Greater Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce Business Journal and Other Publications Q1 2016 Business Journal | Page 20

Congress Can Cool Off
Obama’s Climate Plans
President Obama wants a climate deal and is willing to pay dearly
to get it.

The ostensible goal of the Paris talks (Nov. 30-Dec. 11) is to convince countries to
commit to enacting laws that reduce carbon emissions. That fits President Obama’s vision of a world without fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. The
American people oppose these policies, but the president has shown himself deU.S. DEPARTMENT OF
THE INTERIORBUREAU OF
LAND MANAGEMENT

termined to circumvent Congress.

SENATOR JOHN
BARRASSO, M.D.

When the U.N. climate-change talks convene in Paris, the risks will
be high for American taxpayers. President Obama wants a climate
deal and is willing to pay dearly to get it. The inevitable outcome is

BOONDOGGLE
A Green Scheme for our Nation
is a potential “boondoggle.” It is
a cap-and-trade scheme which
is a lobbyist’s dream. For those
of you unacquainted with how
these boondoggles work, it goes
something like this: (1) regulators
assign an emissions quota to
tens of thousands of individual
industrial suppliers and users of
energy (because emissions are
synonymous with conventional
energy use, an emissions “cap” is
the same as energy rationing); (2)
these businesses then purchase
the right to emit their allotment in
the form of permits disbursed by a
government-run auction; (3) these
businesses are allowed to trade
permits among themselves (ie, a
company that exceeds its emissions
quota can buy permits from a
company that emitted less than its
quota); and (4) the government
spends revenue raised in the auction
of emissions permits-as much as
$300 billion a year, according to
the Congressional Budget Office-on
green technologies and mitigation
of the cap-and-trade’s adverse
economic impact.

20 | Quarter 1 M 2016

a plan with unproven benefits and unreachable goals, but very real
costs. It will be up to Congress to check the president’s ambition
of committing the U.S. to an international green scheme that will
produce little or no return.
The ostensible goal of the Paris talks (Nov. 30-Dec. 11) is to
convince countries to commit to enacting laws that reduce carbon
emissions. That fits President Obama’s vision of a world without
fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. The American people
oppose these policies, but the president has shown himself determined to circumvent Congress.
The Obama administration has already imposed burdensome regulations—for instance, the sprawling Clean Power Plan aimed at
wi [