The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee are hosting a Roundtable Discussion of European Union Emissions Trading Scheme today. ENR clearly cherry-picked its participants to exclude the many individuals with real world experience, widely available in the public record and readily available to the Committee, that also happens to be quite unhelpful to their theme that we must follow our European climate superiors into cap-and-trade bliss.

These cherry-pickies span the breathtakingly parochial gamut from an official of the European Commission (who designed the scheme), to largely unaffected nuclear-power dependent Electricite’ de France, to rent seekers and their pilot fish like a Shell Oil carbon credit trader and the founder of Point Carbon. O, The Great Debate that awaits us! In advance, each of them offered, in one page or less, what’s “right” with the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), and what’s “wrong”. To summarize the tenor and substance of the “wrongs” offered, simply recall the scene in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” where a stoned Jeff Spicoli leans out the window of Trans Am which he has just wrecked, and returns fully inside said vehicle to say “Relax, all right? My old man is a television repairman, he’s got this ultimate set of tools. I can fix it.” Um, no, you can’t.

The “right” pages give banal comments worldwide a bad name, particularly those of Bruno Vanderborght, Vice President of Climate Protection, Holcim Cement — please, as if I could even make that up. I think he may have been in a really big hurry because this sure reads like he just excerpted the Commission website.

In truth, the concept that Europe’s implementation of the Kyoto Protocol is a model to follow, if with strong lessons, doesn’t withstand the slightest scrutiny. So, throughout the day I will post a few quotes that you won’t hear, from regulated entities that might soon be looking for more accommodating places to conduct their business.