George Rebane
Ms Mary D. Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, came to Nevada City tonight to speak to us about AB32. To a full city council chamber the lady calmly laid out the regulatory program that still awaits us should Prop23 fail to halt the implementation of the rest of California’s demonstration program of how carbon should really be managed in an economy. There was no beating around the bush, AB32 is there, not to make an impact on climate change, but to inspire the world to pitch in and do their part to stop manmade global warming.
She spoke to us in quiet reasoned tones acknowledging that the debate truly was over on anthropogenic global warming (AGW). To me this was perhaps the most chilling part of how government can simply ignore what it doesn’t like to hear, and then proceed as if what it puts out is truly revealed truth.
Her prime focus for working to get AB32 fully implemented was the abatement of air pollution – yes, read that again, air pollution. There was a passing mention of green technology jobs and the enthusiastic investment in ‘clean tech’ ventures. But the overall impact on California’s economy was quietly glossed over with assurances that we would all breathe easier when she and the troops at CARB put their regulations into effect.
A piece of red meat on the subject of Nevada County’s ozone problem was emphasized to the mostly leftwing audience in the chamber. Our county is represented as having the worst rural air pollution in the country. Of course we generate effectively none of it here, but suffer the downwind effects of Sacramento and the bay area. Nevertheless, AB32 will fix the problem by its carbon reduction program. Someone forgot to tell the lady who “has dedicated her entire life to protecting the environment” that ozone and its precursors don’t contain carbon. But then, if you cast your regulatory net wide enough, you can claim to catch anything and everything in it. (My own study of the local ozone issue is documented in SESF’s Foothill Furor – Seeking Basis for Public Policy on Ozone Pollution.)
CARB was momentarily embarrassed at least three times when it sought to push its favorable analyses of AB32’s effect on California’s economy. In short form, the analyses were sleazy in their accounting, how they defined “saved and created clean-tech jobs”, and in the credentials of authors brought to bear on behalf of their arguments. No one beyond the leftwing environmentalist fringe believed them. To make matters worse, the state’s non-partisan Legislative Analysts Office was unable to find any economic benefit and reported a net negative long-term effect on the economy.
CARB sought to paper over this embarrassment by going to Boston to hire the prestigious Charles River Associates to take a look at the overall effect of AB32 on California’s economy. Bummer! CRA came back with more bad news. I reported on all this here. However, when you have the power of the bayonet, you just ignore such trifles and charge ahead as if nothing had happened. And tonight Ms Nichols played true to form and did not even give the economic impact on California a passing nod – that factor is dead and buried as far as the progressives and that 1,000 plus most powerful California agency are concerned.
So what we saw tonight was a well rehearsed showtime for backwoods peons from a confident and powerful arm of California’s liberal establishment. They have ruled us for a generation and expect to show everyone what they can really do when AB32 comes into full force. Ms Nichols did not tell us that with AB32, CARB will have the power to regulate EVERY aspect of life in California until the state is an economic and social wasteland. Maybe the global benefit from our sacrifice will be to show the world how not to respond to politically motivated phantom science. At this time only the passage of Proposition 23 in November stands in the way. (more on Russ Steele’s NCMW)
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