Western Business Leaders Say Cap-and-Trade Proposals are Failing

 

Broad-based coalition Western Business Roundtable said that Congress should go back to the drawing board and develop climate legislation that follows 10 common sense principles.
Courtesy of mallikreddy.blogspot.com

Denver -- A coalition of Western business leaders working on greenhouse gas control technologies says that the leading cap-and-trade proposal in Congress is no longer politically viable because it fails the public's test of common sense, while levying crushing new costs on citizens in the middle of a recession.

Instead, the Western Business Roundtable said that if Congress develops climate change legislation that follows "10 Common Sense Principles," released by the Roundtable this week, it would gain the acceptance of a public increasingly skittish about sweeping proposals from the federal government.

"If Congress goes back to the drawing board and develops climate legislation that follows these 10 common sense principles, it would undoubtedly be embraced by the American people. It would lead to an explosion of technology innovation that would help us address climate concerns," said Roundtable president and CEO Jim Sims.

"The Waxman-Markey bill in Congress, as well as other highly-complicated regional efforts to impose cap-and-trade schemes on the economy, are on political life support now primarily because citizens have awakened to the crushing costs, job losses and market uncertainty these bills would inevitably cause," Sims said. "Voters demand that large government initiatives like this pass the test of common sense.