Cap-And-Trade Tosses An Anchor To Drowning California Economy

According to Chuck DeVore, the implementation of AB32 will result in the following:

- A lucrative source of income for the state at the expense of the consumer. This comes from the sale of carbon allowances.

- Use of funds for pork rather than its clean air purpose.

- Fraud in the exchange of carbon credits causing an outflow of funds from California

- Political favors exempting "friends" from the pain

- An outflow of funds from California to purchase credits from "third world" countries that are riddled with fraud.

- Closure of some California refineries that cannot comply with the law

- Gasoline price increase of 30% to 80% for Californians

After bankrupting an already bankrupt state, AB32 has no redeeming value and must be repealed for the state to survive. The environuts have no regard for the economy or the people of the state and rely on failed solutions to advance their agenda of control.

Excerpt: California often leads the nation, especially in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The act of leading is one thing, however. Leadership's outcome is another matter entirely.

On Friday, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the bureaucracy charged with implementing AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, adopted a cap-and-trade scheme to reduce California's greenhouse gas emissions by about 15% by 2020. CARB's regulations go into effect in 2012.

The unelected officials at CARB intend to reorder California's use of energy. In so doing they blandly declaim that their rules will create jobs while admitting to higher energy costs and a slowing economy. Somehow, this formula is transmogrified by CARB analysts into net job creation.

Given the immutable laws of math, one is forced to calculate that CARB's actions will "create" low-paying jobs at the expense of good jobs.
CARB's new cap-and-trade rules will place yet another load on California's teetering economy. Yet with AB 32 the law of the land, CARB has little choice, other than encouraging an ambitious program to build modern nuclear power plants to reduce California's carbon footprint.

A likelier course will be the repeal of AB 32 before the end of the decade as Californians come to realize that the Golden State's go-it-alone approach to reducing transportation-fuel carbon intensity isn't immune to the laws of economics or physics.


Read full Chuck DeVore article in Investors Business Daily here.