With unemployment at over 12%, California has one of America’s highest unemployment rates. Los Angeles County has unemployment at over 14%. California also suffers from punitive sales and income taxes, bloated unionized bureaucracies, chronic illegal immigration and gratuitous environmental laws. In its third year of economic recession, California has seen an unprecedented exodus of people and businesses who can no longer prosper in the once “Golden State.”
Before the economic downturn, Californians naively approved the California Global Warming Solutions.jpg)
Act of 2006 (Assembly Bill 32) that mandates 2012 reductions of greenhouse gases through carbon taxes, alternative fuels and renewable replacements. All new climate laws increase the unit production costs and corresponding consumer prices of goods and services. A study by the Governor's Small Business Advocate reports that small businesses pay more than $134,000 each in annual California regulatory costs. Estimates are that the total cost of California regulations is about $493 billion annually – the equivalent of 3.8 million jobs. Environmental regulatory costs are a significant embedded cost in all of California’s products, services and enterprise.
Act of 2006 (Assembly Bill 32) that mandates 2012 reductions of greenhouse gases through carbon taxes, alternative fuels and renewable replacements. All new climate laws increase the unit production costs and corresponding consumer prices of goods and services. A study by the Governor's Small Business Advocate reports that small businesses pay more than $134,000 each in annual California regulatory costs. Estimates are that the total cost of California regulations is about $493 billion annually – the equivalent of 3.8 million jobs. Environmental regulatory costs are a significant embedded cost in all of California’s products, services and enterprise.California voters can rein in climate laws like the California Global Warming Solutions Act (A.B. 32) by voting for a recently-qualified November 2010 ballot initiative. Proponents, who needed to submit at least 435,000 valid voter signatures to qualify the initiative, turned in more than 800,000 signatures. The initiative would block implementation of A.B. 32 until the state’s unemployment rate is reduced to below 5.5%. Estimates are that A.B. 32 could cost the state an additional one million job losses with its cap-and –trade system to reduce greenhouse gases to 1990 levels.
What is clear in California, and globally given recent climate frauds, is that partisan ideologies and cultish environmentalism have replaced prudent science and economic realities in climate policy. What is also clear is that environmentalism no longer offers any product or service in support of our future security and prosperity. Militant environmentalism and green-obsessed bureaucrats have become an “axis of antagonism” that we can no longer afford.
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