would produce a substantive treaty that would cap and cut carbon emissions. The Copenhagen agreement would replace the Kyoto Protocol that was rejected by the United States Senate 95 – 0. But as the Washington Post reports, even President Barack Obama’s star power failed to move nations towards meaningful carbon reductions:

Initially, many climate activists had hoped this year would yield a pact in which nations would agree to cut their greenhouse gas emissions under the auspices of a legal international treaty. But recent announcements by China, Japan and other nations point to a different outcome of U.N. climate talks that will be held in December in Copenhagen: a political deal that would establish global federalism on climate policy, with each nation pledging to take steps domestically.

But climate “federalism” would be pointless. It is called “global” warming for a reason. Just ask Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson who admitted to the Senate this July that “U.S. action alone will not impact CO2 levels.” This is 100% consistent with all the best science which shows that the carbon reductions under the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill will not affect global temperatures in any material way. For example a recent study of cap-and-trade by MIT concluded: (more…)