Cap and Trade by Stealth: U.S. States Partner With Foreign Governments

Cap and Trade by Stealth: U.S. States Partner With Foreign Governments

WRITTEN BY ALEX NEWMAN

FRIDAY, 10 DECEMBER 2010 09:18

While Americans were battling cap-and-trade legislation at the national and international levels, global-warming alarmists were quietly building regional systems between state and local governments, private industry, and even foreign governments that basically achieve the same effect — higher energy prices for consumers and more money for governments. The first and most prominent of these U.S. cap-and-trade systems is known as theRegional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). It was created not by the people through their legislatures, but by a so-called “Memorandum of Understanding” between state governors. Consisting so far of 10 Northeastern and mid-Atlantic states — Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont — the scheme is described on the RGGI website as “the first mandatory, market-based effort in the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Its board of directors consists primarily of each participating state’s top environmental bureaucrats. http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/5466-cap-and-trade-by-stealth-us-states-partner-with-foreign-governments