At the recent EPA hearing in Seattle on carbon regulations, Craig Kenworthy, Executive Director of the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, testified that EPA regulators should be dismissive of the claims of potential costs of regulation. He claimed that EPA regulation always cost less than projected.
This claim is so inaccurate it is disturbing that it was made by someone who oversees an environmental agency.
First, it should be noted at the outset that the EPA itself warned just a few years ago that climate regulation would be much more expensive than other approaches. Warning of the high cost of "command-and-control" approaches, one White House official in 2009 warned:
"If you don't pass this legislation, then ... the EPA is going to have to regulate in this area," the official said. "And it is not going to be able to regulate on a market-based way, so it's going to have to regulate in a command-and-control way, which will probably generate even more uncertainty."
President Obama himself told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2008 that under his plan, "electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." To diminish the potential cost of carbon regulation, when both the President and the Aministration admit a very high cost, is foolhardy.
Just as remarkable is that cap-and-trade was first tried due to the expensive failure of environmental regulation.