I am reminded of one more note about that depressing spectacle at the Earth Day confab I have serially alluded to in this space. First, I read something today that aptly described the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade plan — even sans most key details — as still being “intentionally complex.” Of course. It’s entire purpose is to hide the tax. Then there is the Daily Oklahoman’s editorial today (“The proposal . . . takes 648 pages to detail a system that would cap the amount of greenhouse gases companies can emit”) and Larry Kudlow’s comments (“huge, unwieldy tax”) over on the Corner.

This reminded me of how an NRDC co-panelist promoted cap-and-trade as the simple alternative to a direct tax, which he dismissed as too complicated. He suggested the audience consider how confusing their tax preparations had been just one week prior — well, that’s pretty much all you need to know about taxes, he ruled. Some argument. I suggested he take a look at how Europe’s scheme worked out, if he really wanted to see complicated.

I’ve noted how the rationers’ lead stab to promote cap-and-trade over the less inefficient, less costly tax, is the claim that it supposedly provides “certainty of emissions,” vs. a tax’s “certainty of cost” — even though Europe proved that any cap-and-trade scheme that can be enacted will have so many outs (“offsets,” and their cousin, the “safety valve”) that it brings no such thing. The closest thing to a “certainty” is that covered emissions will rise, until it’s just too costly to buy the offsets, at which point the covered emitters will leave.

My conclusion from all of this is that, if these are the best they can do in support of the thing, as it certainly seems is the case, you know it’s on a thin reed and likely won’t make it through a robust exposure to democracy (Europe’s scheme, as you know, was never subjected to such consideration).