Daily Herald - IN OUR VIEW: Climate plan is business poison

A week ago Utah joined in announcing a plan to fight global warming -- but the real danger lies in cooling: the cooling of the world's climate, and the chilly outlook for the state's economy.
The Western Climate Initiative has trumpeted a cap-and-trade system to cut carbon emissions and thus fight "greenhouse gasses." Joining the Beehive State in the proposal are six other Western states and four Canadian provinces.

In cap-and-trade programs, businesses are allowed to pump out certain levels of substances such as carbon dioxide and methane. If emissions exceed statutory levels, the businesses have to pay the government. If they are under that level, they can trade those credits to other enterprises.

Utah would have to pass legislation to implement these ideas. But they couldn't have been announced at a worse time.

The news indicates that, if anything, our planet is growing not hotter but colder. Recently, NASA's Ulysses project reported that the intensity of the sun's solar wind -- a flow of charged particles -- is at its lowest point of the Space Age. This adds to the mounting evidence that the Sun's activity is decreasing, and could signal the start of an era of cold weather, as in the Little Ice Age from the mid-16th century to the middle of the 19th century.