Climate Change

The Environmental Defense Fund debunks Gingrich's claims this way: "The bill is not a tax. Under a cap on carbon, there will be a small increase in energy bills for the average American – and Congress has the tools it needs to protect U.S. consumers. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the cap in the American Clean Energy and Security Act can be met for as little as $98 per household per year – about a dime a day per person. That’s roughly what it costs to brew one pot of coffee in the morning, and substantially less than a pack of chewing gum.

"That’s nothing compared to what will happen to our economy and our pocketbooks if we fail to reduce greenhouse gas emissions -- punishing heat waves, droughts, water shortages, rising sea levels, worldwide food shortages, intense hurricanes and more. Even the military is worried about the national security implications.

"The centerpiece of this bill will make clean energy profitable by capping carbon – and that’s exactly what will give scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs an economic incentive to create new technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We have empirical evidence that cap and trade works. When the formula was applied in the 1990s to lower acid rain pollution from power plants, it worked faster and more cheaply than anyone predicted."

The right keeps peddling this line even though the author of the MIT study, John Reilly, told the St. Petersburg Times' PolitiFact.com that the way they are using the figures in the report is "wrong in so many ways it's hard to begin."

What the report actually says is that the cost per household of a climate bill that would cap carbon emissions and tax polluters for the ability to exceed that cap would be $79 in 2015, Reilly says.

Conservatives say nothing about the potential benefits of such a bill, including greater incentives to conserve energy and competition from other energy sources that would help lower prices for everyone. And some percentage of the revenue from a climate bill could be used to mitigate its impact on lower-income families, in the form of direct subsidies and in helping them lower their energy bill. The details that would actually determine the costs and benefits, such as an energy tax credit to families proposed by the Obama administration, have yet to be hammered out—yet another reason to dismiss conservative claims about what they are mislabeling a "light switch tax."

These right-wing blasts are really arguments to keep the coal, oil and gas industries from having to pay the costs of polluting our environment, and to keep the nation from embracing the new energy future.