12.27.09 Senate Democrats to W.H.: Drop cap and trade
Bruised by the health care debate and worried about what 2010 will bring, moderate Senate Democrats are urging the White House to give up now on any effort to pass a cap-and-trade bill next year.
“I am communicating that in every way I know how,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of at least a half-dozen Democrats who've told the White House or their own leaders that it's time to jettison the centerpiece of their party's plan to curb global warming. READ MORE... http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30984.html
Senate Agrees to Vote on Proposal to Halt EPA's CO2 Action
By Ian Talley
The Obama administration may be forced to delay new greenhouse-gas regulations for a year under a Senate Republican proposal that the Democratic leadership has agreed to allow a vote on in early 2010.
As part of a deal on a bill to increase the nation's debt limit, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) will allow the GOP to submit a controversial amendment to temporarily suspend new emissions regulation. The agreement was reached late Tuesday.
While it's unclear whether the proposal will become law, it could be an early show of how many Democrats support the administration's decision to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
A similar amendment wasn't allowed to come up for a vote earlier this year. Capitol Hill pundits say the majority leader likely feared Republicans might win the vote, with many Democrats also expressing concern about proposed greenhouse-gas regulations.
The Obama administration's Environmental Protection Agency has triggered the process of regulating greenhouse gases across industries through the Clean Air Act by declaring such emissions a public danger. Business groups, lawyers, legislators and industry analysts say regulating such emissions as carbon dioxide under the law could cripple the economy.
EPA spokeswoman Adora Andy said the agency is "highly respectful of Congress" role and will continue to work with members of both Houses as they approach this issue."
While the EPA hadn't seen the amendment, Ms. Andy said, "as this process moves forward it is important not to lose sight of what led to where we are today." In particular, she noted the EPA's actions follow a Supreme Court order to determine whether greenhouse gases are a public danger and are within the mandate of Congressionally-prescribed statutes.
The EPA's action under the tenure of Administrator Lisa Jackson and Obama's climate czar, Carol Browner, is meant to pressure Congress into crafting a more economically efficient way to curb emissions, analysts say. Both Ms. Jackson and Ms. Browner, recognizing the consequences of regulating under the Act, have said they prefer congressional legislation.
Senator Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska), the ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and chief sponsor of the amendment, has said a number of colleagues across the aisle have already expressed support for her proposal.
If the amendment passed, it may also be a relief to the EPA, now that Congress is increasingly unlikely to pass a climate bill next year and the agency is forced to play out its regulatory hand.
Even if the amendment is approved in the Senate, it would still need to be passed in the House, where its fate is also certain.
Republican leadership said earlier this month they were prepared to try to block any administrative action on greenhouse gas regulations, including by prevention of any funding for such work or by voting on a "disapproval resolution."
An aide with a ranking Republican said that by allowing a vote on the Murkowski amendment, Democrats may have avoided the confrontation that such strategies would likely precipitate. Politically, debate on EPA regulation of greenhouse gases might have proved harmful for the majority and the administration, especially for those lawmakers preparing to fight tough re-election campaigns next year.
Write to Ian Talley at ian.talley@dowjones.com
11.27.09
Climategate e-mails sweep America, may scuttle Barack Obama's Cap and Trade laws
To read some of the emials for yourself check out this site, Not Evil Just Wrong:
A remote corner of East County is shaping up as a battleground between companies pushing wind farms as clean and cheap power generators and activists who view them as a blight on the landscape. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2009/nov/15/wind-farm-plan-irks-activists/
November 14, 2009 -Copenhagen May Be Postponed
Obama to Attend Impromptu Climate Change Breakfast at APEC Summit
UPDATE: Breakfast just concluded here. Michael Froman, a top economic adviser to Obama on the National Security Council, repeated what had been reported here earlier --- that Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen flew here overnight to update APEC leaders on climate change talks.
http://whitehouse.blogs.foxnews.com
Gore: Not Evil-Just Wrong--the Documentary
Written by CA Political News on October 15, 2009, 01:44 PM
"Not Evil, Just Wrong--Gore and his "Inconvenient Truth"
By Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer, Special to the California Political News and Views, 10/15/09
Hollywood has scored some of its biggest hits with movies that have a tenuous link to reality. That must have been what Al Gore was thinking when he produced the global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth because it is mostly a work of political fiction.
The bad news for Californians is that the state's powers-that-be accepted the fiction of Gore and other environmentalists as fact. They embraced the flawed science of global warming alarmists and finalized the jobs-killing "Global Warming Solutions Act" (known by the shorthand AB 32) months after An Inconvenient Truth premiered in 2006.
Now the people of California are about to feel the economic pain of that foolhardy decision -- lost jobs and exorbitant energy prices in a state already crippled by recession.
As European film makers, we have seen the devastation wrought by environmental hysteria. Spain believed the hype about "green jobs" boosting the economy, and now 18 percent of Spaniards have no jobs. Britain faces blackouts for the first time since the 1970s because policies that require the country to replace coal with cleaner fuels that aren't readily available.
