( – promoted by Robert Cruickshank)

It is not a headline we would expect to see, but that is exactly what is happening in our state as we speak.

In 2006, the California Legislature passed AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act. The Governor then signed this law to make our state the leader in fighting greenhouse gas pollution.  I hope you will consider joining me in working to ensure that Big Oil does not get its way in California by eviscerating our landmark climate change legislation.  

California’s Attorney General is uniquely positioned to stand up for strong, effective enforcement of our state’s environmental laws. That is why I am calling on each and every candidate for California Attorney General — Democratic and Republican — to denounce this effort by Big Oil to slash through our state’s environmental protections for their own corporate gain.

There’s more, and also cross-posted on Daily Kos.

Texas oil companies want to stop California before we can really implement AB 32, our landmark climate change legislation. Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp., both based in Texas, are almost single-handedly financing a measure that would eviscerate AB 32.   The two companies have pledged $2 million to help get the initiative on the ballot, and even tried to sneak their contributions past any observers.

We cannot afford to turn around now. Today, I want to make my support for this vital piece of environmental legislation crystal clear. I applaud Governor Schwarzenegger for his commitment to AB 32, and call on others to join the fight to protect AB 32.

I urge you to join me in supporting California’s landmark greenhouse gas pollution law by signing my petition for climate change solutions.

I am committed to protecting the environment, and that is why I am proud to be the endorsed candidate of the California League of Conservation Voters.  If you’d like to help my campaign to defend our precious natural resources, please consider donating to our campaign.

Economic studies show that we can fight climate change and can create jobs at the same time. We cannot let Texas oil companies muddy the waters so that they can continue to practice business as usual while the environment pays the price. California has always been a leader in protecting our environment, and together we can ensure that we never abdicate this role.

Kamala Harris is the District Attorney of the City and County of San Francisco, and is a candidate for Attorney General of the State of California.

A new report by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) was released last week that provides an updated analysis of the impact that AB32 will have on the economic growth of California. This report comes about a year and a half after the last one released by the CARB staff that received some criticism from outside economists due to the report making some questionable assumptions. In response to this, ARB appointed a board of 16 experts called the Economic and Allocation Advisory Committee (EAAC) to help CARB staff during the analysis, as well as contribute its own peer review of the analysis.

The result confirms that AB32 will have a positive impact on growth, although that impact was slightly less than in the original report. It is estimated that despite the economic downturn, two million jobs will be created by 2020, the economy will grow at 2.4% per year, and that $3.8 billion will be saved in reduced consumption of gasoline and diesel fuel.

The first part of this report outlines the economic benefits to California that AB32 would bring, and answers one of skeptics' prime questions: will AB32 take jobs away from Californians? The answer, quite simply is No.

In fact, the report states that this shift toward a clean economy will create a sustained growth of about .9 percent each year. The key, according to the report is “shift the driver of economic growth from cheap but polluting energy sources to clean energy and efficient technologies.” In addition, this new report explains that although some industries like fossil fuel burning utilities and mining will take a hit under the new climate laws, overall, businesses can be expected to flourish.

It is anticipated that “small businesses may expect to see an increase in employment and output as consumers invest in more efficient appliances and improve energy efficiency of their homes.” The reality is that not only will most industries, including small businesses prosper under this law, but that without AB32 will incur higher costs.

The second part of this report released by ARB analyzes the future possibilities if California fails to go through with AB32. Diverging from this plan would actually increase costs and individual Californians as well as small businesses would carry the majority of this burden. The report makes a point to weigh both the environmental as well as the economic repercussions of diverging from AB32. It states that “By transitioning to clean energy, we will shift our economy towards the future, and avoid the serious mistake states like Michigan made in using government to try to prop up outdated jobs in dirty industries.”

Unlike other reports from different sources and with contrary findings, this one makes a point to include the opinions of impartial experts. These facts make it clear that not only will AB32 help our economy, but is necessary to get back on track.

