This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, April 19, 2010. I'm Caleb Brown.

The cost of cap and official estimates of the legislation.

According to Pat Michael, senior fellow environmental studies at the Cato Institute.

What was the challenge put to the President in trying to make a choice about whether or not

to push for additional drilling?

Well, the president wants cap and trade legislation

that was passed by the House of Representatives

to go through the Senate.

And several Democratic senators and virtually all Republican

senators are opposed to cap and trade. It doesn't have the votes or it didn't have the votes and so the

president thought he would make it more attractive by linking cap and trade to

a proposal to open up more drilling offshore. Well, it turns out that the

proposal is not really what you think it is. It's mainly a proposal to allow for exploration and not

drilling and at the same time his Environmental Protection Agency is making it

quite clear that if the Senate does not do

cap and trade that it will regulate anyway.

So what we have on one hand is saying, well you might find some oil that you might drill for five years from now, but the EPA

will put some type of levy or some type of restriction on carbon dioxide, so it's not going to

be worth it for you to do it is it?

And the plan seemed to cater specifically to states where drilling was popular and

also catering to states where it's less popular. The plan caters mainly to states where there are votes of senators that are currently not

in favor of cap and trade.

...