Clean-tech advocates hail Schwarzenegger's legacy

When Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the landmark Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, there were 30 clean-tech companies in the Sacramento region.

Today, there are more than 100 such companies in the area employing thousands of workers.

With weeks remaining in Schwarzenegger's administration, the fledgling green economy in Sacramento and the rest of California owes a debt to Schwarzenegger's stewardship of the state's climate-change law and his administration's policies, clean-tech advocates say.

"(Gov. Schwarzenegger) helped to spark a clean-energy revolution in our state and ignite a national dialogue about the importance of climate change legislation," said state Sen. Fran Pavley, who was author of the 2006 climate-change law.

"He used his celebrity status to convince millions that we don't have to choose between a healthy environment and strong economy – but that by investing in clean energy we can create 21st century jobs."

In recent months, Schwarzenegger has avoided talk about his legacy as California's 38th governor, saying there's still work to be done on the state's budget and efforts to reform state workers' pensions.

But in the wake of this month's landslide defeat of Proposition 23, the oil industry-backed ballot initiative to roll back the state's 4-year-old climate-change law, he spoke at length this week about his administration's achievements in promoting California's green economy and the state's efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Has the governor heard about the broken windows economic fallacy? This well known fallacy contrasts the benefits from a broken window to the hidden costs associated with destroying property of others. The left has destroyed the ability of traditional power plants to generate power. The benefits are easily seen as evidenced by the bubble in renewable energy. The left is desperately trying to hide the costs: higher utility rates, movement of energy intensive industries, and even pollution levels that have actually increased due to inefficient usage remaining traditional power plants.

Every government unit pursuing this green strategy has the illusion that it will offset its hidden costs by exporting its green technology to other government units. Some government units will be successful but most will not. In the long run, China seems to be the only major winner on this account. At some point, the green bubble will burst even for the successful government units. The green industry is heavily dependent on government subsidies and mandates. Given difficult economic times, these subsidies and mandates will decrease and perhaps just be shutoff entirely as the public realizes the real costs of fraudulent green energy claims.

California voters had lots of wishful thinking in November. The majority deluded themselves about the Democrats having the ability to make the harsh economic reality stop. Perhaps if rats had still maintained control in Washington, this delusion could be maintained for a few more years. It is now likely that California will begin down the road of public debt defaults starting at the local level. The state legislature will prevent cities from declaring bankruptcy to rationalize their pension debt. It looks like a GM scenario again in which bond holders get shafted.

*Today, there are more than 100 such companies in the area employing thousands of workers.*

And, I'm guessing, thousands of companies that will have to leave Kalifornia because of draconian hoax-based global warming laws that will cost hundreds of thousands or millions of jobs.

The Job Terminator should check on Spain's experiment with “green jobs” before throwing them out the window in the name of junk science.

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