Election Day Giving California Voters Choice Over Global Warming Law Through Ballot Prop. 23
October 29, 2010 Kyriaki (Sandy) Venetis 
Graphic courtesy of climateactionmoreland.org.
Californians will have a very important decision to make this Election Day beyond who will represent them over the next term. On the ballot, voters will find something called the “California Jobs Initiative,” also commonly known as Proposition 23.
The ballot will inform voters that if they vote ‘yes’ and the proposition passes, that it will suspend the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (also known as AB 32), which is scheduled to become operative on Jan. 1, 2012.
The goal of the proposition is to suspend law - which will reduce greenhouse gas emissions - until California’s unemployment rate drops to 5.5 percent or below for four consecutive quarters (a 12-month span).
If the global warming law goes into effect, it will require California’s State Air Resource Board to design and implement measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to their 1990 levels in the next eight years (by 2020).
They don’t know what the 1990 levels are yet, so the law has given the board the job of evaluating “the best available scientific, technological, and economic information on greenhouse gas emissions to determine the 1990 levels.”
Graphic courtesy of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
As part of designing statewide emissions reduction measures, if the law takes effect, it will require the board to: minimize costs and maximizes benefits for California’s economy; improve and modernize California’s energy infrastructure and maintains electric system reliability; and maximize additional environmental and economic co-benefits for California.
Representative Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) opposes the global warming law and is for Proposition 23, saying, “In 2006, Sacramento’s rocket-scientists enacted AB 32, imposing draconian restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions. Yes, that’s the stuff you exhale.
“They promised to save the planet from global warming and open a cornucopia of new jobs. Since then, California’s unemployment rate has shot far beyond the national unemployment rate and the earth has continued to warm and cool as it has for billions of years. Prop. 23 merely holds the environmental left to its promise. It suspends AB 32 until unemployment stabilizes at or below its pre-AB 32 level.”
Among other supporting Proposition 23 is Koch Industries, Inc., a U.S. oil and chemical company, saying in a statement that, “AB 32 was enacted during an economic boom,” and acknowledges that, “It would establish a carbon cap and trade scheme, and low-carbon fuel standards aimed at lowering carbon emissions in California, (though also) causing (in the company’s opinion) significant job losses and higher energy costs at a time when California can afford neither.”
Opposed to Proposition 23 is David Foster, executive director of BlueGreen Alliance, a national partnership of labor unions and environmental organizations, saying that, “Proposition 23 deceptively claims it would suspend California’s global warming law, known as AB 32, until unemployment is at or below 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters.
“In fact, since current unemployment is more than 12 percent, and since unemployment has held for a year at 5.5 percent only three times in three decades, this effort would destroy, not delay the law.”
Mr. Foster also attacks Koch Industries position saying, “California’s global warming law will stimulate the economy while protecting the environment and public health. This isn’t pie-in-the-sky speculation, it’s based on sound economic research from the Employment Development Department that says there are already 500,000 green jobs in the state, thanks in large part to the law, and from other research conducted by the Air Resources Board indicating (that) we can expect about 120,000 additional jobs to be created in the near term.
“Given job losses suffered during the current recession, that’s a modest up-tick. But the dramatic, long-term economic prospects of clean energy in California are what explain why so many of the state’s largest employers and business groups oppose Prop. 23, from Kaiser Permanente and Google to Levi Strauss and the Los Angeles Business Council.”
Also lashing out against Proposition 23, and Koch Industries in particular, is The Union of Concerned Scientists. “The Koch brothers’ outlandish financial investment in support of the Prop. 23 campaign should be exposed for its colossal cynicism. These out-of-state billionaires want to degrade the air quality for all Californians while maximizing profits for their own polluting businesses,” said James McCarthy, chairman of the UCS’s board of directors.
“With their enormous profits from polluting industries, the Koch brothers are trying to drown out the voices of scientists on a number of public health issues, including climate change,” Mr. McCarthy concluded.
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