Green Jobs Fantasy

I have a piece in National Review Online today outlining the fantasy behind Sen. Lindsey Graham’s latest attempt to keep cap-and-trade alive. Here’s the beginning:

After declaring energy cap-and-trade “dead” in the Senate, the Left’s new favorite Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) has been working hard to resurrect it under another name. Working with Senators Kerry (D., Mass.) and Lieberman (I., Conn.), along with lobbyists for the major electric utilities (and, err, Big Oil), Senator Graham appears to have come up with a new boondoggle that would institute a cap-and-trade scheme for utilities only, thereby creating a carbon cartel. The plan would impose a carbon “fee” on transportation fuels, driving up the price of gas, that would be rebated in the shape of funding for highway projects — which the Big Oil lobbyists appear to believe would help offset the rise in gas prices. All of this, of course, amounts to a new tax on energy, so Senator Graham and his cohorts are cloaking their smash-and-grab raid in the mantle of investment in “green jobs.”

Read the whole thing here.