California's Economic Suicide

From IBD
California's Economic Suicide
Posted 10/25/2011 06:50 PM ET


The Weather: Regulations finalized by the California Air Resources Board establish the nation's first state-run cap-and-trade regime. Despite Solyndra, the state will gather solar panels while it may.

The 262 pages of regulations implementing California's 2006 global warming legislation, Assembly Bill 32, approved by CARB last Thursday, will probably reduce employment more than it reduces emissions. The only thing it will cap is economic growth by bleeding a patient that is already hemorrhaging red ink.

Signed into law in 2006 by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the cap-and-trade regulations are intended to force California to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

By 2015, some 85% of the state's businesses and power sources will be under its mandates. Businesses that exceed 90% of their current greenhouse gas emissions will be forced to buy carbon credits as penance.

The question is why — in the face of evidence that the prospect of imminent doom from man-caused weather danger is on overhyped scam based on doctored data — California risks repeating the sad experience of Spain. There, subsidized windmills and solar panels dotted the landscape, only to wind up with a collapsed economy that lost 2.2 jobs for every "green job" created.

A 2009 study by economists at the California State University, Sacramento, commissioned by the California Small Business Roundtable, found the legislation would result in "a total loss of (economic) output of $182.649 billion annually," with an estimated impact on small businesses alone of 1.1 million jobs. This in a state with a 12.1% unemployment rate.

The experience of Spain and other countries is that the purported creation of "green jobs" destroys real jobs through diversion of economic resources and denial of abundant sources of fossil fuel energy. As California businesses and energy producers shift resources from job creation and energy production to buy pieces of paper, the state is doomed to the insanity of repeating Spain's mistake and expecting a different result.

Our national economy staggers under the weight of regulations restricting coal mining, offshore drilling and extraction of gas and oil from shale as we subsidize failing and uncompetitive, but politically connected, solar panel manufacturers such as Solyndra and electric car makers in Finland.

The Founding Fathers envisioned the states as individual laboratories where a free market and free people would find what works and reject what didn't. California's state experiment will only cause jobs and people to flee to the other 49.

"By forcing trade-exposed industries to purchase up to 10% of what were to be free emissions allowances, CARB will be in effect imposing a new tax on regulated entities," wrote industry leaders and the California Chamber of Commerce in a letter to the board. "In addition to being legally questionable, this tax will lead to dramatically higher energy costs that will harm virtually every sector of our economy."

The futility of AB32 is magnified by the fact that California is downwind from the world's biggest polluter, the "developing" nation of China, exempt from such draconian restrictions. Not long ago, the New York Times reported that a new coal-fired plant big enough to serve every household in San Diego comes on line in China every eight to 10 days, exporting more pollution to California and the Western U.S. than full implementation of AB32 would ever hope to eliminate.

Before he left office, Schwarzenegger touted his state's green initiatives, including AB32, at the Copenhagen weather conference in December 2009. "The desire and hope and desperate need for planetary transformation is what brought me here," he said. "Is it a dream, a fairy tale, a false hope? If not, how can we make it real?"

California's is a very grim tale, sir, having acted to make real its transformation to an economic basket case a reality.

Not at all biased. }:|

The science just keeps getting ignored for the force-fed talking point. It is a little depressing:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/10/climate-change

infi said:

The science just keeps getting ignored for the force-fed talking point. It is a little depressing:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/10/climate-change

Click to expand...

The debate's not about whether or not the place is warming. The debate is about how much, if any of it is man-made.

Interesting. The economist article actually made note of the climate scientists 'cooking the books' in the UK.

Big business, this green stuff. Ask Algore.

"I'll believe it's a crisis when the people that are telling me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis....Glenn Reynolds"

Gee, that means no more UN conferences in Bora-Bora, and Angelina Jolie, Brad and George Clooney need to start flying commercial.

[/quote]

The debate's not about whether or not the place is warming. The debate is about how much, if any of it is man-made. [/quote]

That is the most reasonable position I see on that side of the divide. Wonder over to Malkin' site or the other such and you will see full scale denial in action...and even urging others to burn fossil fuels in excess to combat any efforts made by others to reduce. That is what is depressing. We have to assume based on scientific evidence man has an impact - sure we can argue how much though the latest research seems relatively clear - I am fearful that the religious fundamentalists and the know-nothings will hijack the issues as they are trying to do on a lot of other things.

