EDITORIAL - Of all the crazed global warming proposals being put forth by the new masters of Congress, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairperson of the Public Works Committee, by far the worst would be a mandated cap-and-trade program that would supposedly offset carbon dioxide emissions.

This program is horrid on several counts. First, there is not a scintilla of scientific evidence—other than disputed and dubious computer models—to suggest that any significant global warming is occurring. The warming and cooling of the Earth is an entirely natural phenomenon.

Second, carbon dioxide (CO2) plays only a minor role as a so-called greenhouse gas. The predominant greenhouse gas is water vapor produced by the world’s oceans. The Earth has been warming since the last Ice Age and, even if a mild warming were to occur, the only result would be an extended period to grow more crops and to enhance the growth of the world’s forests that generate the oxygen on which all humans depend for life.

Third, the notion that man-made CO2 emissions—the result of industrial activity, the use of cars and trucks for transportation, and a host of other things humans do—is a major contributor to “climate change” is almost too silly to believe. Recently, the European Union identified cow and sheep burping as an even greater threat than human activity, but ruminants have been doing this long before human civilization began.

Similarly, climate change went on long before industrialization occurred and continues today as always, almost entirely the result of the Sun’s cyclical activity, the oceans, volcanic activity, and other factors totally beyond the control of mankind.

To get an idea how bogus cap-and-trade emissions credits are, one need only look to see who is behind this spurious campaign. At or near the top of that list is the United Nations for whom global warming has become the Holy Grail. By positioning themselves to save the Earth, the U.N. sets itself up to control all aspects of life upon it. Supporting the U.N. program are the endless non-governmental organizations that benefit from keeping people fearful the Earth will come to an end without their programs to save it.

The adage, however, is “follow the money” and here’s where we find the greatest supporters of cap-and-trade emissions credits. Huge financial firms such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are betting they can make billions through government mandated programs in which vast amounts of money move back and forth through “climate exchanges” where companies trade their alleged emissions reduction activities for credits, i.e., real cash.

Just as Al Gore tells us that he can continue living an extravagant lifestyle, using private jets and living in a home that uses many times more electricity than the average home, because he buys carbon “offsets”, this obvious fiction will be embraced as large corporations and small realize what a cash cow cap-and-trade can be.

It’s already happening. In April, the Financial Times revealed the results of its investigation. It turned out that “some organizations are paying for emissions reductions that do not take place. Others are meanwhile making big profits from carbon trading for very small expenditure and, in some cases, for clean-ups that they would have made anyway.”

The Financial Times investigation concluded that there were “widespread instances of people and organizations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.” Further charges included the fact that the brokers for these credits were “providing services of questionable or no value.” Think back now to those “climate exchanges” the large banking houses have embraced.

When even The New York Times, one of the oldest and greatest global warming propaganda sheets around, ridicules a carbon neutral lifestyle, you have got to know just how idiotic it is. A recent Times article quoted Dennis Hayes, one of the gurus of environmentalism, as saying, “The worst of the carbon-offset programs resemble the Catholic Church’s sale of indulgences back before the Reformation.”

The absolute worst part of these cap-and-trade emissions programs is the way they will affect the American consumer. A recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) delivered a devastating indictment of the proposal.

In brief, the CBO concluded that the CO2 cap-and-trade scheme would increase home energy costs and the price of gas, unfairly punishing the poor while transferring wealth to the rich who have investments in these industries. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) noted that “Today’s report confirms what Europe, Canada, and many other nations have come to realize about CO2 cap-and-trade schemes: The entire carbon debate has been skewed toward the least effective and most economically damaging of the various approaches.”

Not one of the nations that signed onto the Kyoto Protocol to limit their CO2 emissions has ever met the standards to which they agreed and none ever will. The cap-and-trade scheme is just another version of these meaningless limits, but one that is designed to enrich those who engage in the smoke-and-mirrors trade in such credits.

If a Democrat-controlled Congress permits this to occur, the global warming scam will have been brought to its full culmination and purpose, the enrichment of those who have been perpetrating it and those who seek to benefit from it.