California is in economic collapse. Without the nearby ocean, the state would have become Michigan by now. The politicians seem to think that the weather and the scenery will bring people no matter how badly the state is governed. They may be right but those people will be tourists and they will go home again to their jobs; the jobs that California doesn’t have. Why aren’t there jobs ?
In 2006, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California state legislature decided that each and every man, woman, and child in California should eliminate 4 tons of CO2 emissions by 2020. And so America’s first mandatory cap on greenhouse gasses, the Global Warming Solutions Act, became law. The state must now reduce its emissions to below 1990 levels, a 30 percent reduction from projected business-as-usual emissions, essentially cutting the allotment of carbon dioxide equivalent from 14 tons to 10 tons per person.
The fixation of California elites on global warming will kill the state’s economy soon. They, of course, don’t need jobs because most of them have trust funds, bloated pensions funded by the state or have income from sources outside the state (like the movie industry which has largely left the state). Are the politicians worried about jobs for the rest of their constituents ?
the California Air Resources Board predicts that increasing energy prices and implementing new regulations in California will improve the state’s economic outlook. A 2007 study by the Electric Power Research Institute begs to differ; the non-profit electricity industry think tank found that “the cost of meeting the stated 2020 emission reduction goal could range from $104 billion to $367 billion of reduced consumption (discounted present value through 2050).”
Last week, the California Small Business Roundtable issued their own report, charging proponents of the 2006 global warming mandate with wild optimism about its alleged beneficial economic effects. The report notes that California’s 700,000 small businesses comprise 99 percent of all employer firms, provide 52 percent of all jobs, and contribute 75 percent of gross state product. Using the California Air Resources Board’s own figures, the new report finds that the annual implementation costs would likely result in a loss of $182 billion in gross state output and 1.1 million fewer jobs. The business losses would occur in part because regulations would increase costs to consumers whose discretionary incomes would be reduced by about $3,800 per year as they paid more for housing, transportation, natural gas, electricity, and food.
Don’t worry, the state will keep its residents employed with “green jobs.”
In 2008, the California Air Resources Board issued a study reassuring Californians that they can make money hand over fist selling each other wind turbines and electric cars. Implementation of the cap “creates more jobs and saves individual households more money than if California stood by and pursued an unacceptable course of doing nothing at all to address our unbridled reliance on fossil fuels,” the study cheerfully declared.
This sounds remarkably like Obama. They have invented a perpetual motion machine. We’ll see if it works.