The great thing about federalism in America, to the extent that it still exists unsubverted, is that businesses and individuals displeased with California law can alter their circumstances by picking up and moving to the Lone Star State, where they view things a little differently than you and your comrades in the Peoples Republic of California.
People voting and expressing their opinions with their feet.

That's all good, however, I just prefer people vote using their brain.

Now, you're exposing the arrogance of the Left. Because we disagree with your opinion or viewpoint we're not using our brains, i.e. we're either stupid, ignorant, or blinded by our religion or personal financial interest, or whatever. What if I said you're stupid for staying in California? I don't think that and wouldn't say it. I do realize that we see the world from very different points of view. I don't think they're equally valid, but I do respect your right to hold yours. I'm especially gratified that our federalist system allows both of us to control our own destinies within the same country.

Uh, not really...
CA instituted stricter smog controls on cars a few years back...
While some made 49 state versions, others just built em all to CA standards.
Biiiiig auto market. Guess it made sense.
Besides, pollution is the least of their worries. Public unions are bankrupting the state.

The article omits something very crucial in the example of Spain.

The government of the PSOE (socialists), in order to encourage solar and wind power generation, provided for companies and individuals incentives to invest and build these power generating infrastructures with the agreement that a specific rate would be paid to the owners of these green generating power plants to allow them to make a reasonable return on their investment.

Once up and running, the same government ascertained that paying the agreed upon rates for green generation of electricity were unsustainable and changed the rules.

So now you have hundreds of these green power generating projects that are essentially losing money every month because the rules and agreements were changed after the fact to the government's whim.

It is a disaster.

I sort of agree. Federalism is a hard thing in practicality. You have mass production, transnational supply, global technology, nationwide distributors and on. In our business we trade in more than 37 countries, source in over 18, sell nationally and internationally and use enabling technology to talk to multiple countries and time zones at all times. State legislation for a company like ours is just another level of nuisance and from my experience state government are even more incompetent than Federal. Increasingly, it matters little where you live in the “real” world as in a business sense those state and national boundaries just get glossed over by business practicalities.

And, as if on cue, here's the extremely erudite Victor Davis Hanson doing a pretty good job of explaining how intelligent, well-reasoned people might differ with the Gorebal Warming crowd:

October 27, 2011
Global Warming -- RIP
By Victor Davis Hanson

Not long ago, candidate Obama promised to cool the planet and lower the rising seas. Indeed, he campaigned on passing "cap-and-trade" legislation, a radical, costly effort to reduce America's traditional carbon energy use.

The theory was that new taxes and greater regulations would make Americans pay more for fossil-fuel energy -- a good thing if it reduced our burning of coal, oil and gas. Obama was not shy in admitting that under his green plans, electricity prices would "necessarily skyrocket." His energy secretary, Steven Chu, at one point had even said, "Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe" -- that is, about $8-$10 per gallon. Fairly or not, the warming movement seemed to cast a tiny elite imposing costs on a poorer and supposedly less informed middle class.

But despite a Democrat-controlled House and Senate in 2009-2010, President Obama never passed into law any global warming legislation. Now the issue is deader than a doornail -- despite the efforts of the Environmental Protection Agency to enact new regulations that would never pass Congress.

So what happened to the global warming craze?

Corruption within the climate-change industry explains some of the sudden turnoff. "Climategate" -- the unauthorized 2009 release of private emails from the Climatic Research Unit in the United Kingdom -- revealed that many of the world's top climate scientists were knee-deep in manipulating scientific evidence to support preconceived conclusions and personal agendas. Shrill warnings about everything from melting Himalayan glaciers to shrinking polar bear populations turned out not always to be supported by scientific facts.

Unfortunately, "green" during the last three years has also become synonymous with Solyndra-style crony capitalism. Common-sense ideas like more windmills, solar panels, retrofitted houses and electric cars have all been in the news lately. But the common themes were depressingly similar: few jobs created and little competitively priced energy produced, but plenty of political donors who landed hundreds of millions of dollars in low-interest loans from the government.

Of course, it didn't help that the world's most prominent green spokesman, Nobel laureate Al Gore, made tens of millions of dollars from his own advocacy. And he adopted a lifestyle of jet travel and energy-hungry homes at odds with his pleas for everyone else to cut back.