Down in the Lone Star State, they like to say that everything is bigger in Texas. I am not sure they were talking about the lies Texas companies like to try and sell the good people of California, but they should have been. In fact, with April 1st just around the corner, it seems that Texas Oil Companies bankrolling the initiative to suspend AB 32 are counting on Californians to be willing to be fooled again (remember what Enron did to Golden State anyone?)

Anti-AB 32 groups first relied on the now completely debunked “Varshney Study” to “prove” that passing this legislation would be the ultimate job killer and lead to skyrocketing consumer costs. But now that the Legislative Analyst's Office has torn the research to shreds, calling it “unreliable” and “essentially useless”, the anti-AB32 force is focusing on some new junk science to stand in as a replacement.

The California Manufacturers and Technology Association (CMTA) is using an oil industry-funded study conducted by the Pacific Research Institute to support its argument of the negative impacts of clean energy legislation. And it's no surprise that CMTA is the voice promoting this study, since the group has already announced its support for “AB 32 Suspension” in a recent press release as well as shelling out big bucks as one of the main sources funding the “AB 32 Implementation Group” (which contrary to the title, is code for the force working to suspend AB 32).

But like we saw with the Varshney Study, just because you paid a scientist to create it doesn't make it true. So before you buy into the “facts”, make sure you are aware of the variables that are manipulating the data behind the scenes:

• The oil industry: Valero is a leading member of CMTA, contributing over $500,000 to help suspend AB32. Also, Valero lobbyist Michael Carpenter happens to be one of the board members of the Pacific Research Institute, which has funded the study.
• The author of the study Thomas Tanton: consultant to the oil and gas industry and Senior Research Fellow with the Pacific Research institute where a Valero lobbyist sits on his board. He is also a former VP at the Institute for Energy Research (IER), an organization funded by oil and gas interests, which has received over $200,000 of funding from ExxonMobil.
• CMTA's VP of Government Relations, Dorothy Rothrock: was an industry energy consultant for years before joining CMTA. From the moment AB 32 was signed into law Rothrock criticized it – even though unemployment was 4.8% at the time – which makes her support for enacting the initiative when unemployment levels reach that low again very doubtful.

Now that this report is in the same trashcan as the Varshney Study, we're sure that another one is on the way. Wouldn't it be better if the oil companies just stood up and said, look, we don't want progress on clean energy because we will lose in billions in dollars in profits? Wouldn't that be more honest? We doubt that will happen but in the meantime, don't be a fool this April.

AB 32 is a proven job creator and will continue to drive innovation and success for California. It's bad news for big oil companies, and we don't need to create a fake study to know that.

So it’s been over a week since Texas oil refiners (and two of California’s worst polluters) Valero and Tesoro ponied up close to $2 million to launch a petition drive to get an initiative on the November ballot to kill AB 32, California’s nation-leading legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels and encourage job creation in the booming green/clean energy and tech industries. Naturally, Valero, Tesoro and assemblyman Dan Logue (R-Chino), one of the initiative’s primary sponsors, are doing their best to keep Texas Big Oil’s involvement in the petition a secret, refusing to confirm or deny that Valero/Tesoro are actually the sole funders of the signature drive and stand to profit from insuring that Californians continue to breath some of the dirtiest, most unhealthy air in the nation.

Unfortunately for them, the secret is out. Supporters of AB 32, the environment and clean energy started a website, NoOnValero.com, to let Californians know that the effort to kill AB 32 is about Big Oil profits, not saving or creating jobs. They also staged a rally in front of a Sacramento Valero station to tell Valero to mind its own business. Below is news coverage of the event, and you can also visit the No On Valero Youtube channel to hear what the protesters think of Valero’s involvement in trying to kill AB 32.

Not to be outdone, the Teabaggers, America’s favorite racists and climate change/evolution deniers, decided to stage their own pro-Valero rally the next week. That’s right, a rally to celebrate the fact that an out-of-state Big Oil company — a member of one of America’s most hated industries after banks and health insurers — is attempting to further corrupt our political system and compromise the health of Californians. Because apparently Teabaggers, who claim to value what they call “freedom”, think it’s better if unelected Texas CEOs of heavy-polluting corporations write California’s anti-pollution laws. Also, someone may want to tell the Teabaggers that Valero’s involvement in the petition is supposed to be, you know, a secret. And I’ll be curious to hear what Valero thinks of getting the support of a group known mostly for racism, unhinged anger, willful ignorance and irrational, apocalyptic conspiracy theories.  

