The program, however, is little more than a sham. The CCTI is but a repackaging of failed programs that have littered the federal budget for 20 or more years. The program offers misleading and incomplete cost/benefit analyses, is obsessed with remedying market failures that do not in fact exist, projects emission reductions that are wildly implausible, asserts a correlation between energy efficiency and energy consumption that is demonstrably false, proposes counterproductive labeling and product standards, and misleads the public about the ability of such a program–even if it performs as advertised–to measurably affect global temperatures.
The CCTI is built on economic ignorance and political symbolism. Regardless of one’s position on the threat of global climate change, the CCTI is nothing but an empty and expensive political gesture.