Posted on 09/17/2006 10:14:13 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is poised to sign landmark legislation to curb emissions of greenhouse gases that many scientists believe are heating the planet.
But don't expect fellow Republicans from northern San Diego and southern Riverside counties to get up and cheer when he pulls out his pen.
Local GOP lawmakers voted against the legislation, Assembly Bill 32, when it came up for consideration late last month in Sacramento. The area's senators and Assembly members say they worry that the bill, while perhaps crafted with good intentions, will exact a devastating toll on the California economy ---- and for little environmental benefit.
Assembly Minority Leader George Plescia, R-La Jolla, led the charge against the bill, declaring the measure "will drive the final nail into the coffin of the California economy, causing businesses to leave our state in droves for other states that encourage job creation ---- or even other countries with no commitment to the environment."
Continuing, Plescia said, "The real impact of this measure will not be reduced emissions, but rather boarded-up businesses and higher tax bills."
The problem, said Assemblyman Mark Wyland, R-Escondido, is that the bill obligates California to take costly steps to reduce emissions with no guarantee that other states it competes with economically will follow suit.
"It creates an unlevel playing field," Wyland said. "Other states, and especially other countries that don't do any of these things, will just suck up more jobs for Californians."
Environmentalists and Democratic legislative leaders who back the bill disagree.
"Those criticisms are more about political rhetoric than about what's really happening in our economy," said Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego. "California is gaining jobs. And we're gaining good jobs, professional jobs, high-tech jobs, clean jobs."
If anything, Kehoe said, the bill will boost the economy by promoting development of a new industry built around nonfossil-fuel energy sources at a time when California needs to wean itself off oil.
A UC Berkeley study recently suggested that the bill would inject $74 billion into California's economy and create nearly 90,000 jobs by 2020.
As for an unlevel playing field, Kehoe countered that several states are gearing up to follow Sacramento's lead, and therefore California is not likely to find itself alone on the issue. She said California historically has been a trendsetter on environmental initiatives that eventually spread throughout the country.
Bill aims to curb emissions 25 percent
Authored by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, the legislation commits California to slashing emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide to 1990 levels ---- or by 25 percent by 2020.
It gives the California Air Resources Board the task of developing a strategy for meeting the target and devising by 2011 a cap-and-trade system for power plants, oil refineries and factories.
Similar to the trading program that the South Coast Air Quality Management District employs to ratchet down levels of air pollution in the smoggy region of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, the system would provide a way for factories having trouble meeting their emission targets to buy credits from those that have had more success.
Companies would need to begin meeting annual reduction targets in 2012.
"This bill doesn't say you have to buy one kind of car or use solar energy when you flip on a light switch in your house," Kehoe said. "But it establishes clear goals for California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."
Upon the bill's passage, Schwarzenegger signaled his intent to sign it.
"We can now move forward with developing a market-based system that makes California a world leader in the effort to reduce carbon emissions," he had said then, in a statement.
Nunez's ambitious plan is patterned after the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty on climate change reached in December 1997 in Kyoto, Japan. In the years since, 165 countries have signed on, with the notable exception of the United States. Formally in effect since February 2005, it aims to curb greenhouse emissions of participating nations to 1990 levels.
Sen. Dennis Hollingsworth, R-Murrieta, suggested it was a serious mistake for California to pattern a state policy after that worldwide initiative. At best, the Kyoto Protocol will barely make a dent in the global warming trend
"The bottom line is, if we do what the climate change Chicken Littles want, destroy our economy, and what do they say it will get us? An improvement of less than one-tenth of 1 degree," Hollingsworth said last week, by e-mail. He was referring to how much warming scientists say the globe will be spared if the treaty succeeds.
"And that's if the whole world did it," Hollingsworth said.
The measure of success
Given California's 2 percent share of world emissions, he said, benefits of the Nunez bill would be minuscule.
"It's better to keep our economy strong, innovative, and our society rich so that, if man-made carbon emissions are causing a harmful change in global climate, then we will have the know-how, technology and most importantly, the money to be able to actually deal with or do something about the problem," Hollingsworth said.
On the Senate floor late last month, Hollingsworth declared: "This bill is the road to economic ruin for California."
Nothing could be further from the truth, said Craig Noble, a spokesman for the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council in San Francisco. On the contrary, he said, the opposite is true.
"Scientists say that, unless we take action soon, global warming will have a devastating impact on our economy, environment and quality of life," Noble said.
And just because the Nunez legislation may yield small benefits globally is no reason to reject it, he suggested.
"The expression, 'When you're in a hole, the first thing you need to do is stop digging' applies here," Noble said. "We've got to start somewhere. We may not be able to completely avert global warming, but we may be able to slow global warming."
California's proportion of worldwide greenhouse emissions may be small, but it is still significant, he said. He noted the state is ranked as the world's 12th-largest single contributor.
"The measure of the success of this legislation is not just by how much we reduce carbon dioxide emissions here in California," Noble said. "California is a proven world leader. Where California goes, others will follow."
Here's to George Plescia and the "Wild Bunch" as they fight the good fight against political&financial opportunists on both sides of the aisle.
Time to call the Ref. Algore, are you listening? </sarc>
"This bill is the road to economic ruin for California."
Ironic that the skids will be greased and oiled with foreign imported oil.... and here we sit on an unknown quantity of reserves offshore.
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