Posted on 07/31/2006 8:25:31 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
To our way of thinking, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's eagerness to have California become the de facto world leader of an aggressive effort to combat global warming by requiring businesses to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions has an inescapable fundamental flaw: It would add unique costs to industries here not borne by competitors in the other 49 states, to say nothing of the many developed and emerging nations who see pollution as a small price to pay for prosperity. Especially at a time of growing international competition, for one state to tackle global warming alone isn't just quixotic, it's economic folly. Obviously, a coordinated multinational approach is needed.
Last week, during the governor's meeting with the Union-Tribune editorial board, he was asked to justify his approach. Schwarzenegger is invariably described as one of the best salesmen around – but not this time.
He claimed that California's noble efforts to cap emissions would inspire copycat efforts around the globe, offering as examples (we are not making this up) the speed with which body-building became a worldwide craze and how discotheques sprang up around the planet after the 1978 release of “Saturday Night Fever.” Huh?
Some people enjoy body-building. Many people enjoy dancing. How many people (or, more to the point, how many politicians) around the world will queue up eagerly for a grand cause that inevitably will cause economic dislocation or worse?
In response, Schwarzenegger and his allies assert that global warming is a tremendous economic opportunity. They predict California firms will come up with the advanced emissions-controlling technology that the rest of the world someday will rely on.
But this theory falls apart upon the slightest inspection. Consider China and India, the world's emerging economic powerhouses. Ecstatic over their rapid ascent from mass poverty, both nations do not see shuttering their manufacturing and industrial plants to remedy a problem created mostly by the United States and Europe as an opportunity. They see it as a bad joke. So Beijing opens about one new coal-fueled power plant each week and New Delhi reduces environmental regulations on the mining industry and both tolerate air pollution so extreme it makes Los Angeles seem like Eden.
If Arnold Schwarzenegger thinks his example will inspire China and India to do anything, it borders on the delusional.
So whatever the moralistic trappings or bizarre anecdotes used to sell the governor's global warming crusade, be wary. There is little reason to believe it will accomplish anything – beyond helping Schwarzenegger win support from green voters – and plenty of reasons to worry it will hurt California. This is why our governor needs a reminder that he answers to the men and women who make up the world's fifth-largest economy – not the Santa Monica chapter of the Sierra Club.
"for one state to tackle global warming alone isn't just quixotic, it's economic folly."
California is the the HOME of folly!
Britain and Calif. to join forces on global warming
Houston Comical (AP) ^ | July 31, 2006, 6:36AM | JOHN HEILPRIN
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1675103/posts
Posted on 07/31/2006 8:05:26 AM PDT by The_Victor
I think all of Hollywoods elite liberals and actors should be required to walk everywhere, and banned via state law from driving cars, owning private jets, etc. Rosanne could use the exersize. these wierdo's are the biggest polluters of all.
I live just outside Oklahoma City and many here think the state is about to have a boom in economic growth, jobs, income, etc. If that is so, I think that the we shoud send a fruit basket to the entire state of California.
Enter Al Gore and his movie "An Inconvenient Truth," along with other leftist propaganda machines kicking into full gear. "Snake Oil--get your Snake Oil here.... "
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