But even without the corruption and hypocrisy, sincere advocates of man-made global warming themselves overreached. At news that the planet had not heated up at all during the last 10 years, "global warming" gave way to "climate change" -- as if to warn the public that unseasonable cold or wet weather was just as man-caused as were the old specters of drought and scorching temperatures.

Then, when "climate change" was not still enough to frighten the public into action, yet a third term followed: "climate chaos." Suddenly some "green experts" claimed that even more terrifying disasters -- from periodic hurricanes and tornadoes to volcanoes and earthquakes -- could for the first time be attributed to the burning of fossil fuels. At that point, serially changing the name of the problem suggested to many that there might not be such a problem after all.

Current hard times also explain the demise of global warming advocacy. With high unemployment and near nonexistent economic growth, Americans do not want to shut down generating plants or pay new surcharges on their power bills. Most people worry first about having any car that runs -- not whether it's a more expensive green hybrid model.

Over the last half-century, Americans have agreed that smoky plants and polluting industries needed to be cleaned up. But when the green movement began to classify clean-burning heat as a pollutant, it began to lose the cash-strapped public.

While the Obama administration was subsidizing failed or inefficient green industries, radical breakthroughs in domestic fossil-fuel exploration and recovery -- especially horizontal drilling and fracking -- have vastly increased the known American reserves of gas and oil. Modern efficient engines have meant that both can be consumed with little, if any, pollution -- at a time when a struggling U.S. economy is paying nearly half a trillion dollars for imported fossil fuels. The public apparently would prefer developing more of our own gas, oil, shale, tar sands and coal as an alternative to going broke by either importing more fuels from abroad or subsidizing more inefficient windmills and solar panels at home.

We simply don't know positively whether recent human activity has caused the planet to warm up to dangerous levels. But we do know that those who insist it does are sometimes disingenuous, often profit-minded, and nearly always impractical.

Can't unleash VDH on the folks here, Cass. Their minds have been warped by the NY Times, etc.

Might cause a fatal disconnect.
Start them with easier stuff...who's the "conservative" opinion guy for the NYT? David Brooks?

On classics and history he has a pedigree. On science..just an opinionist

There is no one jot of scientific data in his opinion piece. He is just recycling climate gate claims.

Sad

I've heard of the New York Times. Does anybody really read that anymore?

infi said:

On classics and history he has a pedigree. On science..just an opinionist

Click to expand...

And, the leaders of the GW movement, AlGore and MichaelMoore, what degrees do they hold, pray tell?

Cassidain said:

I've heard of the New York Times. Does anybody really read that anymore?

Click to expand...

Ask Fred.

He thinks we all do.

Greenland was settled by the Vikings in the 10 hundreds, I believe. There once was a reason it was named Greenland.The remains of the settlements have been found and it is an absolute fact that grapes were grown there at one time.Eventually Greenland became unlivable due to Global Cooling.Human activity had no influence on that climate change.The same folks who blame us for global warming now blamed us for global cooling in the '70s.Anyone remember the severe winters we used to suffer in those years and the dire predictions of our intellectual betters?These global warming hucksters have more than the wellfare of the planet on their minds.There are $$$ signs for those at the forefront of green technology.Look how they're pushing electric cars when we still need coal plants to charge them?

Cassidain said:

infi said:

On classics and history he has a pedigree. On science..just an opinionist

Click to expand...

And, the leaders of the GW movement, AlGore and MichaelMoore, what degrees do they hold, pray tell?

Click to expand...

I quoted the latest research undertaken by credible and qualifies scientists. Moore and Gore are irrelevant to that.
You countered with an opinioist without scientific credentials. That was my point.

wickhamlane said:

.Eventually Greenland became unlivable due to Global Cooling.Human activity had no influence on that climate change

Click to expand...

I am a little confused as to what that has to do with the overall point.

Because one occurrence of climate change was not due to man's potential environmental impact are you concluding that any/all climatic change is not impacted by later man's industrial activities?

That seems akin to saying one boat once sank from its wooden planks rotting naturally without man's interference then all boats that sink have nothing to do with man's actions.

It is a singular to global logic rationale that doesn't seem to be quite right.