OpenEurope’s daily briefing directs us to further insight from Europe on the cost of reducing carbon emissions — insight that our next president and Congress will strive desperately to ignore as they scramble to replicate it, in an effort to “do something” so that certain people will stop being mean to them at diplomatic receptions:

Business and politicians turn against EU climate change package; Amato: “This plan is garbage. It’s politically correct, but it won’t happen”AFP reports that the EU’s package of proposals for reducing carbon emissions by 20% by 2020 are coming under fire from businesses and politicians around Europe. The cost to industry is estimated at some 44 billion euros per year between 2013 and 2020, with a tonne of C02 costing 30 euros. Business leaders have denounced the policy as a “tax”, threatening to take their investments elsewhere and move their more polluting activities out of Europe. A number of European politicians are now speaking openly about diluting, or even abandoning the project. “This plan is garbage. It’s politically correct, but it won’t happen,” former Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato said at the end of August. Renato Brunetta, Italy’s minister for innovation and a trained economist, said “If it happens, it would kill the economic upturn. No one needs to kill themselves”. One negotiator involved in the talks between the Commission and member states, said: “We’re hearing these arguments more and more, notably from countries such as Italy and Germany, where industry is increasingly worried.” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said: “I’m counting on Mr. Sarkozy’s authority that the package will be adopted without being watered down before the end of the year.”According to PA, UK Business Secretary John Hutton told the Labour Party conference today that the British Government would “put UK energy security at the centre of our plans for Britain’s economic future. To make it a first thought, not an afterthought… No coal plus no nuclear equals no lights. No power. No future.”

At least we don’t have to rely on business leaders denouncing this as a tax (Will the last one willing to utter this before the whip comes down please turn out the lights? Of course, if you spoke up now we might be able to keep the lights on.) We can point to the Congressional Budget Office, Resources for the Future, and others to demonstrate that cap-and-trade regulation is indeed a tax, and a very expensive one to boot.