Environmental Law

CALIFORNIA TAKES ANOTHER STEP TOWARD ECONOMIC SUICIDE (?)

By STEPHEN HOLZER

     Per the Associated Press, today:

California on Thursday adopted the nation's most sweeping plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions, issuing rules that could transform everything from the way factories operate to the appliances people buy and the fuel they put in their cars.

The eight-member [California] Air Resources Board ["CARB"]unanimously approved the plan despite warnings it will put costly new burdens on businesses at a time when the economy is in extreme crisis, with California forecasting a staggering budget gap of $41.8 billion through mid-2010.

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The strategy relies on 31 new rules affecting all facets of life, including where people may build their homes and what materials they use to do it.

     Not everyone is buying into the CARB "solution", however.  Witness the editorial in today's  San Diego Tribune:

The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office and six economists hired to do a peer review of the CARB's plan have chronicled its cherry-picking of data, its weak methodology and the absurdity of many of its premises.

For one example, the CARB says that any action by a business that reduces greenhouse gas emissions is automatically ?cost-effective? ? meaning going out of business is therefore cost-effective.

No wonder one independent economist worried about AB 32's threat to 1.5 million California manufacturing jobs. No wonder two others said the air board's report looked more like an attempt to justify AB 32 than to evaluate its economic effects. No wonder another said the air board's work was so weak it could undermine efforts to combat global warming in a responsible way ? and called it ?useless for identifying a cost-effective portfolio of policies to achieve the ambitious objectives of AB 32.?

     Having spent a good part of my career helping businesses to close down in California and move to more business-friendly States, I don't look forward to what's coming next.

Full post as published by Environmental Legal Blogs on December 11, 2008 (boomark / email).