To hear Prop 23 backers tell it, action to address global warming by reducing our carbon emissions and developing a green jobs economy that spurs clean energy innovation is somehow optional, something we can just put aside when it’s inconvenient.

We know this isn’t true. From rising sea levels to more frequent and intense fires to droughts that cause widespread damage to the agricultural industry, global warming represents an immediate and ongoing threat to our economy. Whether in 2010, 2020, 2030, or later, inaction on global warming will doom the California economy and cause higher unemployment for some time to come.

The only way anyone can look at that future and not really care about it is if they deny it – and that means denying global warming.

A new study from Germany’s Max Planck Institute makes clear the urgent need to act, arguing that carbon emissions must peak by 2015 if the worst effects of global warming are to be avoided:

The model, developed by researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, suggests the world’s annual carbon emissions can reach no more than 10 billion tonnes in five years’ time before they must be put on a steady downward path. After that, the researchers say, emissions must drop by 56 per cent by mid-century and need to approach zero by 2100.

Those targets are necessary to prevent average global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees C by 2100. Under that scenario, though, further warming can still be expected for years to come afterward.

California’s AB 32 helps address this concern by mandating our carbon emissions be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020. But as I explained yesterday, if Prop 23 passed we probably wouldn’t resume action on global warming until April 2021 at the earliest. By that point, it might be too late to avoid the worst.

Anyone who supports Prop 23 has to explain why it is good for us to let global warming run amok without taking any steps to address it – and the only way they can do that is to deny global warming itself.

Maybe they agree with Carly Fiorina that worrying about global warming is just worrying about “the weather”. Or maybe they just don’t care about the lost jobs and destroyed communities that will result from unchecked global warming. Either way, it’s impossible to back Prop 23 without denying global warming – unless you think the effects of that warming are a good thing for our state.

Yesterday the San Diego Union Tribune ran two dueling columns on Prop 23, which would destroy California’s green jobs economy and efforts to address global warming. The anti-Prop 23 article, by John Reaves of Citizens Climate Lobby, was a good articulation of the reasons why Prop 23 would be so damaging.

The pro-Prop 23 article, by Bryan Bloom, made a number of deeply flawed statements that need a strong rebuttal. So that’s what I’m going to do here, to start off the week. Much of his argument is of the typical “government taxes and regulates too much,” but Bloom adds some other pieces that should be dealt with more directly:

A California State University study estimates an average family cost of about $3,900 per year, a small business cost of about $50,000 per year and a total loss of output in the range of $180 billion in order to comply.

But what of the cost of doing nothing? Bloom and Prop 23 backers assume that the cost of doing nothing is zero – that if we “suspend” AB 32, then we save all that money.

This is not so. Climate change costs us all a lot of money already, from higher firefighting costs and home insurance premiums to lost jobs in the wineries and agricultural industries when their work is disrupted by extreme weather events. San Diegans should be concerned about rising sea levels, which won’t come cheap.

Bloom’s analysis also ignores the fact that AB 32-spurred innovation will help us save money through the development of more efficient uses of energy. California has already led the way on this. Our air pollution laws, the nation’s strictest, have dramatically slashed (though by no means eliminated) smog, while also helping spur innovations that save us money at the pump or save on our electrical bills.

Bloom’s op-ed also relies on a flawed Legislative Analyst’s Office study of AB 32, which I debunked here at Calitics a few months back. In fact, there is considerable evidence that AB 32 has already fueled the growth of a green jobs and clean energy economy in California that is one of the only bright spots in our otherwise dismal economic picture.

That dismal economic picture is used by Bloom as justification for “suspending” AB 32:

That’s why so many voters and small businesses are supporting Proposition 23, which would temporarily suspend costly AB 32 regulations until California’s unemployment rate reaches 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters, a threshold reached numerous times in recent years, according to the state’s Employment Development Department.

Notice how Bloom fudges the numbers: “numerous times in recent years.” That’s because the truth is damning. Since January 1975, the 5.5% for four consecutive quarters threshold has only been met three times – and for short periods:

1. November 1988 to August 1990

2. February 2000 to July 2001

3. April 2006 to September 2007

If you believed that climate change was a serious problem, it wouldn’t make any sense to support this proposal, which would have action on climate change move only in fits and starts.

And that’s even if it were to move at all. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, even if job growth matched the four fastest years of growth during the ’00s bubble, we wouldn’t be at 2007 levels of employment – required under Prop 23 to revive AB 32 – until April 2021 when you account for population growth. Prop 23 would likely “suspend” AB 32 for eleven years – and that’s under the best-case economic recovery scenario.

Bloom also argues that California can’t solve global warming on its own:

California produces only a tiny fraction of the world’s greenhouse gases. Without the rest of the world following AB 32-like rules, California could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to zero and still have no impact on global warming.

