I’m in the 5th district of VA, where Tom Perriello just voted for cap and trade. Here’s the letter that I’m planning on submitting, but I wanted to ask the collective brilliance of Redstate for any critique before sending it in. Is it too long? Should I add more or change the wording of anything?

Thank you in advance!

******************

Last Friday, the House passed Carbon Cap and Trade by a 219-212 margin. Despite running as a moderate, Tom Perriello was not one of the 44 Democrats who voted against this jobs-killing bill. His vote for the bill puts him far outside the mainstream of Virginia’s 5^th district.

The bill is 1500 pages long, but the purpose can be summed up in one sentence; energy use will become more expensive so people will consume less. However, increasing the cost of domestic energy use will provide an incentive for manufacturing plants to move overseas, where they will produce the same amount of greenhouse gasses, less the American jobs.

If the bill comes out of the Senate, electricity costs will dramatically increase. Perriello claims the increase in costs will be marginal, but if that were so, then the bill would not have any effect on consumption and would be pointless. As President Obama said, under cap and trade, “electricity prices will necessarily sky-rocket”.

Even under the assumption that this bill works exactly as planned, the EPA has said that by 2050 it will reduce temperatures by a mere one tenth of a degree Celsius. That assumes that other countries unburdened by this legislation do not increase their carbon production.

Comparing the marginal benefits with the substantial costs of this bill, particularly during a deep recession, should have made this an easy ‘no’ vote for Perriello.