Tom McClintock gave a speech October 18, where he outlined the grave impacts global warming will have on California. According to McClintock, one disaster on the immediate horizon is AB 32, passed recently by the legislature and signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger.
“In the name of saving the planet from global warming, California adopted the most radically restrictive legislation anywhere in the nation, including AB 32, which requires a 25 percent reduction in man-made carbon dioxide emissions within 13 years. To put this in perspective, we could junk every car in the state of California RIGHT NOW – and not meet this mandate.
“[Yet,] Californians just approved $40 billion of bonds that California’s political leaders promised would be used for highways, dams, aqueducts and other capital improvements. They are desperately needed. But at the same time, those same political leaders have imposed a 25 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.
“Now here’s the problem. Building highways, dams and aqueducts requires tremendous amounts of concrete, the principle ingredient of which is cement. [But], it turns out that for every ton of cement, a TON of carbon dioxide is released. It’s the third biggest source of carbon dioxide in all human enterprise…
“Citing AB 32, Brown argued that unless the counties could show how they would build highways without using earthmoving equipment or concrete – and that once built, that people would not drive automobiles on them – the only legal use of the funds would be to promote mass transit, transit villages – and I’m not making this up – pedestrian trails and bicycle paths.”
And that’s just how AB 32 will impact California’s highway infrastructure. Read the rest of McClintock’s speech to the Western Conservative Political Action Conference.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Rich makes good point about science. I wonder what science is at work that passes massive highway construction as an initiative while the assembly and governor promote AB 32 at the same time.
Its hard to know where to start. Sen. McClintock’s unscientific approach appears to be a strung-together set of anecdotes he has collected from various sources, very little of which has any scientific merit. Admittedly, the science surrounding climate change can be tedious and it certainly cannot be simplified into the political sound bites that seem to the only thing digestible by the average politician, but public policy on such an issue must be informed by science and thus it is incumbent on the dialogue to make the effort. I would suggest that one would be far better enlightened by actually reading reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and our own California Department of Water Resources on climate change than listening to the politically misleading screed of Sen. McClintock. While I personally think that Al Gore gets more right than wrong on this issue, I don’t get my information on this issue from Mr. Gore because he is an indirect conduit at best relaying what he interprets from the findings of science. Far better to grapple with the science and the policy implications by going to the source material itself rather than to let politicians, of whatever political stripe, or to take media information (from Fox News, NPR, or whatever source) as gospel. I find the scientific case for anthropogenic climate change to be conclusive and the potential consequences for California and the globe to be worthy of policy and action, but others may draw different conclusions. So be it – in a democracy. But I would strongly urge those interested to reach beyond the sloganeering to seek better sources of information than opportunistic political posturing of any stripe.
Links referenced:
IPCC: http://www.ipcc.ch/
DWR: http://www.climatechange.water.ca.gov/
-Rich, Concord