The California Democrat Party voted last week to oppose any thought of suspending AB-32, the purported “environmental friendly” law passed in 2006 that sets 1990 greenhouse gas emissions levels as the goal to be achieved (yet again) by 2020.
According to Steven Maviglo at California Majority Report, “California Democrats are united to defeat efforts by greedy Texas oil companies to try to undo our state’s clean energy law,” says California Democratic PartyViceChair Eric C. Bauman. “Our party will lead the fight to defeat this dirty energy proposition that will kill thousands of high quality jobs in California’s growing clean energy economy and further pollute our air.”
Proponents of suspension, and not just Texas oil companies, base concerns on the draconian effect of AB-32 in the middle of recession and a period of high unemployment and forcing California deeper into a competitive disadvantage with other states and nations.
§38600(a) From and after the effective date of this measure, Division 25.5(commencing with section 38500) of the Health and Safety Code is suspended until such time as the unemployment rate in California is 5.5% or less for four consecutive calendar quarters. (b) While suspended, no state agency shall propose, promulgate, or adopt any regulation implementing Division 25.5(commencing with section 38500) and any regulation adopted prior to the effective date of this measure shall be void and unenforceable until such time as the suspension is lifted.
Besides a potential job killer and based on highly politicized pseudo science, AB 32 will dramatically increase costs of doing business in the once Golden State.
According to the Howard Jarvis Tax Group, implementation of AB 32 at any time will:
- Increase your electricity bill by 60 percent, according to the Southern California Public Power Authority.
- Increase your natural gas bill by at least 8 percent, according to CARB’s own economic analysis.
- Raise the price of every new home by $50,000 or more, according to an analysis by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
- Cause Americans to spend $3.7 billion a year more for gasoline and diesel according to Sierra Research.
- Increase the cost of any new car by and additional $1,000-$3,000, according to CARB and automaker studies.
Wait a second, according to the Democrats, all the lies about AB-32 were coming from Tesoro and Valero; but this research is coming from their own bureaucratic documents!
Bill Gram-Reefer is Editor & Publisher of Halfway To Concord, founded in 2004. Halfway To Concord is the leading online source for community-driven political news, events, and opinion for Contra Costa County and the San Francisco East Bay.
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It is worse than CARB or Democrats are letting on. The AB 32 Implementation Group offers these additional issues:
• According to a recent study commissioned by the AB 32 Implementation Group, the AB 32 cap-and-trade regulations with an auction tax alone would increase basic household costs by $818 to more than $9300 per year per family. These higher costs would lead to job losses of in the range of 76,000 per year to more than 1.6 million a year, depending upon the rate of the new auction tax on carbon. There would be a loss about $250 billion to $350 billion over ten years5 in economic activity, or nearly 2% of gross state product.
• The cost of allocating cap-and-trade permits would be $143 billion, at $60 per ton, between 2012 and 2020 for California government agencies and businesses according to CARB’s Economic and Allocation Advisory Committee (EAAC).
• CARB’s Economic and Allocation Advisory Committee found that low income families would be particularly disadvantaged by the higher electricity, gasoline and natural gas cost increases their report predicted would occur as a result of AB 32. In addition EAAC stated: “AB 32 is likely to raise fuel and energy prices, and these price increases will be reflecte4d in higher process of consumer goods.”
• Under a section entitled Offering Assistance to Displaced California Workers, CARB’s Economic and Allocation Advisory Committee conceded that AB 32 would result in lost jobs and opined: Fairness considerations suggest possibly using allowance value to fund worker transition assistance (WTA) for any California firms’ employees who might lose their jobs or their fulltime status due to the AB 32 greenhouse gas reduction program.”
• A study by the University of California, Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education found that more than three million jobs could be impacted by new AB 32 regulations and/or a cap-and-trade program. These jobs are in manufacturing, fuel extraction, energy generation, waste and water services. There are a high concentration of well-paying, blue- collar union jobs in these sectors, and these jobs are disproportionately filled by men, Latinos and workers with lower than average years of education. These three million jobs represent 20% of all California jobs, and the sheer number of these jobs dwarfs the number of jobs in new green businesses.
• Studies of the costs of national efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are also helpful in assessing the true costs of AB 32. In Washington D.C., great confidence is placed on the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) analysis of government policies. CBO found that the national plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Lieberman-Warner) would cost American taxpayers $1.21 trillion during the 2009 – 2018 period and would impose mandates on the private sector that would exceed $90 billion per year during the 2012-2016 period. California’s pro-rated portion of these costs would be roughly $156 billion during this time frame.
• The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) concluded this bill would result in annual reductions of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP from roughly $1 trillion to more than $2.8 trillion ($130-364 billion for California) in 2050. Gasoline prices would increase by $0.53 per gallon in 2030 and by $1.40 per gallon in 2050.
• The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change examined several Congressional proposals to limit carbon emissions using their Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model. For S.2191, MIT found that, by 2020, S.2191 will lower expected GDP by nearly 1% (range of estimates is -.69% – -.78%) or by between $136 billion and $154 billion ($18-20 billion for California).
As author of Suspend AB 32, I thank You for your honest coverage of this issue.
Assemblyman Dan Logue
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