Texans Will Pay a Price for Cap and Trade

Houston Chronicle

Barry Smitherman

The proposed climate change legislation, intended to reduce carbon dioxide emissions over the next 40 years, will substantially raise electricity bills. An analysis recently released by ERCOT, the electric grid operator for most of Texas, joins other reports from around the country that project significant job losses and dramatic increases in the cost of electricity if this legislation is enacted.

About 50 percent of all electric generation in America comes from burning coal and about 20 percent comes from natural gas. And, even though Texas has more wind generation than any other state (and all but a handful of other countries), we still burn fossil fuels to generate the vast majority of our electricity.

What is the justification put forward by the bill’s proponents, including President Barack Obama, for destroying jobs and dramatically increasing your electric bill? An attempt, based upon computer models with no guarantee of success, to prevent the Earth’s temperature from rising a couple degrees by the year 2100. (In fact, one study projects that at best this proposed legislation reduces the already projected rise in temperatures by only 9/100ths of one degree in 2050.)