Cap and Trade California is the New Greece

California Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32) becomes law this week.  This far reaching bill will enact a cap on greenhouse gas emission in the once Golden State.  The bill is modeled after similar legislation in the European Union that established a Cap and Trade system for greenhouse gas emissions.  California will now become the second biggest market for Cap and Trade after the EU. 

Sounds like a great idea to cap greenhouse gas emissions and then force those who cannot eliminate their emissions to pay a fee for those emissions that were not eliminated.  Our local newspaper the Marin IJ carried a very informative article today on the mechanism of implementation of the Cap and Trade bill.  In a nutshell the intent of the Bill is return California to its 1990 levels of emissions of greenhouse gasses by 2020.   I think that we will reach that level simply by the continued decay of our economy and the flight of businesses and citizens from the once Golden State.  We are the Greece of the United States.

For a motorist paying the pass through effects of the bill it will be an additional tax of 12 cents a gallon with a present futures market price of $12 per ton of CO2.  The $12 per ton is actually a “fair” price for the market value of a ton of CO2 emissions.  I have previously blogged that plug in electric vehicles actually impose a cost of over $500 per ton of avoided CO2 to the motorist.  The real cost of the Bloom Box fuel cell technology that Al Gore is invested in, is an infinite carbon tax as the Bloom Box is dirtier and much more costly than power generated in a combined cycle power station.  The math shows that dividing added costs by increased emission means an infinite tax from this rubbish technology.

Based on the above, a California motorist paying only $12 per ton of CO2 emissions is getting a “bargain”.    My worry with the Cap and Trade system is that it will get gamed and the State will not have the resources or the intelligence to know they are being taken for a ride.  Remember the deregulation of electricity under Governor Davis and how Enron were the much smarter guys in the room compared with the California Energy Commission. 

As the Green Machine is all for conservation and energy efficiency I actually am not sad we citizens of the once Golden State will test this Cap and Trade system at a low price.  If it gets out of hand and the real cost is above $20 or $25 a ton of carbon dioxide then I think we will simply be overtaxed.  I am also all for California abandoning the tax credits given to Al Gore’s Bloom Box as that is simply the most idiotic waste of tax payers’ money.  But AB 32 did not end those massive tax credits to the owners of Bloom Boxes.  The state assembly should now revoke the tax credits given to the fully discredited Bloom Box and I will not lodge any complaints about paying an extra 12 cents a gallon of gasoline.

What I do not want to do is pay over $200 per megawatt hour of dirty power from a Bloom Box when I could have paid $70 per megawatt hour of power from a cleaner combined cycle power station.  The fools in Delaware are doing this with their 47 megawatt Bloom Power station in the coastal zone.   But wait Al Gore the father of the Bloom Box is going to give a talk in New York City linking dirty energy to dirty weather.   I wonder if the opportunistic environmental carpet bagger will discuss his Bloom Box as being the poster child for dirty energy?  Hell no he stands to make many more millions out of Bloom Energy and his hypocritical speeches

No doubt California is the new Greece and Al Gore is not Plato who said “there must always remain something that is antagonistic to good”.  That is precisely why we have Al Gore and His Bloom Box.