Environmentalists: ‘Cap-and-Trade’ Is Designed to Drive up Energy Costs and Redistribute Wealth

President Obama’s “cap and trade” plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is specifically designed to drive up energy prices and redistribute wealth, according to a coalition of environmental, union, and liberal activist groups that is pushing for Congress to enact the proposal this year.

The plan would also redistribute wealth by taking revenue earned by the government in auctioning off carbon-emission permits and giving some of it in rebates to lower income households to offset the increased energy prices they would pay. The rest of the revenue would be used to subsidize the development of alternative “green” energy sources.

“The purpose of the cap, the way it works, is that you are capping fossil fuel energy–you’re limiting the supply to a lower level than would otherwise be used,” Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told CNSNews.com last week. “Demand then has to fall to meet that level of supply at the cap level and demand falls by virtue of prices rising–this is basic economics.”

Every once in while the left lets it’s real agenda slip out… This is one of those times, “cap and trade” is about social policy not energy policy.

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