Bbhunji

We rightly no longer expect much when it comes to industry's willingness to take on a tough fight, particularly in the face of such a shrill attack machine. In Europe, many big businesses can be forgiven for having decided that the fight there is, at least for now, lost and trying to make the best of a bad situation. That's not what we face here, however, because we haven't adopted this agenda. The big businesses pushing it -- and most businesses involved are doing precisely that -- do so because they have designed some scheme aimed at capitalizing off of the energy scarcity agenda. Enron was the pioneer, pushing Kyoto before there was a Kyoto, after acquiring the world's largest windmill company and a half-share in the world's largest solar panel company; these are financial black holes without massive subsidies and mandates, which is precisely what the Kyoto agenda promises. Enron had the world's second-largest gas pipeline network, the cost of space on which would be dearly expensive once coal was regulated out of viability. They set up a trading floor to play bookie to millions of sales of carbon dioxide "credits". All of these elements of the agenda would cost our economy dearly by piling on inefficiencies, as it is in Europe now, with no environmental benefit. This is the world's second-oldest profession, "rent-seeking", that is trying to gain millions from government favors that they could not earn in the marketplace.

GE has Enron's windmills and some of their pipeline assets, BP has the solar panels. DuPont got out of the nylon business and for reasons peculiar to that decision would have about a half a billion dollars in CO2 equivalence "credits" to sell others who want to keep using energy in the event a Kyoto-style scheme is imposed domestically. Lo and behold, suddenly they strike a "responsible" pose of hand-wringing over Congress' failure to impose this albatross around the economy's neck. Certain cynical power companies have varying motivations, including a desire to be paid to replace aging coal-fired capacity with new gas plants that they have to build anyway; some nuclear providers want to be paid for not emitting CO2 but only water vapor. And the list goes on.