Opposition to AB32 Suspension is not shooting straight

Russ Steele

The fax machine are humming way at the Stop Dirty Energy Proposition headquarter trying to re-frame the suspend AB32 Initiative into a dirty air proposition and misrepresenting the economic studies showing the economic damage to California’s economy.

 AB 32 has nothing to do with changing California clean air laws and regulations, it has to do with restricting CO2 emissions.  Restrictions that will strangle California’s economy.

According to recent flier put out by Stop Dirty Energy Group:

Projections of economic doom and gloom resulting from AB32 have been throughly debunked by independent economists and Legislative Analysis.

Really, lets take a look at what they said and do some fact checking.

Those seeking to repeal AB 32 cling to several studies by a Sacramento professor claiming economic doom and gloom. However the Legislative Analyst recently evaluated these studies and concluded:

Our review of this study indicates that it contains a number of serious short comings that render its estimates of the annual economic cost of state regulations essentially useless.

They target “several studies by a Sacramento Professor.” Really the only study I can find is a single study by Varshney and Tootelian at Sac State University, and they say "this study" What happened the multiple studies?  Yes, the Legislative Analyst had some issues with this study. And, yes they found some serious short coming in the study, due to the data provided by CARB. The study team was not given sufficient and accurate data. No wonder it was a flawed study.

However, an independent Legislative Analyst study found that implementing AB32 would cost California 10,000  jobs due to “leakage.” Companies moving to lower cost energy markets when AB32 is fully implemented.  Details in this post: What is the real cost of the AB32 Scoping Plan?

Again the Legislative Analyst questions CARB’s ability to analyze the economic leakage that will be caused by AB 32.

The model CARB used does not look at how individual industries and sub industries will be affected.

How come this leakage study did not showed up on the Dirty Energy Proposition flier?  How come they missed the Cal Lutheran Study discussed here that found:

1. Where existing jobs are counted as green and when policies create green jobs at the expense of existing jobs, the true impact of green policies can’t be determined.
2. Green job policies are counterproductive if California becomes economically inefficient -- creating green jobs but raising costs or reducing output.
3. Due to these and other factors, no study yet proves that green job policies will be beneficial to the California economy.(Emphasis added)

Right, they are not shooting straight with the Citizens of California. This is about protecting the green investment of Al Gore and his Venture Capitalist buddies on Sand Hill Road in the Silicon Valley.