You and I know it was never about facts, it was about hyping the green dream. Just look at the numbers. First from the opposition:
Of course they don’t dare mention the amount of money their side has put into it, because, well, that would look imbalanced. Now have a look at the other side of the issue from the legislator who spearheaded the effort:
Logue: Big money beat Proposition 23
AB32 was passed and signed by the governor in 2006. It provides that between 2012 and 2020 greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced to 1990 levels.
Proposition 23 would have postponed implementing major parts of AB32 until the state’s unemployment rate stood at 5.5 percent for a year. Now the jobless rate is around 12 percent.
In June, when Proposition 23 qualified for the ballot, the Enterprise-Record interviewed Logue and Robin Huffman of the Chico-based Butte Environmental Council. At that time, Logue was thrilled, and Huffman expressed concern.
Full story here at the Chico Enterprise Record
Here’s the REAL “dirty secret”, from the LA Times:
But it was pure spin. As they say in the movie, “Follow the money.”
Two Texas-based oil refiners, along with California business trade associations and anti-tax activists thought they could halt the nation’s most ambitious effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But they were able to raise only $10.6 million. Most of California’s biggest companies, including Chevron, Pacific Gas & Electric and Sempra Energy, stayed neutral or actively opposed the initiative.
Backers were steamrolled by a $31.2 million campaign funded by such wealthy philanthropists as San Francisco hedge fund manager Tom Steyer, such big environmental groups as the National Wildlife Federation and the ClimateWorks Foundation, and such Silicon Valley green-tech moguls as John Doerr and Vinod Khosla.
10.6 million from “big oil”
31.2 million from “big green”
Yep, that’s some dirty secret alright. But you won’t see this reported on one side news outlets or green blogs.
There’s lot of hype about green jobs, but read this from a man who actually created some of them:
I know firsthand about green jobs. SunPower Corp., a company I chair and the second-largest U.S. producer of solar cells, has produced about 800 green jobs in California. But that’s just a fraction of the 4,700 jobs lost when Toyota pulled the plug on its local Nummi automotive plant due to the high cost of doing business in California.
That “pull the plug” meme will be repeated again and again in the coming months.
And then there’s this absolute rubbish:
Here’s why, when you look at California’s energy supply…
Energy Generation in California: Source: Figure E-1
California Energy Commission – http://www.energy.ca.gov/2009_energypolicy/
…and you see all that hydro, nuclear, natural gas, and renewables, you have to ask yourself: “where’s the dirty energy problem?”
With coal making up only 18.2%, “dirty energy” and up to 40% of the electricity coming from out of state (remember Enron’s manipulation of California?) “dirty energy” was really a non-issue.
But when we are talking green jobs, green energy, green money, green envy or just about anything else “green”, such facts don’t matter.
Congratulations to California, you got the government and legislation you deserve.
Maybe Keith Olberman of MSNBC will name me the “worst person in the world” for writing this fact check. Oh, wait.
As long as it’s money that belonged to someone else, they could care less.
The state motto needs to be amended to “Eureka! There be lemmings here”
Californians can keep score on the business losses at:
http://thebusinessrelocationcoach.blogspot.com/
They runs a website that attempts to list the business evacuee’s. An interesting list. For a small fee, they will help you relocate as well.
From the website:
In the three weeks since my last tally, I’ve learned about another 14 companies that have left California completely or re-directed capital to build facilities out of state. The names of the 14 and justifications for listing them appear below. Today’s entry builds upon the Sept. 21 entry 144 Companies Shrink from Calif. This Year – Three Times the Total for All of 2009.
In short:
Total for 9-1/2 months of 2010: 158
Total for all of 2009: 51
Too bad Mr. Rogers was unable to convince his CEO (Thomas Werner). Mr. Werner gave the Anti 23 campaigners $25,000:
ttp://cal-access.ss.ca.gov/Campaign/Committees/Detail.aspx?id=1324059&session=2009&view=late1
Burns me up. I’m about to have American Vision Solar do an installation on my roof, and they use Sun Power panels. Hate to think they can use my money against the public interest. Same with my AMAT stock. Of course you’re helping subsidize this propaganda yourself–PGE donated $250,000. And Sempra was in for a bundle…
Strange how some of the same folk who have been loudly complaining about the Supreme Court’s lifting limits on corporate contributions are suddenly quiet. I can hear the crickets….
Kum Dollison;
I simply think it makes sense to start preparing for the escalation in the cost of fossil fuels that is on the horizon>>
By making laws that force their use? Rather odd. I would think that when fossil fuel costs escalated to the point that wind and solar were less expensive (as you suggest is going to happen) that people would be smart enough to switch on their own. Of course if wind and solar never become less expensive, then people wouldn’t switch and the stupid law was nothing but a waste of money. Then there’s the possibility that something we haven’t even thought of yet will come along that is less expensive than fossil, wind, and solar, in which case people will switch and the stupid law was nothing but a waste of money. If you are serious that it isn’t about global warming, then all I can say is that the green lobby has spent an enormous amount of stupid money on a wasted law.
