Cost ineffective: Warming bill would hit Oklahoma hard

WE'RE pretty skeptical about the global warming bill the U.S. Senate is debating this week, especially when the benefits-to-cost equation is analyzed. State-specific research on the legislation's potential effect on Oklahoma offers even more reason for concern.

The Lieberman-Warner bill would impose limits on greenhouse gas emissions with the goal of reducing them to 2005 levels by 2012 and then cutting them 30 percent more by 2050.

This would be done through a cap-and-trade system under which businesses and industries meeting federal emissions caps could trade or sell excess capacity to those exceeding them.

That means new bureaucracies, new programs — more than 40 by some estimates — and the complications that routinely go with most new government initiatives. That concerns Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Tulsa. "The climate solution should not require an overhaul of our economy and those decisions should not be made by nameless bureaucrats,” Inhofe says.

As it is, the conservative Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis warns of cumulative losses to the national economy of more than $4.

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