From the great minds that brought us ingenius concepts such as hippy communes, bans on barbecues, tree hugging, free education for people who are here ILLEGALLY, and 'The Reasonable Woman' standard (which determined that sexual harrassment should be based on what reasonable women believe. Men were to have no say... even when a man is the victim and a woman is the harrasser. This guicance, thankfully, has now been corrected) we how have:
Oct. 25, 2011 Updated: Oct. 26, 2011 7:32 a.m.
Editorial: Pollution czars' plan to choke California business
CARB plows ahead with cap-and-trade plan that Congress, other nations have abandoned.
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
California foolishly is going where Congress fears to tread, and where even European global warming zealots are backing away. Nevertheless, an unelected, virtually unaccountable board of government overseers has voted unanimously to impose mandatory cap-and-trade regulations on California businesses that will likely kill jobs, chase companies out of state and impose $2 billion in new taxes, all in a Quixotic quest to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a highly questionable, perhaps meaningless, goal.
"Cap-and-trade is a new tool that for the first time allows us to reward companies for doing the right thing," California Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols said after last week's historic vote.
How companies might earn such rewards, other than by greatly reducing their output, is a bit of a puzzle. "There is no way to comply," said Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield. "Not only is it extremely expensive to try to comply with the standards in the medium-risk category, there is no approved technology that reduces emissions and enables food manufacturers to come in below the emissions cap set by CARB and still maintain the current level of production."
While Ms. Nichols' promised "rewards" may be nebulous, the government will be fully capable of punishing those who do not comply. There will be punitive fees and penalties for companies that fail to reduce emissions enough to satisfy the air board's arbitrary overseers.
Businesses emitting more than the government says they should will have to use "allowances" – credits – to make up the difference. Credits "will be mostly free when the program starts" on Jan. 1, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. But eventually they will have to be purchased at an auction run by a centralized government "market," which, of course, is a contradiction in terms.
As with other government-administered markets, some companies will be required to buy a greater percentage of allowances, while others will be allowed more free credits, all at the government's discretion. Paid credits amount to a tax that some will pay more than others, and which the California Chamber of Commerce estimates will total about $2 billion to start, crippling many businesses and putting others at a disadvantage with out-of-state competitors. The economic damage will have ripple effects, such as increasing water rates because of the costs the regulations will add to energy, according to several Southern California water agencies.
The air board will have broad discretionary powers because it writes the rules. Consequently, favored companies will receive exemptions for up to 8 percent of their emission caps by engaging in "offsets," such as planting trees.
Even the liberal, Democratic-controlled Congress refused to approve cap-and-trade regulations, and many European nations that rushed to impose similar rules now are backing off because of the economic harm it has caused. But California's Legislature adopted then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's signature Global Warming Solutions Act in 2006 amid a booming economy and frenzied concern over man's purported hand in global warming.
Assemblywoman Grove summed up the situation well: "Six years later, our economy has plummeted, human-caused global warming is widely disputed, and not one other state is following our lead. Why should they?"
Why indeed. This centralized government control makes no sense in times of prosperity. How much less today?
Even the government concedes the cap-and-trade scheme will result in lost jobs. Unsurprisingly, the air board refers to these human tragedies euphemistically as "leakage," which is indicative of the impersonal attitude of powerful, unaccountable bureaucracies.
Full article: http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/government-323678-companies-california.html
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