Of course California can’t eliminate global carbon emissions on our own. This is obvious and not in dispute. But neither was that the point of passing AB 32. As was widely acknowledged in 2006, AB 32 was passed to kickstart a national and, eventually, global effort to force reduction of carbon emissions. If Prop 23 fails, it will be a huge signal to Congress that real action on climate and energy is popular with voters. Bloom and other right-wingers are actively trying to stop California from providing progressive leadership by destroying AB 32 before it can spread.

Ultimately Bloom’s argument rests on a defense of the status quo – that everything is just fine in California, and that all AB 32 offers is higher costs. It only makes sense if you do not believe global warming is a serious issue. If you do, it does not make sense to support Prop 23, as it will ensure California does absolutely nothing to prepare for it or build a more sustainable economy to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Back in 1990, after 10 years of Willie Brown outfoxing Republicans and preventing the state from collapsing as the right-wing intended in 1978 with the passage of Prop 13, California conservatives decided they needed another solution to break Democratic power.

Brown had just stopped an effort by the so-called “Gang of Five” – moderate Democrats who threatened to bring down Speaker Brown, including Gary Condit – in 1988, and with Brown having high approval ratings in his San Francisco district, Southern California conservatives placed Proposition 140 on the November 1990 ballot, to limit the terms of all legislators (including Congress).

It passed by a narrow margin, and by 1995 it had started to produce its intended purpose – Willie Brown left to run for mayor of San Francisco, and by the end of the decade, the accumulated experience of the legislature began to erode, as elections became a game of musical chairs, and the legislature became a kind of graduate school for politicians who were always seeking the equivalent of a tenure-track job – a non-term limited elected office.

The results of term limits have been extremely destructive. Legislators focus on the short-term and show little interest in long-term solutions. It takes about 5 or 6 years to fully understand the state budget process, by which point a new Assemblymember is on their way out or too focused on finding their next elective office. Institutional knowledge is left with legislative staff and lobbyists instead of the people who were elected by the voters to represent them.

After 20 years, it’s become clear to almost everyone that term limits has been a failure. And now, in a San Jose Mercury News article, conservatives themselves are finally admitting the error:

“Of all the mistakes I’ve made in public life, the one I regret most is advocating for term limits for the Legislature,” said Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Granite Bay, a leading conservative figure in California who was one of a small number of incumbent legislators who backed the term limits measure two decades ago. “It has harmed the institution badly.”…

Robert Naylor, a Republican Assembly leader in the mid-1980s and former state GOP chairman, said shorter terms have made lawmakers increasingly unwilling to even consider proposals that are opposed by what he called the parties’ “anchor tenants” – for Democrats, unions and trial lawyers; for Republicans, the Chamber of Commerce and anti-tax groups…

Jim Brulte is another one-time term limits fan who’s had a change of heart. A former Republican leader in both the Assembly and Senate, he said term limits fundamentally altered the dynamic between special interests and legislators, especially legislative leaders. And not for the better.

“When I was Republican leader in the Assembly, special interests needed me,” Brulte said. “Today, the leadership in the Legislature needs the special interests.”

The article suggests that there has been an increase in bills sponsored by “special interests” since term limits took effect. Obviously we have to be careful whenever we see the term “special interests” thrown around – those “special interests” often are the working people of California, and there’s a world of difference between a labor union seeking better working conditions and a fairer economy and the California Chamber of Commerce that’s always looking for ways to hoard wealth and impoverish everyone else.

But the overall point is clear: term limits destroyed what had once been seen as the nation’s best state legislature. What began as a spite initiative pushed by right-wingers who saw they were losing their grip on California has become a reckless policy that leaves 36 million people without good representation and without an effective government.

The occasion of the Mercury News article was the qualification of a term limits reform proposal that would allow legislators to serve 12 years in either house, but would not protect current legislators as Prop 93 had. It’s not clear which ballot this new proposal will be on – if it’s on either the presidential primary ballot or the June 2012 primary ballot, I’m not sure it will succeed. If it’s on the November 2012 ballot, it has a strong chance of success.

Perhaps it might have a better shot at passage in the earlier elections in 2012 if more conservatives spoke out in support of it. And while Tom McClintock’s support is useful, the fact remains that the real powers in the California Republican Party – the Howard Jarvis Association, the California Chamber of Commerce, and Grover Norquist – all strongly support the current term limits rules, as it helps guarantee their power over the state GOP.

It’s nice that some of these right-wingers recognize their mistake, even if it’s 20 years too late. But we’re going to have to mount a bigger, stronger campaign against the right if term limits are to be successfully reformed, our legislature fixed, and California’s government made democratic and effective once again.