Last summer’s bizarre California ballot initiative was proposition 16, a PG&E funded measure which was fortunately voted down. This season’s appears to be proposition 23. Proposition 23 is admittedly much less crazy than proposition 16: it calls for the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 to be suspended until California’s unemployment rate drops to 5.5% or below for four consecutive quarters. The Global Warming Solutions Act requires that greenhouse gas emission levels in the state be cut to 1990 levels by 2020.
What’s bizarre about proposition 23 is that the monetary supporters are primarily oil companies based out of state. Their argument is that the Global Warming Solutions Act will cost jobs. That argument makes little sense. Working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions creates jobs, as people must work to develop and implement new technologies. The argument is that this will lead to increased costs for businesses, and that they will pass the costs on to consumers. That is most likely correct, but what it means is that money is shifted around. It doesn’t mean that money or jobs is lost, although certainly some specific people will gain and some will lose.
So the question is how the money would shift. And the answer is that the money would shift away from technologies which generate greenhouse gases and toward technologies which do not. The former are found in places which generate fossil fuels, such as Texas. The latter are found in places which do green technology research and development, such as Silicon Valley. So the overall effect of the law is most likely to cause more of the money that California residents spend on energy to stay in California rather than to move to places like Texas. Or, for that matter, Saudi Arabia. It is clear why so many out of state oil companies are supporting proposition 23.
Now, I happen to think that there is a straightforward case to be made for why we don’t want to increase greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and the counter-arguments to that do not make sense to me. But I am of course aware that it is, for reasons that continue to escape me, a controversial topic. What is, however, not controversial is that there is a limited amount of oil on this planet, and that the most pointless possible thing we can do with that limited oil is burn it. Moreover, the U.S. is a net oil importer, and the money we send overseas to purchase oil is being sent directly to countries which do not share our values and often work against our interests. I believe that any rational calculation would lead us to decrease our use of oil, which in turn means decreasing our generation of greenhouse gases.
So I see exactly one argument in favor of proposition 23: it supports the profits of oil companies. And I see many reasons against it. I sincerely hope the proposition is defeated.
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