A few weeks ago, Bountiful City Manager Tom Hardy let us know he clearly wasn’t happy.

In fact, in a Clipper story dated Sept.10, he called what is going on in Washington as “Looney Tunes.”

Specifically, he was referring to the proposed cap and trade legislation moving through Congress.

I’ve asked my staff to do a little research, and on the surface it sounds like a pretty good idea.

Essentially, the government sets limits on overall pollution in an effort to continue improving the environment. 

That’s the cap. It’s essentially a limit on how much pollution certain industries or groups may release.

The government then issues credits to companies, which allow them to pollute up to a certain level, as long as the overall pollution remains below the cap.

Companies that can more easily or cheaply meet their targets can then sell some of their credits to companies that can’t. That’s where the trade takes place.

It appears that companies which find it prohibitively expensive to meet the new pollution standards will essentially pay a penalty for polluting by buying these credits. To make this work, the cost of the credits will need to be less than the price of cutting pollution, however.

On the surface, everybody wins. High polluting companies save money by buying up credits rather than bankrupting themselves to meet what are for them impossibly stringent standards.

Those who sell the credits, on the other hand, are rewarded for not polluting — and these rewards could even be the factors that allow them to survive as businesses.

It’s actually a brilliant idea: The entire nation cuts overall pollution via the caps imposed by regulators, while both polluter and nonpolluter “benefit.”

That works, however, if all industries were equal in their importance to society.

The oil industry might be one of those which may have to buy credits, upping their costs and impacting us all. I’m not sure what type of companies would qualify to sell credits, but a company that winds thread onto spools probably won’t pollute much.

If the price of gasoline soars because the oil industry must make payments to those who spool thread, I’d say most of us would prefer a rise in the cost of mending socks than for gasoline.

Those are only hypothetical illustrations. But the real-world application that Tom Hardy is trying to warn us about deals with electric power generation.

Because Bountiful gets a large share of its electricity from coal-fired powerplants, our rates are likely to go up. Coal, after all, will have a harder time meeting environmental standards than other sources.

And, as Hardy sees it, those costs could double, or even triple, how much we pay for electricity. That’s not a trifling price hike.

The beneficiaries of the credits to be paid by the coal-fired power industry could be groups that generate solar and wind power. They will essentially be subsidized, making solar or wind power producers more competitive in the market — which they really aren’t at present.

Theoretically, all this would cut carbon emissions at the lowest total cost.

Only you could be paying the money to support wind farms and solar panels owned by others.

While the whole thing works in economic theory, this is clearly a way to foster the alternative energy agenda. It creates a hidden tax to support industries that are not, and may never be, economically viable on their own.

This bit of social engineering is appealing to those who are committed to alternative fuels at all costs — but it has the odd effect of subsidizing inefficiency.

Had this been in place during the rise of the automobile, car makers might have had to buy credits from the horse-and-buggy industry, thereby artificially prolonging its life while slowing the spread of vehicles.

To some, that might sound like a bit of heaven, but it’s still supporting the uneconomic industry at the expense of the efficient one.

I think there’s some merit to cap and trade, but it smacks of a convenient way for liberals to get their way and make it sound good.

But if we end up having to pay triple the price for electricity, we won’t think it’s a good thing — no matter how many windmills our neighbors put on their lawns.