AB 32 is the four year old California legislation that requires deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in the state. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and Valero Energy of Texas are sponsoring an initiative to place a measure on the November ballot which would suspend the plan until California unemployment falls to 5.5 % a little more than half the current level of slightly more than 12.5 %.

The principal legislative sponsor of the measure is Republican Assemblyman Dan Logue of Chico. He argues that the measure is one of many that are driving jobs out of California. Both Republican candidates for Governor have joined in the call. Meg Whitman has called for a one year suspension of the law, and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner has indicated that he supports the initiative.

In October 2009 two academics from Sacramento State University (CSUS), Sanjay Varshney,dean of the College of Business Administration at CSUS , and Dennis Tootleian, a business professor at CSUS, produced a pair of studies on the effect of AB 32. One report calculated that regulations had cost the state’s economy 3.8 million jobs and $ 492 billion. In the other study they concluded that implementation of AB 32 would wipe out one million jobs and $ 183 million in economic output.

Stanford enegy efficiency expert Dr. James Sweeney released his review of the report and concluded  “that their estimates are highly biased, are based on poor logic and unsound economic analysis, and are likely to be too large by a factor of at least 10.” Frank Ackerman, an economist with the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University had equally scathing comments and has been quoted as saying “The losses they project would be serious economic impacts-if they were real. They are, however, entirely unreal: they should be viewed merely as daydreams of disaster.”

The two academicians prepared the study on the cost of regulation for the Legislature at a cost of $ 85,000. Democratic Assemblyman Kevin de Leon of Los Angeles requested the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s office to assess the two studies. Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor wrote the Assemblyman that the two studies had major problems associated with them. He termed the first study “essentially useless” and the second “unreliable.”

The March 20-26 issue of the Economist has a helpful review of the entire subject. The magazine notes that legislators in Washington have revived talks on legislation to control carbon emission and may reach a compromise. But the magazine notes environmentalists have no reason to cheer. Any legislation that passes will be a pale imitation of what advocates had hoped for.

Why? The magazine notes several reasons. The Copenhagen Conference came with great hopes and little in the way of results. The recession has diverted the attention of business people and the population at large. While they may want to save the planet,business people have a more pressing concern with their bottom lines and no desire to incur new costs and people are going to be wary of anything even alleged to have a negative effect on the creation of new jobs. The bitter debate, if that term can even be applied to the bitter exchange of views over health care reform, has made any bipartisan effort very difficult. The weather, two feet of snow on the ground at the Capitol, seems to give the lie to global warming. And Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s error in predicting glacial melting in the Himalayas and the emails of scientists from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia that I discussed in an earlier post have cast a shadow on climate science.

However, the magazine notes that most research still supports the idea that the planet is warming and that the warming is a result of human activity. The magazine’s main point and mine is that there is no certainty in science. The range of possible outcomes of global warming are numerous but the most drastic would have draconian implications for the planet and the people who live on it. If prudent measures can be adopted to avoid these outcomes, those measures should be pursued. The Whitman campaign in California so far has been a prime example of disingenuous. Her commercials end with a starlit sky over a beautiful desert scene implying that all will be well if she enters the Governor’s Mansion. There are two aspects of the problem. First, the politicians need to seriously discuss the issue in all of its complication and not just engage in sloganeering in the form of sixty second sound bytes. Second, the voters must put in the effort to understand the issues and to give them a reasoned consideration and not place all the weight of their judgment on the fact that we have had the first normal winter in awhile. The consequences of being wrong are just too dire.