Then again, Valero may need all the support it can get. In a shocking turn, one of the leaders pushing for the anti-AB 32 ballot initiative, conservative Dan Costa of People’s Advocate, is now opposing the ballot initiative due to Valero and Tesoro’s involvement and the seediness of keeping it a secret, possibly in violation of state campaign laws. From the Sacramento Bee:

Ted Costa, of People’s Advocate, said he continues to believe in the thrust of the initiative but that the signature-gathering campaign has been “stolen” by big-money interests that have not identified themselves publicly.

“You ruin the whole organization when you go through this kind of muck,” said Costa.

And Costa told the LA Times:

“I wanted to do a grassroots operation and involve a lot of people,” Costa said. “But they believe they can run this thing out of the country club and to hell with the little people of California. If they have half a million dollars, how come they haven’t reported it?” he asked.

Of course, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to Costa that Logue would be hopping in bed with Valero and Big Oil, even if it seems unseemly or illegal. After all, Logue knows who owns him. From California Watch:

Last year alone, the oil and energy industries donated $14,200 to Logue’s campaign coffers, including $2,000 from Valero. Other Logue donors in 2009 include Chevron, Occidental, and the California Independent Petroleum PAC.

So Big Oil buys Logue through campaign contributions to get him elected, then Logue sponsors a ballot initiative to kill legislation that Big Oil is opposed to, then two Big Oil companies provide the funding to gather signatures for the initiative. Could the dots be any easier to connect? The Circle of Oil continues…

And in another surprise, not only are the authors of the thoroughly debunked Varshney/Tootelian report claiming that implementing AB 32 would lead to massive economic pain refusing to defend their work from the withering criticism it has received, but apparently they don’t think AB 32 is so bad. From the State Hornet:

“We conducted an independent and unbiased study, and certainly support the spirit of AB 32,” [Dennis Tootelian] said in an e-mail. “Our study estimated the costs, and we have no other comment.”

You’d think he’d have something a bit stronger to say after Tootelian’s co-author on the report, Sanjay Varshnay, received criticism like this:

“For a guy [Varshney] who purports to be a professor, this is an embarrassment to himself and an embarrassment to [Sacramento State],” said Chris Thornberg, economist and founding principal of Beacon Economics.

Thornberg said the report committed fatal flaws in basic statistical analysis. The authors used regression analysis, a statistical technique used to test one variable while controlliing for many others. The report looked at state output, but did not control for the number of workers and amount of capital in California.

“The results are so screwy and crazy,” Thornberg said. “It’s so bad that if a freshman student handed this to me, I wouldn’t even give him an ‘F,’ I would call it incomplete and hand it back to them.”

With only a month to get almost 434,000 signatures, the anti-AB 32 petition drive is off to a pretty rocky start. But one thing that’s for sure is that you should never, ever count the republicans out. They never give up and will fight to the end using the dirtiest tactics, the biggest lies and the most outrageous scaremongering imaginable. Plus, the anti-AB 32 movement was handed a gift this week in the form of a new report by California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office claiming that AB 32 will result in short-term job losses, even though the Union of Concerned Scientists pointed out that the report admits that predicting job losses or gains from AB 32 is extremely difficult, provides no independent research to back its claim of overall job losses, and fails to mention the numerous studies that have found that AB 32 would be a net job creator with little or no impact on small businesses.

With California’s reputation for setting precedents that the rest of the country often follows, you can bet that powerful players are gearing up for a fight that will only grow in intensity as the days tick down until the petition signatures are due on April 16.  

California’s Suspend AB32, deceptively entitled “California Jobs Initiative,” is one of the stupidest ideas cooked up in a state not named Utah or Texas.  AB32 is California’s landmark climate law, requiring the state to reduce its greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020.  A Republican member of the state assembly, Dan Logue, has proposed that the law be suspended until unemployment drops below 5.5% for four consecutive quarters — effectively gutting the law entirely, as unemployment has rarely been that low for that long.  

