LA Weekly

Can you trust this man with your planet?

He's the man everybody's quoting today in opposition to the climate change control bill introduced in the state assembly (a new version should be up later today), on the heels of Schwarzenegger's http://climatechange.ca.gov/climate_action_team/reports/index.html">Climate Change Action Team Final Report . A slightly scarier report, from last spring, is here.

"I think it would be a big mistake," is what the man in this photo thinks of the legislation (according to the not-free Wall Street Journal. Write to me if you want to read the whole thing, but it's really not necessary).

Relevant nuggets from the reports: Over 41 percent of greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, nitrous oxide) come from transportation sources; carbon-emitting fossil-fuel combustion accounts for 81 percent. Because more hot days means more inversion, "the number of days meteorologically conducive to pollution formation may rise by 75 to 85 percent" by century's end in places like Riverside and the stinky San Joaquin Valley; by the end of that same freaky century, the Sierra snowpack could be down by 90 percent. With rising sea levels, the California Delta may just dissolve into the sea (that sure saves us a bundle on levee repairs, doesn't it?). The southern-ranging pink bollworm will migrate northward to ravage the state's lucrative cotton crops. Pine pitch canker, a pathogen once limited to the coasts that has already found its way inland, will devour the trees of our mountain forests.

What is it exactly about climate change legislation that the this guy worries will hamper our economic growth? A couple of months ago he warned that "we must ensure that California's ability to create and retain jobs" is not "compromised" by the state's efforts to reduce climate emissions, even though last year California's ability to create and retain jobs was somewhat compromised when he recruited workers in India to help get the governor's propositions on the ballot.

Why do reporters quote these people? 'Cause, after all, some folks at Berkeley actually think the drive to mitigate greenhouse gases could be a good thing for the state coffers, even without the doomsday predictions.

Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)