Global waming? Hold on to your wallets

As the Senate debates a global warming bill this week, will reality finally have a role in the debate?

Only if supporters of radically overhauling our energy policy will admit the actual costs of such an approach.

The Senate takes up legislation this week which is designed to reduce the nation's carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions by two-thirds within 40 years. Central to the 500-page proposal is a "pollution allowance trading system," which essentially creates a system of rationing various sources of energy, and thus increasing prices.

What this will actually do to curtail "global warming" remains murky, especially since India and China won't be attending the parade -- but that's just a minor detail to left-wing environmentalists, who see an opportunity to use this issue to cripple human advancement.

As debate on the measure approaches, at least a few brave souls -- primarily on the Republican side, of course -- have been highlighting the fact that this legislation will send energy prices through the roof.

Consumers are already struggling with gasoline approaching $5 a gallon and other utility costs that have been moving steadily higher for the past few years. New mandates placed on producers in the name of "global warming" will only make matters worse.

Even those who worship at the church of global warming agree that many Americans might not be eager to cap emissions if they realized the price.

"This debate is going to be mostly about costs," Daniel Lashoff, director of the Climate Center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told The Associated Press. "But we want to make sure in that debate we don't forget that the cost of inaction on global warming would be much higher than the cost of the emission reductions called for in this bill."

In fact, Mr. Lashoff knows that this bill will do little -- if anything -- to actually impact any warming trend. In a paper for the Heritage Foundation, Ben Lieberman notes that "a number of economists, including many who are far from global warming skeptics, warn of overly aggressive cap and trade measures imposing costs exceeding the benefits. In other words, the costs of implementing such measures would be higher than the value of the global warming damage that they would prevent."

In reality, this legislation is a Trojan horse that will impose strict federal command-and-control regulations on the economy -- for which consumers will pay billions over the coming decades.

"People are looking at this; they're seeing that it's going to do destructive things to energy prices and gasoline prices," Andrew Wheeler said, GOP staff director of the Environment and Public Works Committee, told The Washington Post.

Democrats don't appear to have the votes in the Senate to override a Republican filibuster. Let's hope the GOP acts accordingly.