The initiative ran into financial trouble last month, but it’s been resurrected from the grave.  The money behind this particular zombie looks like it’s coming from two large Texas-based refiners, Tesoro and Valero.  If so, the initiative may be in violation of California Fair Political Practices Committee regulations.

When last we heard from Suspend AB32 in mid-February, it was dying from lack of the mother’s milk of politics, a shortage of funds, along with a renaming (thanks to once-and-future governor Jerry Brown) from “California Jobs Initiative” to the far more accurate “Suspends air pollution control laws requiring major polluters to report and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.”  However, as any fan of George A. Romero knows, some creatures are hard to kill.

Greenwire, via New York Times, has the story: Texas refiners mum about funding push to halt California’s climate law.  “Several well-placed sources in Sacramento” report that two refiners based in San Antonio, Texas — Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp. — are the sole funders behind the new push.  (Spokespeople for Valero, Tesoro, and Logue have refused comment but are not denying the assertion.)  Signature gathering has moved from Logue to Goddard Claussen, which bills itself as an “issue advocacy” firm with clients like “Californians to Stop Unfair Rate Increases,” in actuality “several of the nation’s leading insurance companies” and “Floridians For Lower Insurance Costs,” in actuality State Farm.  (All information taken from the firm’s website.)

Valero and Tesoro both operate refineries in California: Valero in Benicia and Wilmington, and Tesoro in Martinez and Los Angeles (formerly Shell).  Valero has an astroturf Voices for Energy campaign, warning falsely that cap and trade is a hidden tax that will cost 77 cents per gallon.  Tesoro repeats the lie on its Tesoro Action Center page.  In reality, AB32 has virtually no economic impact on small businesses and has been praised as a clean energy jobs powerhouse.

The California Fair Political Practices Committee now requires that any ballot measure

must list the economic or other special interests of their $50,000 donors in descending order in its committee name. This list must precede and not be interspersed with constituencies such as “concerned citizens,” or “taxpayers.”

Suspend AB32’s website has lists of proponents and endorsers, all California-based, but no mention of Valero or Tesoro.  Logue fancies himself a Columbo, but as I recall, detectives work to enforce the law, not circumvent it.

Is someone running afoul of the FPPC?  I don’t know, but I do know that this zombie clean energy jobs killer initiative needs to die, once and for all.  And, as a Californian, I’m not too happy with out-of-state institutions spending millions on ballot initiatives telling me who I can marry and what kind of air I can breathe.

(x-posted at DailyKos)

California has always represented a better future, and we seem more impatient to get there than anyone else. The examples are endless: the settlers risking everything to reinvent themselves on California’s fertile soil, the surfers who decided they’d rather surf the streets on skateboards than wait for waves, to the dotcom boom that created the internet age. When California is ready to lead, it’s best if you get out of the way. Because when California leads, it often benefits the entire country — and sometimes the world.

And California is ready to do it again, with a plan to guide America to a greener, cleaner, more sustainable future, and pull the nation out of the worst recession since the Great Depression. That plan is AB 32 (aka the Global Warming Solutions Act), California’s nation-leading initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) to 1990 levels through a mix of energy efficiency, clean/sustainable energy investment and regulations to force California’s polluters to clean up their own messes. In addition to improving the environment and the health of Californians, study after study show that AB 32 will be a major job creator with little or no impact on small businesses. That’s why over 2,400 large and small businesses, many in California, have joined American Businesses for Clean Energy, a diverse coalition calling on Congress to pass clean energy and climate legislation. And with the green/clean economy creating job growth and venture capital investment at a faster rate than the rest of the economy, California could position itself to lead the nation and the world in exportable green technology and solutions, just as it has with computers, software and the internet.

But this is not the first time California has attempted to lead the nation with a pioneering piece of legislation to reduce GHGE. In 1990, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) passed the Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate. It stated that any large automaker selling cars in California would have to derive at least 10% of its overall sales from cars that produce practically zero emissions — with 2% of the cars producing no emissions at all — by 2003. That meant that unless an automaker wanted to lose the huge California car market, they would have to begin making all-electric vehicles.

