State to double down on AB 32’s failure? Really?

By Editorial Board

Originally appearing in UT San Diego Gov. Jerry Brown’s decision to double down on AB 32 — the state’s landmark 2006 anti-global warming law — is stark testament to the power of the green religion among California Democrats. It is also a rejection of basic economics and logic.

In 2006, the key rationale for AB 32 and related laws was to inspire the world to take aggressive action to cut the emissions believed to help cause global warning. Supporters acknowledged that one state going it alone against global warming wouldn’t even begin to solve the problem.

The laws required California to get 33 percent of its electricity from cleaner-but-costlier sources by 2020, using a cap-and-trade system in which emission rights were bought and sold.

The risk this posed was acknowledged by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, AB 32’s loudest supporter, and confirmed by economists hired by the state air board to analyze the law. They warned that negative effects were certain if California had higher energy costs than rival states and nations.

We are well on our way to that reality — because California didn’t inspire copycats around the world at all. Instead, thanks to the booming economies in China and India, greenhouse-gas emissions kept growing. And in addressing global warming, academics and energy experts alike gave up on cap-and-trade in favor of a carbon tax approach that could use tariffs to force broad global compliance with international efforts to limit emissions. (Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers makes the case for this approach here .)

Meanwhile, AB 32’s failure to accomplish its key goal led its admirers to airbrush history and say its real purpose was job creation — as if much higher energy costs were a net good for job creation.

Against this backdrop, Gov. Brown’s announcement Monday that he wants half of the state’s electricity to come from cleaner-but-costlier sources by 2030 — continuing with the failed unilateral approach of AB 32 — is incomprehensible.

What about the effects on California’s economic competitiveness? The governor pretends this isn’t even a problem. “Taking significant amounts of carbon out of our economy without harming its vibrancy is exactly the sort of challenge at which California excels,” Brown said Monday.

The governor can’t offer evidence for this claim because there is none . And who will suffer the most from the higher energy costs that are certain to result if Brown gets his way? Poor people. California may look back at the years when 23 percent of the state was impoverished as the good old days.

A policy that is supposed to be about global warming but that doesn’t do anything to stop it is odd. But when that policy has the side effects of driving away heavy industries, destroying jobs and making the cost of living higher, it is madness.

Yet Jerry Brown won’t even admit that what he wants to do amounts to a risky experiment with California’s economy — and with people’s lives.

This isn’t shrewd or farsighted. It’s scary.

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State to double down on AB 32’s failure? Really?

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