...is not necessarily good for the rest of us, especially when it comes to Assembly Bill 32, the "California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006." Mitt Kibbe explains how Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer are trying to impose the Golden State's draconian reductions in CO2 on the rest of us in a piece in the Wall Street Journal (sub req):
So what is California to do? Handicapped by a deeply flawed legislative mandate, some Golden State pols are hoping that their newly empowered congressional delegation in Washington, D.C., can force the rest of the nation to drink the same carbon-free Kool-Aid. One of San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi's first acts as House Speaker was a tactical end-run around Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D., Mich.), no friend of extreme environmentalists. Promising House consideration of national global warming legislation by July 4th, Rep. Pelosi created a new Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, and put Rep. Henry Waxman, who represents Beverly Hills, in charge of it.
In the Senate, California's Barbara Boxer is perhaps the most extreme congressional voice on this issue. As the new chairman of the Senate environment and public works committee, she wields an influential gavel. Her well-orchestrated March 21st committee hearing on the dangers of climate change turned into a public relations circus -- the de facto East Coast coronation of former Vice President Al "The Goracle" Gore. Sen. Boxer claims that unless Congress enacts new taxes and other limits on energy consumption, "we could risk global climatic disasters on an unprecedented scale, ranging from dangerous sea level rise, to increasingly damaging hurricanes [such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita], increased deaths from air pollution and disease, to widespread geopolitical instability." Scripts this scary used to be produced in Hollywood, but ever since the Oscars, it is getting harder and harder to sort fact from fiction.
The first real casualty of all the hype surrounding global warming seems to be simple economic common sense. Just a few years ago, in 1997, a Senate resolution sharply criticized proposed CO2 limits under the Kyoto Protocol, calling on then-President Clinton not to sign it or any other international climate change agreement that ". . . would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States." The Kyoto Protocol would have compelled the U.S. to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 7% below 1990 levels by the years 2008 to 2012. Adopting Kyoto-style restrictions would have cost the economy 4.9 million jobs, something Sen. Boxer and 96 of her Senate colleagues apparently found morally, or at least politically, unacceptable.
Unfortunately, with AB 32, California has adopted its own mini Kyoto, so Sen. Boxer, Rep. Pelosi and Rep. Waxman are "all in" at a high-stakes game of tax, cap and trade. This push from the California delegation stands American federalism on its head. Competition and innovation among the states are the driving force behind federalism, but Sen. Boxer and Speaker Pelosi hope to take an extravagantly expensive idea from their state and force it on the rest of us, even as similarly draconian carbon restrictions are failing miserably in Europe.
In reality, continued economic prosperity is essential to addressing real environmental challenges. Congress should be considering a positive environmental agenda that strips away agriculture subsidies, drops tariffs on cleaner and cheaper fuels, and eliminates other barriers to technological innovation like excessive taxes on new capital and investment. Unfortunately, environmental stewardship informed by the laws of supply and demand will do nothing to bail out California.
Gee, thanks California. Why don't you just go ahead and secede already?
No comments:
Post a Comment