A conservative environmental group is arguing in new television and radio spots that a Democratic cap-and-trade proposal is bad for both trees and the economy.

“New legislative efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will inevitably fail to lower global temperatures,” CO2IsGreen.org spokesman Leighton Steward said in a statement this week. “Congress and federal regulators seem poised to ignore both science and common sense by repeatedly attempting to put in place a reckless cap-and-trade system that will not only suffocate our economic recovery, but reduce the growth rates of Earth’s plants and forests.”

The organization is spending $600,000 on the 10-day buy that will run through July 13. Television ads will air nationwide on the cable news giant Fox News, as well as on local network affiliates in the Washington, D.C., area. The group is also running 60-second radio spots and newspaper advertisements in Louisiana, Tennessee, Nebraska, Ohio and Indiana publications. The ads criticize an energy proposal by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.).

“Urge your Senators to vote ‘no’ to the president’s cap-and-trade bill full of corporate Wall Street giveaways,” a narrator states in the ads. “At a time of record U.S. debt, skyrocketing deficits and high unemployment, it is not fair to the American people to pass a cap-and-trade bill that increases energy taxes.

“The Kerry-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill will increase your costs of living, such as electricity, gasoline and food,” the narrator concludes. “Keep America strong. Protect jobs. Defeat the Kerry-Lieberman cap-and-trade bill.”