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The Green Police Are Coming
If you think the Super Bowl commercial depicting “The Green Police” was a joke, think again. California’s Cap and Trade law, AB 32 will allow fines, fees, and a law enforcement approach against “green violators,” all while attempting to reduce the state’s carbon emissions starting in 2012. The jobless rate is 12.4% in California, 2.25 million Californians are unemployed, and the state government is broke. Yet many legislators are still gung ho about California’s global warming taxes and regulations. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, “The law all but encourages outsourcing to Nevada, Texas, China and India. Even the liberal Sacramento Bee, which supports the law, says that policy makers should be “candid about the real costs of the transition it is contemplating. . . . Industries that are energy-intensive will move elsewhere.” Those “real costs” will be everything that uses energy from light bulbs, to plastic bags, our cars and pets …even the size of a families’ carbon footprints (limit on number children families will be allowed to have). Trucking companies, utilities, manufacturers and most other businesses will be hit with hefty new taxes when the unrealistic caps on CO2 are imposed and inevitably violated. Because AB 32 regulations require diesel engines to be retrofitted to cut greenhouse gas emissions, small and large business owners would be required to buy newer trucks and have no used truck market to sell their old ones. This would put independent truckers out of business. The green police may have gotten laughs all over the country, but in California it is no laughing matter. The Green Police video -Katy Grimes
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May 16, 2012
That ad scared me! So did the one about the U.S. Census, those snooping enumerators.
And let’s not forget that the NFL and the New York Giants did _nothing_ to help the great Plaxico Burress — who won the Super Bowl for the Giants 2 years ago — was jailed for non-victim, non-crime, when he was wounded when his own gun went off accidentally. (NFL players commonly are the victims of crimes; Redskins safety Sean Taylor was murdered _in his own home_ in November 2007. They need guns to defend themselves. So do you.)
Boycott the NFL!
You’re tripping over dollars to count pennies. According to a UC study, AB 32 will generate 112,000 jobs in California and increase the state gross product by $20 billion. Through gains in energy efficiency, AB 32 will deliver annual savings of $450 (average) per household by 2020 (just like California’s energy efficiency laws for appliances already have).
California’s $3.3 BILLION in clean tech adventure capital funding accounted for 57% of the nation’s total last year — each $100 million in venture capital funding helps create 2,700 jobs.
Between 1995 and 2008, California’s new economy busineses increased 45 percent in umber and 36 percent in employment. Green job growth exceeded the state’s total of 13 percent over this period. Between 1/07 and 1/08, green jobs grew five percent while total jobs dropped one percent. We already have 44,000 jobs in 3,000 companies. That’s why companies ranging from Google and Waste Management and Virgin Atlantic to the member companies of the Small Business Alliance support AB 32.
Steven,
Sometimes academics miss reality. I remember attending a PPIC event in the mid 2000s where an academic presented tried to argue that housing prices were based in reality.
But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that green jobs will continue to grow inside California as a result of favorable government policies/subsidies. At the rate of growth you describe, how long it will take to create green jobs for the 2 million plus Californians who are out-of-work?
Also, who will pay for the efficiency gains of which you speak? I’ve heard from several sources that electricity rates are expected to increase 60% as a result of AB 32 programs. Some of this money will return to some ratepayers through conservation incentives, but it seems clear there will be both winners and losers in our brave new green world.
David