The Cap and Trade bill made it though the House along Party lines. Like the Stimulus Bill, no one read it. But the Health Care Bill was published and read before it could be passed. The ensuing debates are consuming immense amounts of political capital.

The biggest challenge in the Health Care debate is how to pay for it. Americans may not be PHD mathematicians, but they know that there is no such thing as a free lunch. If healthcare cost the Nation $2.2 trillion dollars in 2007, and it only covered 85% of the 300 million residents, then insuring the 10% - 15% uninsured will cost $220 - $330 billion. That’s $2.2 - $3.3 trillion over 10 years. That’s a lot of money.

If the Healthcare debate forces the Senate to read the Cap and Trade bill, their will be challenges.

Cap and Trade has had problems redefining it self. In 1997 Global Warming was the challenge and the Kyoto Protocol gasses were the cause. ‘Carbon footprint’ was the measurement of the impact of all four Protocol gasses and all four were going to be ‘Capped’ and ‘Traded’.

Things changed with the 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Reports. The rate of growth of greenhouse gasses diminished. Methane had a negative growth rate for most of this decade. The Report’s official response, ““The reasons for the decrease in the atmospheric CH4 (Methane Gas) growth rate and the implications for future changes in its atmospheric burden are not understood (Prather et al., 2001) but are clearly related to changes in the imbalance between CH4 sources and sinks.”

In science, ‘not understood’ means the outcome differs from the theory. The challenge is compounded by the fact that 2008 was one of the coldest year of the decade, the current year is colder and even the New York Times recently published an article confirming that there’s no warming, in fact, there may be cooling.

There is an attempt to re-label Global Warming to Climate Change. The U.N. Report is called Climate Change, but the contents focus on global warming. There was an attempt to explain the colder winters and the new snowpack on the glaciers as, ‘Global Warming means the summers get warmer and the winters get cooler.’ Unfortunately, this summer is disproving that theory.

The scientific models don’t project the current trends. But the Government is broke. Foreign governments are reluctant to loan the trillions of dollars needed. Taxing the rich didn’t work for California and it’s not working for the Federal Government. There may be a National energy tax, just to keep the lights on.

The problem is, if the energy tax is used to pay current operating expenses, it can’t be used to offset the costs of alternative energies. Social Security and Medicare taxes are great examples of what happens when specific tax revenue is used for general expenses. Solar, wind and bio-fuels are not cost effective. They require massive Government and Power Company rebates to offset the costs. Those offsets are not an investment. If there is no ‘R’, it’s not an ‘I’; it’s an ‘E’. If there is no Return, it’s not and Investment. It’s an Expense…and everyone is broke.

As in the 70’s, when the Government created a ‘Misery Index’ to measure the misery of the population, if the environmental movement is going to survive, it is going to be because of individuals who do much more than their share. It will be because of environmental products that are so cost effective that they become standard. And maybe, just maybe, there will be a paradigm shift among the masses who learn that happiness is independent of ‘stuff’.