Stick the ‘h’ on the beginning of my link above and it will work.
I have long since accepted that a large number of people have bought into global warming based on magic dressed up as science. But perhaps it is time for skeptics to drive a point or two home about economics as well. To be specific, the economics of “green jobs”.
I have to ask exactly what do these people think “money” is? Sure it is a means of exchanging goods and services, I think most people understand that. But it is a “means”. What does money actually represent (albeit indirectly) that enables it to be the means by which goods and services can be exchanged? Answer: Energy.
We equate money and value, but how is value established? Consider a tree in the forest. What is it worth? Almost nothing. Chop it down and take the limbs off, it is now a log and worth more than the tree. It took energy to accomplish that. A log deep in a forest is not as valuable as a log at a sawmill, so it must be shipped to the sawmill and is now of still higher value, but it took energy to ship it. The sawmill cuts the log into boards, which takes still more energy, the boards are of more value than the log was. The boards get used to build a roof truss, which has more value than the boards and energy goes into that, just as energy goes into using the roof truss to build a house. The completed house has more value than the sum of the roof trusses and other materials used to build it.
Each step requires energy. Some would say also time and perhaps labour, to which I respond, the use of energy reduces both the time and labour required to build value. Therein lies the fallacy of “green jobs”.
In the twisted math of environmental advocacy, there seems to be some notion that choosing higher cost but “clean” energy sources will somehow create value in terms of “green jobs”. But the fact is that choosing higher cost energy sources is, in fact, choosing to burden ALL goods and services in the economy with a higher cost structure. Given that value is built by the use of energy, the money earned by building value cannot help but decline. The log costs more, shipping it costs more, cutting it into boards costs more, making roof trusses costs more and building the house costs more. But has the value of the house changed? Yes it has. It is worth LESS because the profit dollars in the chain are less due to the use of higher cost energy. There’s less money in the pockets of the logger, the trucker, the sawmill worker and so on because to keep their jobs they have to cut the pay (the money they get for the value they build) in order to compete with states or countries using lower cost energy. They have less money to buy a house with. If they get laid f because their customers can get cheaper roof trusses somewhere else, they’ll have even less. Its called a negative feedback loop and it is as real in economics as it is in climate science.
Choosing “green jobs” is exactly the same as choosing to have higher costs. You can twist the numbers all you want but the notion that the jobs created by building high cost energy sources can possibly off set the reduction in value that this imposes on the economy as a whole is absurd. The jobs always flow to the “lowest cost producer” of a given product at a given level of quality, and the biggest input to costs in any end use product is, in fact, energy. The low cost producer may have low labour rates as well, but dollars to donuts if you raise the energy costs based on artificial laws, his costs will go up and the value (money) derived from the work done declines, and jobs are lost to jursidictions with no such naivety in terms of what money really is.
We seem to be living in a mix of George Orwell and Ayn Rand world futures.
It is far worse than they thought.
I really don’t understand how such a large group of people can be so easily convinced to act like lemmings? I have never been to California, but it seems to me that it is the ‘Dumb Blonde’ state!
@davidmhoffer says:
November 6, 2010 at 12:05 am
You got that right – well said!
Forgive me for asking, but…
One thing I’ve NEVER understood with all this CO2 nonsense is how, if you stop producing as much (small amounts as they are), you can honestly believe that your country/county/state boundaries extend miles into the atmosphere, thus preventing naughty, dirty stuff from adjoining countries/counties/states entering your jurisdiction and mixing with your “clean” stuff.
It’s like designating part of a room as a non-smoking area. How does the smoke know where not to go? Always baffled me.
So, correct me if I’m wrong, but if, say, the Former UK decides to (and in the unlikely event, manages to) reduce it’s “human-produced” CO2 levels by 80% (which must be an infinitesimal amount, in real terms, anyway), and China doesn’t, does all the atmosphere above the UK remain 80% CO2 free? Or does some from China (or elswhere) find it’s naughty way to Britain? What if a volcano goes off in Iceland – does it then more than compensate for the amount the British might have, er, saved?
Just asking, but if these “boundaries” stretching into the sky don’t work as such, isn’t the whole thing pointless, anyway?
For years we in Scotland have dreamed of something that was euphemistically called “silicon glen” and for years we’ve had stupid politicians pouring money into useless schemes including renewables with the inevitable result that we’ve got no economic benefit for all that wasted money.
Well finally its good to see that some other idiotic region is going to “lead the world” going nowhere and perhaps just a few of those jobs from silicon valley will finally come our way?
