Here’s a summary of the poison plan, from a bizarre Greenwire article (subs. req’d):

The bill would include an increase of as much as 50 cents in the gasoline tax, a “stiff tax” on carbon and the removal of the mortgage interest deduction on homes over 3,000 square feet….

A “stiff” carbon tax PLUS a gasoline tax PLUS a pointless tax hike for large homes — that triple-tax overkill is the definition of a poison pill, and even the double tax (carbon and gasoline) makes no sense, as I have noted. (I’ll get to what’s bizarre about this article at the end.)

In talking points distributed by his office, Rep. Dingell (D-MI) absurdly claims:

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Yet another reason to be certain you know where your offsets are coming from. Reuters reports:

The biggest emissions-cutting projects under the Kyoto Protocol on global warming have directly contributed to an increase in the production of gases that destroy the ozone layer, a senior U.N. official says.

In addition, evidence suggests that the same projects, in developing countries, have deliberately raised their emissions of greenhouse gases only to destroy these and therefore claim more carbon credits, said Stanford University’s Michael Wara.

The whole article is worth reading since it goes into sordid detail about the counterproductive gaming of the system. In general, I am not a fan of many Clean Development Mechanism offsets, since you run into huge additionality and leakage problems.

The Gold Standard, an international standard for offsets, is wise not to allow such industrial offset projects.