Windfall of cash could hit state treasury from global warming program

For the past 10 years, California has struggled with huge budget deficits and wrenching cuts. Suddenly, however, the state is poised to raise billions from an unusual new source: the proceeds from its landmark global warming law.

The windfall could come as soon as this fall, when state officials are set to begin auctioning off pollution credits to oil refineries, power plants and other major polluters as part of a new "cap-and-trade" system.

The amounts are potentially enormous: from $1 billion to $3 billion a year in 2012 and 2013, jumping to as high as $14 billion a year by 2015, according to the nonpartisan state Legislative Analyst's Office. By comparison, the state's current budget deficit is $9 billion.

But like thirsty castaways on an island surrounded by ocean water they can't drink, Gov. Jerry Brown and state legislators face strict constraints on how they can spend the money. More than 30 years of court rulings and ballot measures -- dating to Proposition 13 in 1978 -- limit its use, probably only to projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

To add another hurdle, major business groups are preparing lawsuits, arguing that the state cannot collect the money at all.

Still, Brown and others in the Capitol are cautiously making plans. On Monday, the state's High-Speed Rail Authority slipped into a news release that the money would be used as "a backstop" that could save the struggling bullet-train project. And in a follow-up interview with this newspaper, Dan Richard, chairman of the rail authority, asserted that a large portion of the money could go to fund high-speed rail.

Perhaps someone can explain it to me In a certain area of the Nation there are air quality problems, assume part to be particulate matter (PM). There are many sources ,large and small, some of both in violation of set emission standards for PM. Let us look at source A which is large and doing very well in having it’s emissions well under what the generalized or specific standard allows. Then we look at a source B, large or small, that has problems with emissions above the generalized or specific standard. B goes to A and says I will pay you a certain amount of dollars as allotted by the EPA for an emission credit from your operations to get my company under it’s generalized standard/allowance. A says good deal you can have some of my unused/unneeded emissions allowances. As such we will both be under the our allowed emissions and free of agency bother. Emissions haven’t changed. Air quality remains the same. However, A has made some money and B has saved some money. Apparently there was little need for making standards more stringent but this comes later on when EPA needs to justify the desires of some bureaucrat to keep government on the backs of employers.

I like the quote in the Mecury News, that states:’the funds will somehow be restrained to enviromental projects’

Yup, just like the "tobacco settlement" money was only supposed to be for "smoking cessation programs". Meanwhile, the states were selling bonds backed by future tobacco revenue.

From the Chicago Tribune:

That may help explain the results of a recent Washington Post poll. Asked whether "recent price increases in gasoline caused any financial hardship for you or others in your household," 63% of the respondents said yes. That's well below the 77% that answered yes during the price surge of 2008, and it was the lowest affirmative response to the same

One part of me is outraged by the blatant spin they put on the gas price hike. The other part says that these libs are whistling past the graveyard, thinking 0bama won't get tagged with the recession that, not might but WILL, result from energy prices "skyrocketing". They're actually cheering the fact that, in a sense, it's only 63% who HATE this regime.

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