“davidmhoffer says:
November 6, 2010 at 12:05 am”
There’s a larger number of people who have not bought into AGW, other than those that seem to benefit (“Green” businesses) or are politicians (With links to “carbon trading”. Al Gore). The poor of South America, Africa, India, Asia and China. Almost all have a resource to sell, but the locals do not benefit.
Kev-in-UK essentially says:
California, seems to me that it is the ‘Dumb Blonde’ state!
Never truer words have been said. I have lived here for 40+ years and this is exactly what I have been thinking. Not sure how to overcome it until you make every one that took the irrational green “line” to drink kool- aid laced with peroxide bubbling in it. I’m feeling mighty low right now.
I apologize for everyone equipped for rational thought for the latest episode and may you permit me to just shake my head back and forth a while until I see a way out of this.
By 2020, it will be so cold, no one but Gore and Pachuri will still be saying anything about “warming”…
davidmhoffer says:
November 6, 2010 at 12:05 am
“I have to ask exactly what do these people think “money” is? Sure it is a means of exchanging goods and services, I think most people understand that. But it is a “means”. What does money actually represent (albeit indirectly) that enables it to be the means by which goods and services can be exchanged? Answer: Energy.”
No, money actually represents human labour, including human labour invested in the form of capital. Energy is merely one of the tools or resources employed by that labour and capital, and like any other resource is itself obtained by the application of labour and capital. The ratio of output value to energy input is not fixed. In a free market they will tend to be roughly proportional, as a consequence of the market process of minimising the sum of the factor costs. You can make the same good in numerous ways – with more labour, or less energy, or more material, or less equipment – so you increase or decrease each factor in turn until the overall cost is minimised and the marginal cost of each factor is the same. If government interferes by means of taxes, subsidies or regulatory impositions, the market is forced away from that optimum and economic efficiency suffers, but the effect is a second order one: doubling the cost of energy will not double the cost of goods or halve standards of living, because the energy is only one relatively minor factor of production; a loss ~5% would be more typical.
If you look at the electoral map of the Nov 2 election, you’ll see that the ‘agenda’ was on the coastal counties, and Sacramento/LA. Great. Split the State, it’s too big to succeed. It was never intended to be 1 state, but 2 (Shasta or Jefferson).
California was built on robbing the rural lands right from the inception, and was born in bad faith.
Sadly this is, for the most part, a study on what enslaved (indentured servitude?Better?) people do: argue and debate at a lower level of understanding than where the crux of the issue lies (no pun intended). The goal in all of this, IMHO, is that the money keeps moving. Expanding. To create debt. Think about it.
We are seeing governments hype and continue the AGW meme in a time when the GMT is falling, and the good science is pointing to natural variation. Practically everyone agrees we’re heading for colder decades in the future (well, not the CAGW crowd of course, not yet anyway)…and the push continues. Why?
Because when once we’ve gone down the “we’re all gonna burn!” road far enough it sets up the “owners”, (i.e. the Fed, World Bank, etc.) to blithely turn around and say, “we’re all gonna freeze!”, as if none of this warming ever happened.
The technology to, warm the planet (in the near future), must be reversed from our current level to cool the planet, as ineffective and useless as it is. Will this increase costs to people again? Of course it will. Crops will die in the coming freeze, new food sources sought, and monies printed, etc, etc. And where does all this money end up? Right back where it started…in the coffers of the “owners”.
The government is a front-man, a lackey, and this is NOT a conspiracy: it is just how the system is set up. To deal with the incredible amount of debt we’ve racked up (globally) new markets must be created, and when they fail another MUST take its place; the money keeps flowing, expanding, ebb & flow from the source (the Fed here in the states) and back to the source.
Many of those here at WUWT have seen this coming for awhile: recall the recent Bildeburger agenda? Global Cooling being listed amoung the topics to be discussed. Well go figure, they’re already making plans for the turnaround. Expect to see more grants and more research funding, and more shoddy ‘post normal’ psuedo-science.
I must be in a funk today, ususally I’m not this pessimistic. Nothing changes until the system changes, or it crashes. The former will happen when the people (us: the people on the treadmill) make it happen, or the later when the megalomaniacs at the top over-step their bounds and they make it crash. Any takers on which will happen first?
” Dum Dollison says:
November 5, 2010 at 7:22 pm
Perhaps the people of California just want clean air, and water. It did win by 60% to 40%.
…”
Well, you’re on track. When the state is empty of those pesky “people”, you’ll have clean air and water. Its just that there’ll be nobody around to enjoy it. Besides, if you want clean air and water in the Los Angeles basin, burn down Hollywood and send the industry packing. You’re overloaded with the world largest collection of hanger’s-on and rent-seekers. You might also have forgotten that the money interests which supported killing the prop, live, or can live wherever they like. Its not like they have to actually live in Calif.
