California's global warming law’s economic impact is still hotly contested

California's global warming law’s economic impact is still hotly contested

AB 32, the four-year-old California Global Warming Solutions Act, has sharply divided environmental groups as well as trade and business associations.
The California Chamber of Commerce and the California Manufacturers & Technology Association released a report this week that states the climate law could cost the state 485,000 jobs during the next decade because companies would move to less regulated states.

AB 32 requires that the state’s greenhouse gas emissions be reduced to 1990 levels. It would also boost solar, wind and other sources of renewable energy, cut the carbon intensity of gasoline, promote electric cars, discourage sprawl and include energy-saving measures into home-building, manufacturing and other sectors of the economy, so says proponents.Opponents, however, say the law is, in fact, a “massive energy tax.”

“A Sacramento State University Study and other studies say there’s likely to be a cost of $50,000 per small business and up to $4,000 per family in increased costs related to housing, transportation, energy and food,” said Eric Eisenhammer, spokesman for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

Eisenhammer also criticized AB 32’s cap-and-trade program.

“It is a carbon tax,” Eisenhammer said. “It raises taxes on every productive business in California and ultimately will drive jobs away from California, which is already one of the most over-regulated states in the union.”

Eisenhammer said the cap-and-trade program will require businesses to reduce CO2 emissions, and if they are unable to meet the target reductions, they will have to buy a “carbon credit.” Businesses — some operating on thin profit margins as it is, Eisenhammer said — will have to pay to retrofit, pay for the credit or leave the state. AB 32 “will cost Californians billions in higher taxes and more expensive energy at a time of record-high unemployment and a severe recession” wrote Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, on the initiative’s Web site. Coupal writes the CARB job creation estimate is “cold comfort for the 2.2 million workers currently on California’s unemployment rolls.” ...."

" AB 32 will cost more jobs than it creates, he says. “AB 32 does in fact create some green jobs,” he said. “But it also creates winners and losers. While the state will tax and regulate most business, it will subsidize and kick back some money to a few green enterprises. That’s where it’s creating jobs. But it’s a small number of jobs, and it’s killing the economy as a whole to do it... Because a reduction in "greenhouse gas emissions" would have no impact whatsoever upon global climate change, a delay in the implementation of AB 32 would have a net positive effect upon Californians' quality of life, both short- and long-term.
from another site

Information coming more acutely into public consciousness in the wake of the Climategate leaks and subsequent investigation into other anthropogenic global warming(AGW) alarmists' datasets and correspondences have demonstrated that the AGW hypothesis is really nothing more than an elaborate and rather pitiful fraud.

All legislation and regulation predicated upon the AGW fraud is therefore worthless, damaging, and possibly criminal (malfeasant). Were the state of California to implement the provisions of AB 32, the officers of the state government would be arguably culpable of criminal malfeasance in public office, and liable to arrest, indictment, prosecution, and both criminal penalties and civil damages.

It is therefore best for both the people of California and the agents of California's state government if AB 32 were not implemented.

Before the economic downturn, Californians naively approved the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (Assembly Bill 32) that mandates 2012 reductions of greenhouse gases through carbon taxes, alternative fuels and renewable replacements. All new climate laws increase the unit production costs and corresponding consumer prices of goods and services. A study by the Governor's Small Business Advocate reports that small businesses pay more than $134,000 each in annual California regulatory costs. Estimates are that the total cost of California regulations is about $493 billion annually – the equivalent of 3.8 million jobs. Environmental regulatory costs are a significant embedded cost in all of California’s products, services and enterprise.

What is clear in California, and globally, given recent climate frauds, is that partisan ideologies and cultish environmentalism have replaced prudent science and economic realities in climate policy. What is also clear is that environmentalism no longer offers any product or service in support of our future security and prosperity. Militant environmentalism and green-obsessed bureaucrats have become an “axis of antagonism” that we can no longer afford.