We have not been very good stewards of our natural resources.

It took millions of years for the Earth to develop coal, oil and natural gas which we have managed to virtually use up over the last 150 years.

Albeit, we still have a lot of these carbon based fuels left, we won’t, if we keep using them up at the pace we currently are.

Oil will be most likely completely gone in 100 years.

Our stocks of coal and natural gas will last longer but who’s to say how long.

I put little stock in the global warming hysteria that has gripped the nation over the last few years. However, regardless of whether you agree that there is global climate change or not, the fact remains that we have been very greedy when it comes to the use of our natural resources.

Something must be done to start weaning us from the use of carbon fuels. However, the current cap and tax legislation that is winding its way through Congress will not achieve that end.

The bill, called by Congress Cap and Trade is just another government expansion program that will hurt the little guy and end up raising gasoline and utility prices to a level unheard of ever in the history of this nation.

It will do nothing except cause the loss of more jobs and bankruptcy for a number of small businesses.

A one dollar additional federal tax on gasoline which is what cap and tax proposes, would make it impossible for most of us to be able to commute to work and would put many trucking companies completely out of business making it harder to get goods to market. It would cause an inflationary spiral that would leave us all paying more for everything from groceries to electricity. That’s why I call the bill, cap and tax as do many others who are completely opposed to this legislation.

The fact is that without cap and tax, the public has done a pretty good job already on its own without government interference. Many people are working hard to reduce their energy consumption voluntarily.

We need to wean ourselves from carbon fuels. I believe that this can be done without government interference. Rather, it can be done and is being done by educating the public to the fact that we are greedily using up all of our natural resources leaving our children and grand-children to suffer the consequences.

We are well on our way toward accomplishing this education in our schools and among the general public.

Innovation is the answer through private enterprise and innovation has always been the way new industries have been built in America for the last 200 years in this nation.

The government can help by giving incentives to new businesses that develop new innovative ways for developing energy that is carbon free. However, the government should not force us into subservience by increasing taxes to the point where we are all left in the poor house.

Already, a large number of companies have started to develop what are commonly called “green industries.” They have done this without government interference believing that a company can make money by going into these new areas.

Solar panels have improved in leaps and bounds over the last few years and the energy developed from solar will get better and better as innovative designers and inventors make them more and more efficient.

Likewise, wind generation has become more efficient as larger windmills are developed that can make more electricity than ever before.

The purpose of the current Cap and tax legisltation aims to cap emissions of carbon dioxide at a politically-determined level and then have the users and producers of oil, coal, and natural gas buy, sell, and trade their allowance to emit a given amount of carbon dioxide. The idea is to increase the price of oil, coal, and natural gas in an effort to force users to switch to other, less reliable, more expensive forms of energy.

These proposals are very, very costly and economically damaging.

The Institute for Energy Research estimated that if enacted, last year’s flagship cap and trade proposal, generally known as the Lieberman- Warner bill, would increase the cost of gasoline by anywhere from 60 percent to 144 percent and increase the cost of electricity by 77 to 129 percent.

Up to four million Americans would lose their jobs under the program according to the Institute. This would amount to a $4,022 to $6,752 loss in disposable income per household.

In return, the proponents believe that the legislation would accomplish a 63 percent emissions cut.

President Obama’s budget sent to Congress earlier this year proposed to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 83 percent. This legislation was more egregious than Lieberman Warner.

If successful, it’s reasonable to conclude it would lead to even greater economic hardship than envisioned under Lieberman-Warner.

Other problems inherent in cap and trade exist, and they are manifold.

The point of cap and trade is to increase the price of energy.

Cap and trade is designed to increase the price of 85 percent of the energy we use in the United States.

For it to “work,” cap and trade needs to increase the price of oil, coal, and natural gas to force consumers to use more expensive forms of energy.

President Obama’s OMB director, Peter Orszag, told Congress last year that “price increases would be essential to the success of a cap and trade program.”

Cap and trade schemes in Europe haven’t worked. Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) began in 2005. The first phase, from 2005 to2007, did not reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Instead, overall emissions increased 1.9 percent over that period while untold numbers of job were lost. The example of what happened in Spain shows how faulty this type of legislation can be. That country is now near bankruptcy.

European politicians now know that cap and trade is economically harmful and do not want these policies to cost more jobs, especially during these difficult economic times.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently stated that she would not allow EU climate regulations to go forward that would “take decisions that would endanger jobs or investments in Germany.”

The worst thing about cap and trade is that it will harm the poor most.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the costs of reducing carbon dioxide emissions would disproportionally harm the poor.

A mere 15 percent decrease in carbon dioxide emissions would cost the lowest-income Americans 3.3 percent of their income, but only 1.7 percent of the income of higher income households they said when rating the Lieberman-Warner.

President Obama wants to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 83 percent, not a mere 15 percent. This will entail much greater economic sacrifice among those who have the least to spare.

Some proponents of cap and trade claim that cap and trade will improve energy security.

Unfortunately, this is exactly backwards—a cap and trade scheme will undermine and erode our nation’s energy security. When many people express concern about energy security, they are concerned about oil imported from foreign countries.

They do not realize that domestically produced oil is our number one source of oil and Canada is our number two source of oil outside the U.S.

During 2007, the last complete year for which data is available, only 17 percent of the oil we consumed came from the Middle East.

But cap and trade will assess a heavy penalty on Canadian oil. Much of the oil we get comes from its vast reserves of oil sands. Because it requires more energy to extract the resources from those sands than it does to produce oil in the Middle East, cap and tax will make Canadian oil more expensive than oil from the Middle East and accomplish just the opposite of the original intentions of the government proposed program, to wean us off mideast oil.

It’s the unintended consequences in many of these proposals that will haunt us.

It would be better for the government to stay out of any plan to wean us off carbon fuels and just work to stimulate companies that want to develop alternative sources of energy including nuclear, wind, solar and water power.

Without cap and tax, most auto makers are well into the development of flex fuel cars and even trucks are under development.

This is the way to go. Don’t let the government in to stifle this new industry that is already well into helping to bring us a new generation of vehicles and ways to generate electrical power.