Most Californians accept the reality of global warming. They also understand that its effects are to be taken very, very seriously – from rising sea levels that threaten the SF Bay Area and the Port of LA-Long Beach to drought and firestorms to threats to the wine industry. Only a fool would say we have no reason to take quick and aggressive action on global warming to forestall and/or deal with these and other related impacts.
So does that make Carly Fiorina a fool? Or just a global warming denier? Check out what she told the Sacramento Bee:
Calling it an “unbelievable job killer,” GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina today urged the elimination of California’s landmark global warming law….
And she said the science involved in global warming should be subject to more scrutiny.
“I think we should have the courage always to examine the science,” she said.
Fiorina, caring not a whit about the thousands of jobs AB 32 has created in the green tech industry, has apparently declared herself a climate scientist. She’s offered no facts or analysis to support her claims that AB 32 kills jobs or that global warming science needs greater scrutiny.
More importantly, she’s proved that she cares nothing at all for the millions of people who either live in a place or depend on places that will be underwater if the Greenland Ice Sheet or one of the Antarctic Ice Sheets melts in the coming years and decades.
I guess all those people who live and work in those areas don’t count as much as the handful of folks who might possibly be impacted by AB 32. Not to Fiorina, who seems to believe that any change to the status quo is bad, even if that change is designed to avert catastrophe in the near future.
Instead of spending time/money/effort debating AB 32 anymore, all parties should agree to table the entire thing until we resolve what we’re going to do at the federal level. As Mary Nichols pointed out yesterday, it was one thing when there was an administration that had no intention of dealing with GHGs. Things have changed. There will be federal climate legislation. Based on what I’ve seen of the newest Senate bill (Kerry/Lieberman/Graham), it’s got a great chance of passing and succeeding (does some very smart things that the current drafts of our reg do not). More importantly, it places a moratorium on states establishing their own separate GHG limits. Why waste more time/money/effort on something that’s simply going to be unwound in a few years?
California can beam rays of green tech out of it’s rear end and it’s not going to matter if the rest of the country and the rest of the world doesn’t follow. Those ice caps will still melt.
without the required corporate giveaway….
Which is what the current Senate bill is, not on a large scale but stupid enough that in five years we’ll be back adding onto it and making it stronger when it should be the bitter pill that Corporate America should have to swallow, which they’ll threaten (like they have already) it will give them an excuse to fire people and not hire anybody.
When are people going to wake up and know that these morons are not hiring anyway and even if they did it would be a greatly reduced wage?
AB32 makes sense and inaction doesn’t, so the first post is laughable at best.
Batten down the hatches, DWP rate increase coming.