Forget about a revenue-neutral cap-and-trade bill if Clinton’s pledge takes effect.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told a packed news conference at the UN climate summit today that the United States would take the lead in raising $100 billion a year to help developing nations meet climate change treaty obligations and adapt to future climate change, on condition that those countries--especially China, India, and Brazil, three large and exceptionally fast-growing economies--submitted to strict transparency and accountability regarding their own carbon emission reduction efforts.

Those nations have resisted doing that, because they doubt the United States’ sincerity in living up to the Obama administration’s pledges of emissions cuts of our own.

Part of Clinton’s statement should be of considerable concern to Americans watching the evolution of proposed cap-and-trade legislation in Congress. One thing proponents have generally said to make the idea palatable was that they would try to make it revenue neutral. That is, they would cut taxes on other things to make up for revenues (taxes by another name) generated by selling carbon emission permits. If you believed they’d achieve that, you’re a lot like Charlie Brown believing Lucy wouldn’t pull the football away the next time she held it for him to kick.

Well, Clinton’s statement here in Copenhagen should put all doubts to rest. Cap and trade, if it passes, will most certainly not be neutral. How do we know? Because Clinton said in her press conference that one source of the $100 billion annual wealth transfer to developing nations would be the revenues from auctioning carbon emission permits under a potential cap-and-trade regime.