‘Cap and Trade’… aka Crap and Betrayed

By Sam Kephart 

Here are some key pointers to the truth about Obama’s proposed cap and trade scam. I call it crap and betrayed. Here’s why: First, the liberal hand-wringing about global climate change is based on junk science or crap. Second, the carbon credit exchange idea is nothing more than a profound economic betrayal of the American middle-class and future generations using a wealth transfer scheme operated by global elites manipulating derivatives.

 President Obama’s proposed “cap and trade” system for limiting and controlling carbon dioxide emissions from energy production, business, and industry will raise the cost of electricity and living for all of us. It will also further enrich the same financial oligarchs that invented sub-prime mortgages, Collateralized Debt Obligations, and Credit Default Swaps.

Since all humans and most human activities generate CO2, lowering those levels voluntarily, using clean technologies, tax incentives, and education is a good idea. Mandating a carbon credits program is a blunder for two reasons: First, there is convincing scientific evidence that shows global warming and cooling trends are, in large part, caused by long-cycle solar energy waves interacting with Earth’s upper atmosphere, not human activity. Do human life and economic activity impact carbon dioxide levels? Yes, obviously. However, the question is does human-generated CO2 create global warming or are these proven solar cycles the principal cause?

Historical data indicate significant heating and cooling periods have occurred on earth long before man and, with all due respect, Al Gore walked the planet. Second is the assumption that a cap system here will offer a net improvement. Unless imposed globally, it can’t. Carbon dioxide accumulates in the upper atmosphere and moves around the world; it doesn’t hang over any given country. A U.S. cap, even if successful, will be rendered meaningless by uncapped growth in China, Russia, India, and other emerging economies.

It can be argued that even if all countries simultaneously reduced their CO2 emissions by 20 percent, it would offer little or no net benefit. Some environmental studies claim that it is too late to curb CO2 accumulations that the damage is done and global warming, if you accept carbon dioxide is the cause, will be with us for centuries.

Further, how do we benefit from the increased costs of compliance and reduced standard of living a cap and trade scheme will impose on us? We don’t. Currently voluntary, a mandated carbon cap will force many of America’s electric utilities, industrial companies, and smaller businesses, like bakeries and possibly even live stock producers, to purchase carbon credits to offset or trade for the “pollution” they’re sending into the upper atmosphere, contributing, at least theoretically, to global warming. These costs will be passed on to us as substantially higher prices for coal-fired electricity and other staples of our economy. Here’s where we get plundered:

Carbon credit futures are financial derivatives; they are nothing more than a shared illusion that literally creates something expensive out of nothing. The same Wall Street casino mentality that caused our current economic mess is already pumping up this $100 billion plus international market. It’s contrived vaporware designed to guilt the American people into paying a hidden energy and pollution tax and transfer our wealth to others. It will have little or no effect on global warming and it will only further enrich the financial elite by generating tens of billions in commissions annually.

“Crap and Betrayed” is the next step in selling out the middle class and bringing our country one step closer to national socialism. Itʼs a fraud… and I can prove it to you.

Currently, there are only two major carbon credit exchanges, The London Exchange and the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange. The London entity owns the one in Chicago, so, in essence, carbon credits brokerage is a global monopoly. Both Barack Obama and Al Gore, Jr. have significant links to the founding of the Chicago Climate Exchange.

If passed, the proposed ʻcrap and betrayedʼ bill will make Obamaʼs and Goreʼs cronies and business associates billionaires overnight…. quite literally.

President Obama has been yammering about openness and transparency in his administration. Have you heard him disclose ANYTHING about something this significant regarding his impending cap and trade legislation? So much for Mr. Obama’s transparency!

The Democrat-controlled Congress is now trying to push though crap and betrayed legislation.

The liberals are attempting to create a thinly veiled wealth redistribution tax masquerading as a solution for global climate change. As if this insanity werenʼt bad enough, Title VIII of the proposed Waxman Markey House bill allows investment banks, hedge funds and other speculators to participate in carbon credit futures, aka derivatives.

Weʼre in our current economic mess because of derivatives. Further, speculation last summer and now is the primary cause of our rising oil and gasoline prices. Since cap and trade would create a de facto tax on coal-fired power plants, do we really want the “big boys” gaming our electric rates too? Didn’t we endure enough of that trading fraud during the Enron years?

This is particularly troubling since government has shown no inclination to properly regulate derivatives. In fact, the bulk of the money ($180 billion so far) given to AIG has been used to pay out for losses to investment banks like Goldman Sachs for gambles they took on derivatives.

Short and sweet, American taxpayers are footing the bill for a bunch of greedy power brokers with a gambling habit who were trying to leverage their bets beyond all reason to puff up the investment returns and get their bonuses.

Further, why should we let those who are primarily responsible for the current economic crisis participate in anything else?

Have they not done enough damage? Has the American public not yet rendered enough “tribute” ?

Al Gore, Jr. is a phony about all this climate change, as well. His father, Al Gore, Sr., was a long-seated director of Occidental Petroleum. Before Dr. Armand Hammer died (he was the founder and CEO of OXY), he arranged for the Gore family to be sold some oil producing properties at a favorable rate in exchange for Gore,

Seniorʼs loyal service to OXY. At the time Gore Senior died, roughly 85% to 90% of the value of the Gore Family Trust was OXY stock or oil producing properties and mineral rights sold to them by OXY. Most of Al Gore’s wealth comes from hydrocarbons. What a crock!!

Lowering America’s carbon footprint may be a good idea, but crap and betrayed isn’t.

Circus impresario P. T. Barnum is credited with saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute!” Are you one of them?