George Rebane

This is Texas governor Rick Perry’s assessment of the fate of his and other states if the country accepts California’s model for lowering carbon emissions.  And it looks like the nation is headed exactly in that direction as Obama announces his new energy team to be led by Steven Chu as Energy Secretary and Carol Browner as the new “energy czar”.  Browner was Clinton’s hard left-leaning EPA administrator, Chu is Lawrence Livermore Lab’s director who is always dialing for federal dollars to keep the lab’s programs funded. 

To do that Chu has, of course, been a very strong advocate of the climate change hysteria because it puts bread on his table.  In return, his pronouncements are cited as further evidence that AGW is real.  Now in other areas, a person who stands to directly benefit from some consensus judgment like that would normally recuse himself.  But in the political push to enlarge governments at all levels, no one in the consensus science crowd is ever called out for making self-serving statements.  And the public is generally ignorant of how these people get their government funded paychecks.  Pay the piper, call the tune.

Looking closer to home, California has finally gone and done it.  Sacramento has now adopted the CARB Scoping Plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions.  As reported in this morning’s WSJ –

California on Thursday (11 Dec 2008) adopted the nation’s most sweeping plan to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

The Air Resources Board 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 budget gap of $41.8 billion through mid-2010.

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 construct them.

One central piece is a cap-and trade program, set to begin in 2012, under which power plants, refineries and big factories will be able to buy and sell the right to emit heat-trapping gases.

In coming years we may set aside 11 December as another annual reminder of a bygone December tragedy, one that turned out to be “absolutely economically disastrous”.  But none can say that this was a sneak attack.