Guest essay by Eric Worrall
LA Times suggests the centrepiece of California’s green policies might be about to collapse in the face of an ongoing legal challenge.
The immediate threat to California’s climate-change fight isn’t Trump, it’s this
With President Trump in the Oval Office, California officials are bracing for the possibility that the new administration will undermine the state’s landmark policies on climate change. But the more immediate threat isn’t coming from Washington; it lies in a lawsuit that has been slowly winding its way through state courts.
The 4-year-old legal challenge pursued by the California Chamber of Commerce and a collection of business interests argues that the cap-and-trade program represents an unconstitutional tax. The system, intended to create a financial incentive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, requires companies to purchase permits to pollute.
…
State lawyers have the chance to defuse the situation Tuesday in an appeals court hearing in Sacramento. A decision could be released within the next three months, but it likely won’t be the final word — the losing party can still appeal to the California Supreme Court.
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All of this activity, state officials argue, falls within the government’s authority to regulate industry.
Opponents disagree, noting that the state is collecting revenue through a program that wasn’t created with a two-thirds vote in both houses of the Legislature, the threshold needed to approve taxes.
“What they’re doing is simply outside the law,” said Loren Kaye, president of the California Foundation for Commerce and Education, a think tank affiliated with the Chamber of Commerce.
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Read more: http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-california-climate-lawsuit-20170122-story.html
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I think there were claims drought came from carbon dioxide, so now what? California can’t get more amusing, can it? Maybe it can: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/10/us/california-drought-water-restrictions-permanent.html?_r=1
Why does it seem that California’s “landmark policies” seem to be a cliff they are more than willing to jump off of?
OK,
* whatever they want:
‘All of this activity, state officials argue, falls within the government’s authority to regulate industry. *
Opponents disagree, noting that the state is collecting revenue through a program that wasn’t created with a two-thirds vote in both houses of the Legislature, the threshold needed to approve taxes.
“What they’re doing is simply outside the law,” said Loren Kaye, president of the California Foundation for Commerce and Education, a think tank affiliated with the Chamber of Commerce.’
While the legal analysis may be perfectly accurate, keep in mind that the left has been appointing judges to California courts, without limitation, for decades. The vast majority of these judges have drunk the Kool-aide, have no soul and will do nothing to block the will of the Legislature and Governor Moonbeam. It is taking some time, but we can begin to see California slipping off into the abyss. Eventually, California = Zimbabwe.
I’m sick of hearing ‘the hottest year ever.’ In nearly 12 months there has been one day over the old century. Now before people say that this is weather not climate. This has been the regular outcome. Yet brainwashed people say they are over the heat. I can remember 40 years ago in Aus. the temperature would stay over the old century mark for ten days and then the cool change would only last a few days and the heat was back on. This doesn’t happen anymore. All we hear it being the hottest year on record. It is simply manipulation. If you grow up in agriculture you become well tuned with the weather because as a farmer it is your livelihood!
The claimed ‘impending doom of CO2 induced global warming’ is so dire that the CA government wants to stop it by allowing companies to continue emitting CO2 IF they hand over gobs of money to the CA government.
$ee how it works.
*yawn* how boring. Doesn’t matter what CA does, we really don’t have a clue what the climate trend for the “World” is, since we don’t have a global temperature network.
It’s like looking at some 60 year old guy’s nose and saying “he’s going BALD because I looked at a small percentage of his head and it HAS NO HAIR!”