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.)

This is almost the equivalent of eating only tofu and water for the rest of your life in order to lose a pound or two.

It’s no wonder that the director of the Texas Bureau of Economic Geology called a recent finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that carbon dioxide is a pollutant “absurd.” And, while it is certainly hot now, does anyone in Washington know that back on May 17, in Amarillo, the temperature was 43 degrees — close to the record low set back in 1945?

For example, EPA’s analysis of this bill estimated the possibility, under certain circumstances, of an almost 300 percent increase in electricity rates and trillions in lost productivity by 2050. EPA also highlighted the fact that those areas of the country with: 1) long driving distances; 2) large demands for residential air conditioning; and 3) an electric generation portfolio heavily reliant upon fossil fuel, would be negatively affected the most. That pretty much describes Texas — 835 miles from one end of the state to the other, really hot summers and more than 80 percent of our electricity comes from burning fossil fuels. We are the state that will suffer the most under this proposed climate change legislation.

An analysis by the National Association of Manufacturers found that job losses in Texas would be from 250,000 to 330,000 in 2030, and that electricity prices would increase between 100 and 145 percent.

Another report, by the Western Business Roundtable, looked at the economic destruction likely to be caused by climate change legislation and found that five Western states would lose more than 600,000 jobs and suffer $220 billion in economic loss, all in an attempt to produce a future temperature benefit in the year 2100 of a fraction of one degree Celsius.

A third study recently found that more than 95 percent of the cost of proposed climate change legislation would be paid for by electric consumers living outside of the Pacific coast and New England. In other words, those of us living in “fly-over country” will pay almost the entire costs of climate change legislation.

It’s no wonder that the sponsors of this proposed legislation, who are from California and Massachusetts, think this is good legislation — their constituents won’t have to pay for it, but those of us living between the coasts will.

For the complete article:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6512861.html