A great cry went up from defenders of the status quo — eerily similar to what is happening now with AB 32 — predicting economic doom if the legislation was enacted. “Electric cars with broad consumer appeal are an idea whose time has come and gone, much like eight-track tapes, Betamax, and New Coke,” said Jo Cooper, president of a major auto industry lobbying group. “It’s not that we can’t [build electric cars]. It’s that we don’t think it’s the right thing to do. In financial terms, it’s insane,” said Donn Walker, a regional spokesman for General Motors, adding, “The internal combustion engine is here to stay. It’s what customers want.” Automakers warned that plants would shut down, jobs would be lost and businesses would flee the state. Many claimed that it would be pointless for a single state (albeit the world’s 8th largest economy) to take such an ambitious step on its own — all claims currently being made about AB 32.

While automakers and lobbyists filed lawsuits to derail the mandate, they also quietly prepared to comply with it should their efforts fail. And in the case of General Motors, they succeeded in creating a great electric car called the EV1, which was leased to a few hundred lucky Californians (including celebrities like Tom Hanks and Mel Gibson) who quickly fell in love with it. Because of California’s leadership, it seemed like the automotive future had finally arrived and America could begin the long farewell to smog, dependence on foreign oil and one of the major contributors to global warming.

Then George W. Bush was elected, with an administration full of former oil executives, as well as Andrew Card, the former CEO of the American Automobile Manufacturers Association and GM’s VP of government relations, as chief of staff. The ZEV mandate was killed and GM took back and destroyed every EV1, despite the leasees’ offer to purchase them. This sad tale of potential lost is told in the excellent, must-see documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? See my ReThink Review of WKTEC? below and my post about it here.

California was denied the opportunity to lead the nation into a new generation of auto fuel efficiency. And look what happened.

The auto industry went in the opposite direction, creating gas-guzzling SUVs that actually decreased America’s overall fuel efficiency. Our dependence on foreign oil increased, enriching countries like Saudi Arabia (home of Osama bin Laden and nearly all of the 9/11 hijackers), as well as Iran and Venezuela, handing them hundreds of billions as we fruitlessly rattled our sabers at them. Stratospheric spikes in oil prices coupled with the Bush recession left many SUV drivers unable to even fill their tanks, causing demand for gas guzzlers to seemingly evaporate overnight. With hundreds of thousands of SUVs left on their lots and few fuel-efficient or hybrid cars on their rosters, GM and other American carmakers were decimated, declaring bankruptcy, closing dozens of plants, laying off tens of thousands of workers and shuttering or selling off several of their brands. In the meantime, Toyota, which continued their investments in fuel efficiency with hybrid cars like the Prius, became the world’s number one carmaker for the first time in 77 years. Nissan’s electric car, the Leaf, will be onsale in December 2010. This week, GM announced it would stop making Hummers, the worst gas guzzler and an “automotive pariah”, forever.

If California had been allowed to lead with the ZEV mandate, America could have been selling electric cars in the late 1990s instead of fumbling to get their half-baked hybrids and electric concept cars into showrooms as they are now. GM’s electric vehicles and the pioneering technology they were based on would be sold around the world, saving and creating thousands of jobs in the US while reducing pollution from tailpipe emissions.

AB 32 has the same potential, if not more, as the ZEV mandate. And despite high unemployment and economic uncertainty that would seem to breed timidity, Californians are still prepared to lead, and are, in fact, proud of their reputation for doing so. In a recent poll by Tulchin Research, 79% of Californians said they are proud of the state’s leadership in innovation and technology, with a staggering 96% seeing it as an essential part of the state’s economy and 66% feeling strongly that policymakers should boost the tech sector and encourage innovation to strengthen the state’s economy.

California is ready to lead. It’s in our DNA. Don’t listen to the scaremongers defending the status quo, who have been so disastrously wrong in the past. Just let us do it.

(with research by Sarah Phillips)