Joe Barton: Keep the lights on

Here.

Excerpt:

Many are coalesced around the idea that American economic and environmental interests can be advanced by capping carbon dioxide emissions and creating an artificial marketplace in which companies will trade the rights to produce emissions. A misguided cap-and-trade policy could wipe out our economy.

If you think I am being too dramatic, consider what's happened to Europe. In Germany, electric rates have risen at least 40 percent, and some estimate the steel industry there will lose 50,000 jobs. The German petrochemical industry has almost been completely dismantled, and yet CO2 emission rates have gone up.

Apologists say that officials don't have it just right, but a little tinkering will fix everything. However, the price that Europeans are paying in lost jobs and constrained economic activity is growing, and so are greenhouse gases.

It doesn't look much different for America. Projections on the household impact of various cap-and-trade proposals now pending range as high as $6,000 per home per year, with job losses topping 8 million under some scenarios.