RE:Kum Dollison says:
November 5, 2010 at 9:34 pm
Kum, the problem with current wind and solar is they are not efficient. Installing them does not do anything for the future. I have no problem with funding research into wind and solar, but installing the current inefficient technology is silly. Whenever they actually do become more competitive is the time to start installing them, not now.
Regarding the green jobs quote:
Jobs are a cost not a benefit. With private firms funded by private consumers the cost of those jobs is met willingly. With green jobs and other subsidised employment the cost of those jobs has been met with money forced from the pockets of taxpayers.
If anyone wants to to see how really bad it is getting in California because of Big Green and Big Bureaucracy, do a google on the San Diego County General Plan Update.
The unelected Commissars have deemed it necessary to stop all growth in the rural two-thirds of the County and allow what little growth they find acceptable to occur only where they happen to live near the coast. It’s anti-car, anti-growth, anti-business, anti-development, and a crime against liberty.
It’s a bureaucratic atrocity and it if becomes law, which could happen as early as this coming week, I’m leaving California for good.
Why return emissions to 1990 level, why not 1890 or 1790. At the rate California is going down that is where they will be when their exploding population has no visible means of support.
I see Google were in the forefront financing opposition to Prop 23.
Blatant hypocrisy –
i.e Funding the fight against Prop 23 while driving their Toyota Pious’s to their corporate 767?
In revenge – I’m trying the new Blekko “slashtag” search engine. You can use slashes to reduce irrelevancy and introduce dates etc – and, best of all, everytime you use it you’re draining a nanolitre of aviation fuel from the Googlejet
Just gotta jump in on the “electric vehicle” issue. What happens when these high tech batteries reach the end of their “useful” lives? Last time I checked, batteries of any kind hold some pretty nasty stuff – heavy metals and acids mostly.
O’course, there won’t be any battery recycling plants allowed in California – so what to do with the junk? Oh, ship them to the third world where people don’t live long enough to understand that breaking up these things poisons them…
Rant over…
Mike
Kum:
“Kadaka, This has nothing to do with “global warming.” I’ve said from the start that global warming was a crock. I’m looking at it from an economic, and “future cost of fuel” standpoint (as well as a “pollution in general” view.)”
ECON 101:
Price takes into consideration all future expectations of supply as perceived by the market, amongst many other things. Price is driven by supply, demand and all types of risk, (the biggest one quickly becoming political). Ergo, if the cost of utilizing coal, hydro, gas, etc. for energy is less than renewables skip the renewables. The sun and wind will be there for all intents and purposes, forever. Will we ever run out of oil? Coal? Probably not. I expect the price will rise to a point where it is not worth while pursuing these resources. I expect we have barely tapped the creative resources of the human mind (despite our educational system’s constant attempts to limit it into submissive following) so I can’t imagine substitutes will not be found.
Clean air is a noble goal. However, that is not what we are talking about when it comes to CO2 reduction. It is not a pollutant. So let’s have a debate about pollution reduction and not the phantom menace called CO2.
With respect to that, IMHO, the level of clean air we’ve obtained is more than acceptable, especially in California. I happen to believe we’ve reduced the level of air pollution in North America where any additional resources put into it has such low marginal rates of return on life enjoyment, it is far better to put resources into other life pursuits.
I’m an adamant lover of nature but recognize I come home to a lovely house built out of what nature provided; wood, brick, stone, dry wall, etc. etc. Are we to deny others that opportunity? What is pollution? IMHO, it extends far beyond what is in the air. Cutting down our forests to put up inefficient, economic unsustainable, rent seeker pleasing windmills and solar panels and lay vast amounts of power lines to me is pollution.
By using carbon based fuels, we utilize the energy which packs the most punch with the smallest physical footprint. Most of that footprint will be temporary. You can go to reclaimed parts of the oil sands project and walk through beautiful new growth forests. Many mines and all oil is underground. Yes, there are risks including collapsed mines and oil spills. However, the benefits achieved on the backs of those resources vastly outstrips the associated costs. Gulf oil spill cost billions. Benefits received from Gulf oil worth TRILLIONS, if not more.
The opponents of 23 attacked pollution. Prop 23 was not about pollution. It was about improving the life of the vast number of Californians and the vast number of Californians are going to experience a lower standard of living because of the efforts of rent seekers such as Khosla and Doerr, and watermelon control freaks.
We are a long, long way from running out of natural resources. The prices say so. A lack of understanding of a basic economics just helped contribute to significant chunk of opportunity stolen from my 2 lovely nieces who live in L.A.
I’ve started encouraging my sister/bro in law to move out of there. California is going broke and they should not stick around to go over the abyss with them. It is a made in California problem and I truly hope the rest of the country forces them to come up with a made in California solution. No bail out.