Ready for cap-and-trade?

So ready or not, here it comes! The cap-and-trade bill is making it's way through congress. This bill will force evil polluters (like your power company) to limit their CO2 emissions (that's the cap) or buy carbon credits (the trade.) Read the summary here.

Of course this will result in higher energy and gas prices. Much higher. The EPA did a study found here, that estimates the cost. They estimate that gasoline will cost 22 to 49 cents more in 2020 and electricity will cost 44% more by 2030.

They make some longshot assumuptions though. They assume, for one thing, that most power plants in the country will be replaced in the next 20 years with new ones that include a system for "carbon sequestration," capturing and storing CO2.

From Wikipedia: (Bold emphasis mine.)
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an approach to mitigate global warming by capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from large point sources such as fossil fuel power plants and storing it instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. Technology for large scale capture of CO2 is already commercially available and fairly well developed. Although CO2 has been injected into geological formations for various purposes, the long term storage of CO2 is a relatively untried concept and as yet (2007) no large scale power plant operates with a full carbon capture and storage system.

CCS applied to a modern conventional power plant could reduce CO2 emissions to the atmosphere by approximately 80-90% compared to a plant without CCS[1]. Capturing and compressing CO2 requires much energy and would increase the fuel needs of a coal-fired plant with CCS by about 25%[1]. These and other system costs are estimated to increase the cost of energy from a new power plant with CCS by 21-91%[1]. These estimates apply to purpose-built plants near a storage location: applying the technology to preexisting plants or plants far from a storage location will be more expensive.

The EPA also made the assumption that many new nuclear power plants will be built and that CO2 emitters will be able to buy carbon offsets. Read this story to see how well these programs work.

Here's the really scary part from the EPA: "The absence of these technologies is estimated to significantly increase compliance costs." In one section they estimate doubling or quadrupling costs. That's just gas and electricity.

The EPA estimate also states that total Gross Domestic Product for the U.S. will be lower by $444 billion to $1.3 trillion... in the best case scenario. This will be due to the higher cost of doing everything and the fact that folks will have less money to invest.

How will this effect the trucking company that brings the food to your local grocery store? How about UPS? Farmers?

So my question? Is it worth destroying our economy to slow global warming, if there is even a tiny doubt that CO2 is the sole cause of the warming?

Well, it doesn't really matter what we think. Both Obama and McCain support this bill. So we are in for it no matter who wins this fall.

Better start saving your pennies now.