Burning the Greenbacks to Save the Greenhouse

The Los Angeles Times reportedFriday that California would adopt "the most sweeping curbs on greenhouse gasemissions in  U.S." According to the story, the state air boardhas ordered that a 15 percent cut in emissions be achieved over the next 12years, which will supposedly bring our emissions down to 1990 levels.

What an original idea!Thatis, if you consider a nearly verbatim restatement of a ten-year-oldtoothless international treaty new or innovative in any waywhatsoever. Of course, the "inconvenient truth" that this proposedmodel has already failed at the global level can't be expected to stopthe overzealous California legislators from engaging in the sort ofself-congratulatory back-patting that one could only expect frompoliticians.

According to the Times, the regulators responsible forthis most recent swan dive into the clutches of crisis-entrepreneurshiphave "characterized  as a model for President-elect BarackObama, who haspledged an aggressive national and international effort to combatglobal warming." For their sake (as well as for the country's), onehopes the president-elect will do what he apparently always does topeople with an exaggerated sense of their own self-importance: pat them on the head and then move on.

For my part, I'd like to keep this bit of "we can change the world"nonsense confined to one state. If possible, it would also benice to get that one state liberated -- something Schwarzenegger coulddo with his new found emergency powers. And not only can Schwarzenegger do this - he oughtto do so, considering that his overriding concern over the next fewyears is to keep California's budget solvent, something which willundoubtedly not be helped by having to spend millions ofdollars for granola-crunching regulators to sniff cow derriere ("I thinkthere's a little excess CO2 here, Johnny!") and otherwise poke and pryin industries that cannot afford to be subjected to inquisitorialmeddling, not the least of which is California's farm community, whichis probably already reeling from the blow it was dealt by Proposition2! First the eggs, then the cows...I wonder if we'll get bread rationing next. After all, these regulators do want us to go back to 1990.

But of course, none of this would convince those who supportstate-mandated meddling in the marketplace. After all, when the marketis left to its own devices, we all know it's a voracious, evil thingthat swallows up entire rain forests in the pursuit of measly dollars.Well, that'sat least according to some people. So what about the environmentalconsequences of this plan? Surely, if those are good, then at leastthose who proposed the plan will have some cause to celebrate!

Actually, any way this plan goes, it will only end in tears. As ofnow, one can see two possible routes. One possibility is that the planwill go the same way as the Kyoto protocol, in which case it willsimply be a mask for more of the same industrial "attacks" on theplanet, and will actually set back the environmental movement that isresponsible for it. This would be the preferable route for California'seconomy, but would totally destroy the political capital ofCalifornia's regulators where environmental activists are concerned. Or,and this seems more likely since this plan can be enforced, unlike Kyoto, the plan will work too well and exacerbate California's financial situation to such an extent that backlash occurs.

Before you dismiss this possibility, consider this: according to Cato Institute Senior Fellow Patrick Michaels, an expert in environmental science, "As economies suffer increasingly from global warming taxes andregulation, nations can descend from first-world energy infrastructureand supply to banana-republic like conditions, even without the currenteconomic contraction." It would be absurdly Manichean to assume that all environmentalists believe in a return to stone-age conditions,so long as the critters aren't hurt. As such, one imagines that theprospect of reducing California to a banana republic would be just asunattractive to those members of her population who have been seducedby environmental crusading spirit as to those without.

But forthose few oddballs who do wish to see industrialization brought to a screeching halt,it would be the height of tactical folly to introduce a plan like thisnow, considering that the opportunities for backlash are so admittedlyprofound. Thus, given that the only options for this plan will both endin disgrace for environmentalists and (possibly) for California'seconomy, it should be obvious that the regulators responsible ought tobe censured immediately before they try and codify more hot air.