by Gayle Plato


With all of the health care scare and town halls going code blue, The American Clean Energy and Security Act, HR 2454, otherwise known as the Cap and Trade legislation, is ready and able, moving closer to Senate approval status. Volumes could be written about how it will impact Arizona. This legislation affects every single Arizonan who uses water, eats food, and relies on power. This legislation has nothing to do with green energy and everything with greenbacks. Cap and Trade will face a serious uphill battle with Arizonans- literally.

CAP has another key meaning here, The Central Arizona Project. The CAP took 20 years and $4 billion to complete, and uses coal to work. Coal creates the electric power used to move the millions of gallons of water around Arizona and the West. The CAP will be hammered by Cap and Trade legislation as coal-burning plants, specifically the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) is the only energy producer supplying the CAP power for the pumps. Water does use gravity to travel but in Central Arizona, much of the water must travel uphill and that requires electricity from the Native American power plants. Nearly a quarter of all the power generated by the NGS goes to the CAP. Imagine the slam to the economy the Navajo and Hopi Nations will face, the costs for the state, and the reality of the Cap and Trade mandates?

“The CAP is the largest single source of renewable water supplies in the State of Arizona and the largest single end-user of power in the State. The CAP uses about 2.8 million megawatt hours of energy to pump about 1.6 million acre-feet of water each year from the Colorado River…Today, CAP’s energy costs are about $50 per acre-foot of water delivered. A $200 per acre-foot increase in CAP energy rates would represent a 400% increase to our water users.” http://tinyurl.com/le3noz
Is the state of Arizona ready for the federal designs on energy? Susan Bitter Smith can reassure us at CAP’s website, taxes won’t be raised.  But let’s face it; CAP’s own site states that costs will skyrocket.  What about the reality that the federal plan directs more than a scrub of the emissions? The Cap and Tax scam fuels a scrubbing of the entire power generation process.
We just completed the CAP in the 90s; are we really prepared to switch all power sourcing over to–what? Hundreds of solar panels lining the highway from Kayenta to Page? Maybe we could put up millions of dollars of wind turbines all over Monument Valley? The plan for hydro-electricity failed at the onset of the CAP because no one wanted to see dams built in the Grand Canyon.  The Navajo Generating Station was created to accommodate the CAP, creating jobs and fueling an entire community of support and infrastructure.  Greening the nation sounds great as a campaign slogan or over a hummus pita in a Flagstaff coffee and organic hemp shop. When you’re in college and thinking about joining the Obama volunteer forces, consider how it’s going to feel on the unemployment line after your year of service, because Cap and Trade will eviscerate the economy one curly cue toxic light bulb at a time. Walk in beauty natives, as the costs to the community will be insurmountable. Never mind the Navajo, the Diné, the People; Yá’át’ééh a bini. To my Navajo friends: Át’aa la’ hóníí’ ‘o’oots’id (loosely-I feel burned)!

But don’t get confused about what Cap and Trade really is. This is not about greening the environment. Carbon credits including the regulation of emissions, is the creation of a truly green currency. The trade of a new currency, that is a carbon emission credit, is the real story and every publication seems to drop that lede. There will be huge profits for the scam artist carbon credit brokers. One metric ton of greenhouse gas equals a carbon credit. The traders of these, on the international scene, follow the greenhouse gassy Kyoto agreement plans dropped down from on high at the United Nations: this is one pile of steaming crap for trade. The best part- a tree must be planted in turn for the credit. Think of the movie Bugsy recalling how Benjamin Siegel sold shares of The Flamingo over and over, ending up in a dire situation with a few bullets in his head. When the trade of credits and subsequent trees being planted cannot be tracked, outright fraud will prevail. But, what a great money maker it will be for the few years is flies.

Coal burns but people shouldn’t be burned as the new greening of the world leaves many cooked. Whether water, food, or people needing to move around the country, power matters. If the POTUS administration REALLY wants to help the environment, get off of the incredibly useless solar and inefficient wind power ideas. Get the country drilling. Drill baby drill– for what we have most of- Natural Gas. Help the natural gas drilling happen and stop blocking it. Listen to a leader who knows a thing or two about energy:

“In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase…We must move in a new direction. We are ripe for economic growth and energy independence if we responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil. Just as important, we have more desire and ability to protect the environment than any foreign nation from which we purchase energy today.

In Alaska, we are progressing on the largest private-sector energy project in history. Our 3,000-mile natural gas pipeline will transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of our clean natural gas to hungry markets across America. We can safely drill for U.S. oil offshore and in a tiny, 2,000-acre corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if ever given the go-ahead by Washington bureaucrats.Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy…We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama’s plan will result in the latter.”- Governor Sarah Palin”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/13/AR2009071302852.html?sid=ST2009071302882