Run Like A Deere From Cap-And-Trade
Posted 08/27/2010 07:03 PM ET
Junk Science: Deere & Co., a major player in the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, drops out, saying the group's legislative strategy is no longer a foundation for moving forward. Is cap-and-trade dead?
The farm equipment giant was a major player in the Climate Action Partnership, a group of large firms that advocate cap-and-trade legislation and lead the drive for reductions of so-called greenhouse gases. In announcing its withdrawal, spokesman Ken Golden said: "We came to the conclusion that Deere had other opportunities to be involved in climate change initiatives."
In other words, Deere came to the conclusion that in being part of a coalition backing legislation such as Waxman-Markey, which has passed the House, and Kerry-Lieberman, which is going nowhere in the Senate at least for now, it was riding a dead horse.
We'd like to think the grand poo-bahs at Deere have wised up, recognizing that the junk science behind climate change has been exposed as the fraud it is, and that the economic consequences of cap-and-trade will be devastating to companies such as Deere and Caterpillar, another corporate giant that recently quit the group.
T.J. Rodgers, CEO of Cypress Semiconductor, isn't surprised. In an interview Thursday with Neil Cavuto on Fox News, Rodgers saw the move as part of a brewing corporate revolt against an overbearing government sucking the economic oxygen out of the room, tilting at windmills, imposing burdens such as the health care overhaul and environmental regulations but not providing the incentives or certainty that companies need to plan and survive.
"When we continue to put money into bad things, take money out of the productive sector, take money away from me to invest, take money away from families to spend on what they think is right, and dump it into these foolish government projects and blather about green jobs," Rodgers said, "you know eventually the overall economy is going to get less competitive and some sort of recession or some sort of problem is going to set in."
As a result, Rodgers continued, "I am not spending any money, I am not opening any plants and I am not hiring anybody, and corporate America is doing the same thing."
Hence, the jobless recovery. Corporate America can be accused of being greedy, but not stupid.
Taxes on energy or carbon will not boost the economy, nor will worrying about delta smelt or imposing drilling moratoriums in a nation starved for energy. Yet the administration scratches its collective head as to why business is not hiring as it declares carbon dioxide a pollutant and plots to regulate everything down to your lawn mower.
Business knows renewable energy must be practical, competitive and necessary. If government mandates it, it prohibitively raises costs and kills jobs. Spain's experience is that for each "green" job created, 2.2 jobs are lost due to the siphoning off of resources that private industry needed to grow and prosper, replaced by an added cost burden. It doesn't help when the wind turbine blades are made in China.
According to the Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis, under cap-and-tax legislation, gas prices at the pump would increase 58%. Residential electricity costs would "necessarily skyrocket" by 90%. Total GDP loss by 2035 would be $9.4 trillion. Net job losses (after "green" job creation) would be nearly 1.9 million in 2012 and could approach 2.5 million by 2035. Manufacturing would lose 1.4 million jobs in 2035.
Cap-and-trade is increasingly seen as the final crushing burden on a business community that wants to hire, wants to expand, wants to expand the economy, yet is frustrated by an administration more concerned with the earth's climate than the business climate, an administration that, as Rodgers says, has "us worried because we do not know what the government is going to do."
Unfortunately, an increasing number are convinced the government doesn't either. |
