California Dreaming: The Myth of the Green Economy
Early Fall in Northern California is special; nights are cool and the days hot—you can see a 40-degree temperature swing between 6a.m. and 4p.m.— but the heat lasts for just a few hours. And the light! The light has this golden quality that suffuses the world with a magical glow. It’s hard to feel down when surrounded by such natural beauty.
Perhaps the gorgeous weather explains the difficulty California voters have focusing on gritty economic reality.
I’m referring to California’s AB32, the evocatively named “Global Warming Solutions Act,” enacted in 2006 to provide us left-coasters the blessings of carbon dioxide cap-and-trade. AB32 requires total state carbon dioxide emissions to be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020, and by 80 percent by 2050. The California Air Resources Board (CARB)—our state’s air pollution control bureaucracy—has been empowered to draft the regulations necessary to convince us to embrace the clean-tech economy, usher in an era of CARB-approved “green jobs” for all and, incidentally, save the planet. And all this economic goodness is about to come gushing our way because our legislators and Governator care—care deeply—about planet Earth, unlike government officials elsewhere.
Oh yes, I nearly forgot: A study commissioned by the California Small Business Roundtable calculates that those Californians not tethered to a venture capitalist recycling CALPERS dollars into the Economy of Tomorrow won’t fare so well:
On average, the annual costs resulting from the implementation of AB 32 to small businesses are likely to result in loss of more than $182.6 billion in gross state output, the equivalent of more than 1.1 million jobs, nearly $76.8 billion in labor income, and nearly $5.8 billion in indirect business taxes. . . . the total cost of AB 32 is $49,691 per small business in California
Even if you avert your eyes from ClimateGate, holding to your faith in the upward trajectory of Al Gore’s net worth and the corollary fairy tale that is anthropogenic global warming, how will California, acting on its own to limit the freedom of its citizens to consume energy, affect the global climate?
Enter Proposition 23 from stage right, a ballot initiative suspending implementation of AB32 until California’s sky-high 12.4 percent unemployment rate falls to 5.5 percent for four quarters. Most of the cognoscenti don’t like it. And now gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman is taking flack for joining, if reluctantly, the San Jose Mercury News and the other Flat-Earthers manning the heavily listing SS Gore.
On Thursday, Whitman finally came out against Proposition 23, an initiative funded by out-of-state oil companies that would all but repeal the global warming law. She announced her conclusion a full year after writing an op-ed for the Mercury News extremely critical of AB 32, calling it "job killing" -- and just two days after our meeting, during which she said that if AB 32 came before her today as governor, she would "probably" veto it.
So we are left to wonder: What does Meg Whitman really stand for? Why did it take her a full year to say whether she'd vote to repeal the law, having had strong enough thoughts that far back to write an op-ed about how bad it was? And why did she reach this particular conclusion now if she would "probably" veto the law if she could?
We have a suspicion: polls. The law requiring California to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2020 is popular here, both among environmentalists and industry groups (although surely not oil companies).
Whitman understands macro-economics and realizes AB32 will destroy jobs, just as similar top-down efforts in Spain have yielded the $750,000 "green job," but AB32 remains popular with voters who hear the glowing cheerleaders daily but have yet to live the gritty reality. And so she must thread the needle between sanity and electability in our deep blue state.
I feel another failed liberal experiment coming on here.
[Edited to fix ClimateGate link]
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Comments :
May '10
Re: California Dreaming: The Myth of the Green Economy
I'm not sure if California is better represented by Wile E. Coyote or by Mr. Magoo. So many wonderfully terrible ideas, yet it somehow manages to survive every blind step.
Jul '10
Re: California Dreaming: The Myth of the Green Economy
I would say let them have thier way and suffer the consequences; But that isn't what happens.
What happens is they enact this nonsense and destroy their economy, then they flee the state and head for Colorado, or Washington and proceed to turn the states they land in into California II.
If we could build a fence around the state and tell the idiots to stay home and eat the bread they buttered, by not allowing California transplants into states that wisely rejected idiocy, then I'd just sit back and gloat.
But, alas, they don't learn the necessary lesson. They conclude that the frogs are deaf and move somewhere else to do again what didn't work in California.
Re: California Dreaming: The Myth of the Green Economy
No, no Jaydee. My family needs an escape hatch. Build the fence after we get out. Okay?
Aug '10
Re: California Dreaming: The Myth of the Green Economy
Autumnal sunshine is full of pollen and dust and dirt , filtered and lit by a sun that runs away from it's old latitude. Enjoy it now, the unattainable laws your politicians attempt will reduce the dust and dirt and pollen, they haven't told you how. Judging from the desired result, we guess that ending agriculture and pulling up the streets is the only viable cure. Good luck ! Houses in Missouri cost a fraction of California , but your children might have to build a snowman .
May '10
Re: California Dreaming: The Myth of the Green Economy
It will crash and burn, of course. Thank God for the Koch Brothers.
Sep '10
Re: California Dreaming: The Myth of the Green Economy
Yeah, I'm with the rest of you who say fine, let 'em live with it. The unfortunate part is that I doubt either party will let that state implode like it should. Would still like to see some cold hard reality smacking them around though.
Re: California Dreaming: The Myth of the Green Economy
George, it used to be "think globally, act locally." As you point out, if you follow this logic, California has embarked on an effort that will do nothing to improve things globally while dramatically raising costs locally.
By the way, they recently had this same debate in Australia, where the recently ousted Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, pursued all sorts of expensive anti-global warming policies even though Australia's impact is tiny.
But the effort to make environmentalists think globally -- i.e., the impact of the policies they want -- seems increasingly futile.
Jun '10
Re: California Dreaming: The Myth of the Green Economy
Does anyone know anyone who has ever known anyone who has suffered lead poisoning? I don't. Furthermore, I have asked this question dozens of times to multiples of people and have never received a positive response. Yet, one would think we have an epidemically proportioned problem with lead, based upon the laws enacted to rid society of this terribly dangerous element. California has passed a zero lead content law. That means the entire plumbing industry in the entire USA must retool their manufacturing of faucets. No recycled brass will be allowed, as it will contain lead. Lead has always been commonly mixed with copper and zinc to make brass. No longer. I will tell you that what California does affects everyone and the cost to industry is hundreds of billions of dollars. Mark Levin compares liberals to locusts. Wherever they go they bring their attitudes with them, eventually destroying their new habitat politically and economically just like they did to their previous cities and states. I really don't believe there is an antidote. Paul Rahe's optimism, notwithstanding.
Re: California Dreaming: The Myth of the Green Economy
Cdor, lead can absolutely be a health hazard, but today's penchant for zero-tolerance public policy towards anything that might be bad is, in aggregate, a far greater threat. Every toxicologist knows that the dose makes the poison. Unfortunately, too often our regulators are indulged their desire to be seen doing something vital to prevent this or that speculative calamity. The American economy is so successful that it usually motors on, despite the drag from this or that inefficiency imposed by a well-meaning bureaucrat.
My bet is that past is no longer prologue. We are nearing a tipping point and need to reverse course.