Right now in Washington, the main focus of every Senator, Congressman, staffer, and lobbyist is the Health Reform legislation they are trying to get passed before the end of the year. However, after this bill is passed, the Congress will then begin work (hopefully) on new climate change legislation, specifically on Cap and Trade. The House already passed their version of the climate bill, the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act. This bill was narrowly passed, with only one more vote than the 218 needed for passage, but it did contain legislation creating a new cap and trade program. So why is it so important that any climate legislation have a new cap and trade policy at its core? And why was the bill in the House passed by such narrow margins?

To begin with the latter, a recent Pew Poll showed that 65% of Americans view global warming as either a very or somewhat serious problem. However, of those polled, only 57% of them said they actually see any evidence of global warming and even still, only 50% of those polled said they supported putting limits on carbon and making businesses pay for excess emissions. That 50% said this even with the knowledge that this might cause energy prices to go up. So why do the number of supporters seem to be getting lower and lower the more we get into climate legislation and cap and trade? Well, we can look to some more interesting results from the poll to explain this. When asked about cap and trade, 55% of people polled said they had not even heard of the term before. In addition, 29% of people who had heard of cap and trade, thought it had to do either with healthcare, banking reform, or unemployment. It was just a mere 23% of people polled who were able to correctly identify cap and trade for what it actually is.

So then, what is cap and trade exactly? Essentially, cap and trade would implement a sort of “carbon marketplace” for businesses whereby businesses would be given “credits” limiting the amount of pollution they can put out (Cap) and if businesses were to not only to meet their limit but come in under their limit, they would be able to sell their excess credits to businesses who have gone over their limit (Trade). The idea of this is that the government would set the cap a little bit lower than what the current pollution levels are at, so as to reduce global warming gasses put into the atmosphere by businesses. The trade part of the plan is where the real incentive comes in for businesses and for alternative energy. Because companies are able to sell excess credits to other polluting businesses, they then have a financial incentive to pollute as little as possible, so they can have as many excess credits as possible and are able to make more money by selling more credits.

This will not only encourage current polluting businesses to “go green” and use more clean energy sources like solar, wind, or geothermal, but more importantly it will give a massive leg up to all the many small companies who already employ clean, green, alternative energy because through this cap and trade system, energy from traditional polluting sources like oil and coal will become more and more expensive while at the same time energy from clean alternative sources like solar or wind will become increasingly cheaper and affordable.

So that is essentially what cap and trade is and how it works, and once implemented, the cap on pollution would steadily get lower and lower. So if one business does change their ways a bit and come in below their cap, a few years later the cap would be lowered again and they would find themselves likely going over their cap again. This would encourage them to continue lowering the amount they pollute so that they can keep selling credits to other businesses. The steady lowering of the cap levels would continue probably for several decades, until the point where all or almost all businesses are running on 100% clean renewable energy.

This will not only drastically reduce the amount of pollution in the air, creating untold health benefits, but it will help slow the damaging effects of global warming and it is essentially the only realistic was America can ever become energy independent and never again have to go to war in order to secure the continued flow of oil to our country.

The economy of the 19th Century ran on steam and coal power, the economy of the 20th Century ran on coal and oil power, and the economy of the 21st Century will run on solar and wind power. America became the dominant power she is today by dominating the 20th Century economy. If America has any hope of maintaining her role as the economic powerhouse of the planet and as a major influence on the global economy in the 21st Century, we must take the lead on the new 21st Century economy, or risk another nation supplanting our influential leadership role in the world.