By Glen Meakem
Published in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review
May 17, 2009

A radio commercial paid for by the Alliance for Climate Protection claims that 86,000 new jobs can be created in Pennsylvania through investment in “clean” energy under the “cap-and-trade” plan now before Congress.

With 500,000 Pennsylvanians out of work, it sounds enticing.

“We have to make a choice,” says the tough male voice in the commercial, “try our luck with business as usual or invest in a clean energy future. The smart money’s on clean energy.”

So what is “business as usual” in Pennsylvania? Who is providing this “smart money”? Will the federal government’s cap-and-trade proposal really spark economic growth and create large numbers of new jobs?

Since he was elected in 2002, Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, has raised taxes and increased borrowing so that he could spend more than $2 billion on clean and green energy “investments.” The “smart money” actually is our tax dollars.

Rendell also promised to create hundreds of thousands of new “green” jobs.

But Rendell’s efforts are a failure. Despite the billions in green energy “investments” and state government spending that has grown at twice the rate of inflation, Pennsylvania’s economic growth lags behind the national average, ranking among the worst in the nation.

Pennsylvania ranks 33rd in job growth, 40th in personal income growth and 43rd in population growth. And despite Rendell’s massive “investments” in clean energy, Pennsylvania’s actual energy usage has barely changed.

Rendell himself states on the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection Web site that his first $1 billion of green energy “investments” created only 3,500 new jobs. That’s a cost to taxpayers of $285,000 per job.

Clearly, Rendell’s policies prove that government cannot tax, borrow, control and spend its way to prosperity. Yet the Obama administration and congressional Democrats continue to believe otherwise.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the cap-and-trade plan will impose $300 billion per year in new federal taxes. A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says it will cost every American family an average of $3,100 per year in increased energy costs and eliminate 4 million jobs.

Even if every new tax dollar raised were “invested” by the federal government in “clean energy” jobs, Rendell’s numbers from Pennsylvania indicate that it would cost the federal government more than $1.1 trillion just to replace the 4 million jobs destroyed.

It makes no sense.

Liberal Democrats who control our government justify this economic catastrophe by arguing that it is necessary to stop global warming, supposedly caused by increasing levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

Even if you believe in global warming — and its scientific basis is increasingly in serious doubt — the 2009 Economic Report of the President states that cap-and-trade will do nothing to reduce greenhouse gases if large developing nations like China and India do not also take dramatic steps, something they have refused to do.

As a result, economic pain that will touch every American family will lead to no environmental gain.

Talk about “dumb money.”