Regarding Obama's "...electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket" quote

Coyote Blog: Good. Now We Have It On The Table

To folks with any kind of background in economics, this has to be the case. Reducing the total output of current power plants, and thereby obsoleting all that investment and squeezing supply, at least in the medium term until new capacity of other types can be built, can only lead to a) rationing through blackouts or b) higher prices to ration the shorter supply. The cost of option a is so high that price is going to have to be the rationing mechanism. Skyrocket is actually pretty close to what would happen to rates if Obama sticks by his plan of limiting greenhouse gasses to 1990 or earlier levels. (His explanation is actually pretty poor for the mechanism - pass-through of retrofit costs would likely be minor to the supply / demand balancing effect of shaving 20/30% off supply in a short period of time.

I think a frank discussion of the dangers of a "pollutant" vs. the cost of abatement is a fair one. I personally think the threat of CO2 is wildly exaggerated, and the cost of doubling or tripling electricity costs will hurt Americans far worse than a few tenths of a degree of warming.