Waxman Markey Bill Passes. Thanks For Nothing Nancy

Nancy Pelosi. Hold your head high. You have reason to be very proud.

In a landmark decision, the House of Representatives passed the Waxman Markey Bill to Cap and Trade Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Gas emissions.
The Bill was shepherded through the House by Nancy Pelosi, something that she probably sees as an achievement that she can be proud of. This Bill is one that the President probably sees as an achievement also, but if the truth is to be told, he probably sees it more with relief, because now he can strut the World stage saying that his Country passed this ‘landmark’ Bill in an effort to save the Planet.

Let’s hope against hope that the Senate sees some sense and rejects this Bill, not to spite the President, but out of sheer common sense.

This Bill is nothing but a new tax, and a huge new tax at that, and will result in nothing at all happening to those CO2 emissions.

Uninformed readers will obviously say I’m just saying this to take a particular political stance, but nothing could be further from the truth.

It’s now a known fact that it will cost every U.S. citizen, and not just the small amount that the Bill’s proposers have told you, but huge extra amounts of money.

Let’s look at that then, shall we?

The largest of those CO2 emitters are those coal fired power plants, so let’s look at how much they emit.

Keep in mind that no one who has proposed this Bill has told you exactly how much they propose to charge per ton of CO2, but that’s pretty incidental really when you actually see the amount of CO2 being emitted.

Currently, the U.S. generates just a tad lower than 50% of all the consumed power from those coal fired power plants, and just to indicate those numbers, I’m going to quote actual figures, because a bland percentage makes it sound somewhat smaller than actual figures.

These figures are directly from the U.S. Government’s own resource database, the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The amount of electrical power consumed in the U.S. each year is 4,064,237 Thousand MegaWattHours, or when expressed as what you see on your electricity bill in KiloWattHours (KWH) that number is 4,064,237,000,000 KWH. Just more than 4 Trillion KWH.
Coal fired power provides 1,934,583,000,000 KWH or just under 2 Trillion KWH.

To produce that amount of electrical power, those coal fired power plants burn 1,017,769 Thousand tons of coal or just over 1 Billion tons of coal.

Each ton of coal produces 2.86 tons of CO2, so that’s 2,910,819,340 tons of CO2 or just under 3 Billion tons of CO2. (The overall World total for CO2 emission from every source is 50 Billion tons, and that 50 Billion tons adds 0.0002% to the overall Atmospheric content of this trace gas, a gas that is essential for life on Earth)

That’s a lot of numbers, and just expressing it as a bland percentage gives you no perspective of the real figures, but that number we want to most put under the spotlight is that last one, that 3 Billion tons of CO2.

So then, now do you see why a dollar number per ton of CO2 has not been expressed to you, the people it will affect most of all.

President Obama said in the run up to the election, no misquotes here, or being taken out of context either. He said categorically that he would like to see it start at $50 per ton, and would not be worried if the price of those carbon credits went as high as $500 per ton.

So, let’s be sanguine and presume he’ll stick to his word and start it at $50 per ton.

Now, the income from the burning of coal to produce half your electricity amounts to $150 Billion, and that’s not just a one off. It’s for each and every year.

Keep also in mind that CO2 emissions from coal fired power plants alone amount to 30% of the overall emissions, so when looking at the overall amount of money FLOWING INTO GOVERNMENT COFFERS from the emission of CO2 from all sources now amounts to $500 Billion each and every year. That’s 500 Billion Dollars. Half a Trillion. 65% of the Stimulus. Every year.

Perhaps now you see why this Administration so desperately wanted to introduce this Waxman Markey Bill ….. to get their hands on all that lovely money, and so much of it, guaranteed, every year.

IT’S A NEW TAX, AND THAT’S ALL IT IS.

Who pays then?

Let’s just go back to what is being raised from coal fired power, that $150 Billion.
The new impost will be levied on each individual coal fired power plant.
Fair enough you say. After all, they are the ones emitting this CO2.
This $150 Billion impost will be passed directly down to the consumers, everyone who uses electrical power.

That amount will be passed to consumers at the three major levels of consumption, Residential, 37%, Commercial 37% and Industrial 25%.

So 37% of that $150 Billion comes to $56 Billion, and with 105 million residential consumers, that comes to around $540 a year. Keep in mind this is averaging it out across the whole U.S. The average current U.S. power bill is just on $1150 per year.
Now, this is where a percentage gives a better indicator because costs vary from State to State. You may think that variation is not much, an incorrect assumption, as for the lowest cost State, the bill is $700 per year for New Mexico, and the most expensive State is Maine at $1750 per year, so that variation is quite considerable.

So, just using the average of $1150 per year, then that increase of $540 amounts to a percentage increase of 47%, so for your own personal electrical utilities price increase, just take out your last electricity utilities bill, and add another half to it.

Now do you see the point?

However, that’s not the end of it.

Those other consumers in the Commercial, and the Industrial sectors will also feel the pinch with the same percentage increase felt on them also. To cover that, they will have to increase the price of everything they sell to cover that extra overhead, and you, the consumer will be slugged again.

So then, will this force us to use electrical power more judiciously?

Yeah! Right!

As I have explained previously, you tell me where in your home you are going to cut back on electricity.

The chart at left here indicates residential power usage. Click on the image to open the chart in a new and larger window.

Cook less. Wash your clothes less. Turn the fridge down, and by a considerable amount, not just one degree or so. Use less hot water. Less heating in Winter. No. Nothing will change. You will use electricity in much the same manner as you always have.

Great play will be made about the savings from converting to those new efficient compact fluorescent lighting. As I have also explained previously, these savings amount to 35 cents a week, or $18 a year, or 3% of the proposed increase.

If every household in the US switched every bulb for these new fluorescent lights, the power saved would would amount to a CO2 emissions saving of the equivalent of less than what is being emitted from one of those large coal fired plants, amounting to about 0.6% of the U.S. total CO2 emissions from coal fired power plants.

Again you might say that this huge amount of incoming money will be used to construct renewable plants like solar and wind plants. Even if every dollar raised from this new tax was diverted to construct those new plants, then there would be no real change because those new plants will not be coming on line for seven to ten years.
The real killer is that those new renewable plants CANNOT supply electrical power on a 24/7/365 basis, so no matter how many of these white elephant renewable plants they construct, it will not result in the closing of one coal fired power plant, because they will be needed to supply that 24 hours of power in every day.

Perhaps now you can see that this new tax will not reduce the CO2 emissions at all, in the near term or even in the long term.

The only reason it is being introduced is so that your Government can get their hands on more of your money, and in the whole of this Global Warming Climate Change debate, that was the first thing they did, that being to make sure they cashed in at the earliest possible point.

Nancy Pelosi. You have reason to be proud. You’ve fleeced the public, and told them it’s for their own good. You should be immensely proud.

Let’s hope the Senate has more sense than the Democrat Representatives who bow down in front of the God Pelosi, the Grand Architect of this whole piece of Bovine Waste product.

Tagged: Carbon Cap And Tax, Carbon Cap And Trade, Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Gas, Coal Fired Power Generation, Kyoto, Lily-Livered Liberals, Limp-Wrist Liberals, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Waxman Markey Bill

Posted in: 111th Congress, America (USA), Barry Soetoro (aka Barack Hussein Obama) Extreme Left, Blundering Bureaucrats, Climate Alarmists, Climate Change, Conniving-Lying-Sneaky Politicians, Democrats, Environment, Environmental activists, Global Warming, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Leftists (In the USA aka as Liberals-Progressives), Political Prostitutes, Politics, Power Hungry, Propaganda