Sadly, the Golden State is set to begin feeling European-style agony come 2011, when the first draconian regulatory steps under AB 32 will be taken.
In June, two experts at California State University predicted that the law will kill 1.1 million jobs and slash economic output by 10 percent. Everything from utilities and gasoline to housing and food will cost more. The law will cost each California household at least $3,857 per year.
You'll never hear environmentalists admit costs like those. The truth is an obstacle to the agenda of environmentalists, so they regurgitate lies about dying polar bears in order to frighten politicians into enacting disastrous policies.
In Gore's case, he lied so often in An Inconvenient Truth that the British High Court won't let schoolchildren in the country watch the movie without the equivalent of a health warning.
We expose the scare tactics of Gore and his allies in our new documentary, Not Evil Just Wrong. "I don't believe that there is a climate catastrophe," Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore says in our film. "I don't use the word chaos or disaster to describe the present changes in climate, which are well within natural variations that have occurred in the past history of the Earth."
Gore and his friends in Hollywood don't want Americans to hear men like Moore, so we are premiering the movie in homes across the country Oct. 18 to bypass them.
Californians need to join that cinematic tea party and hope our movie helps inspire the repeal of AB 32 just as An Inconvenient Truth spurred its enactment. The state already is suffering through one of its worst recessions in living memory; the economy can't afford another blow.
McElhinney and McAleer are the co-producers of the documentary Not Evil Just Wrong. The movie premieres Oct. 18 in homes and on campuses across the nation.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 12, 2009
CONTACT: Jennifer Stone (619) 531-476
COUNTY HOPING NEW BILL WILL SPUR HOME SOLAR, WIND
AB 920 to compensate solar and wind powered homes for surplus energy
SAN DIEGO— Owners of home solar and wind energy systems that generate extra kilowatts can soon turn those surplus electrons into compensation thanks to new legislation signed by the Governor this week.
Assembly Bill 920, which earned strong backing from Chairwoman Dianne Jacob and the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, allows electric utility customers who install solar or wind generation systems on their properties to be paid by their electric utility for the surplus electricity they produce.
“The Governor is to be commended for giving green-minded San Diegans a fair return on their investment,” said Chairwoman Jacob, who brought the matter to the Board of Supervisors in November 2008. “The utilities have been allowed to profit from the investments of home solar and wind customers for long enough,” she said.
In the past, for generation systems of up to one megawatt, the surplus was carried forward on a customer’s bill for 12 months. Any yearly excess went to the utility. Jacob said California’s new legislation has the potential to drive many more homeowners to invest in home solar and home wind.
“If you couple the benefits of AB 920 with the County efforts to roll out a program to help San Diegans afford the upfront costs of home solar and wind systems, you’ve got all the ingredients necessary for a residential renewable boom,” said Chairwoman Jacob. “The benefits of that boom will be far-reaching. We can clean the air, create jobs, stimulate the economy and lessen the nation’s dependence on imported fossil fuels,” she said.
Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, Minnesota and many other states compensate residential PV customers for surplus power. In Oregon, credit from some surplus solar is granted to customers enrolled in the state’s low income assistance programs
# # #
Jennifer Stone
Communications Advisor
Emissions fees on businesses get state OK
By Samantha Young
ASSOCIATED PRESS
2:00 a.m. September 26, 2009
SACRAMENTO — Despite industry objections and threats of lawsuits, California air regulators yesterday approved the nation's first statewide carbon fee on utilities, oil refineries and other polluting industries.
The money raised by the California Air Resources Board, which voted 9-0, is intended to pay for the bureaucratic expenses of carrying out the state's 2006 global warming law, which requires greenhouse gas emissions statewide to be reduced by 25 percent over the next decade.
“It's never pleasant to be in the position of asking consumers to pay,” chairwoman Mary Nichols said at the board's meeting in the Los Angeles County suburb of Diamond Bar.
Nichols said the action is an acknowledgment that limiting greenhouse gases will come with a price. “If you're going to start a new program, I think it makes a lot of sense to be asking that it is a pay-as-you-go program, and that's what we're doing here,” Nichols said. The Legislature had required the board create such a fee. The fee will be imposed at the end of 2010 and raise $63.1 million annually during its first three years. The amount will level off at $36.2 million in the fifth year.
Oil companies, manufacturers and utilities complained that regulators had unfairly singled them out by leveling the fee on 350 businesses in the state. Some business leaders also questioned the timing of the fee, which is being imposed while California endures a 12.2 percent unemployment rate, the highest on record.
“Given the economic climate, we believe it is extremely unwise to ask businesses to pay more government fees,” said Jacque McMillan, a member of the Valley Industry & Commerce Association, which represents businesses in the San Fernando Valley.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman earlier this week drew the ire of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when she described the 2006 law he signed as a “job killing” regulation. Whitman said she would suspend it if elected governor until its effects on the economy are better understood.
Part of the fee would cover the salaries of 174 people hired to implement the law since Schwarzenegger signed it.
About 350 businesses in California that make, sell or import gasoline, diesel, natural gas and coal would be charged about 15 cents for every ton of carbon dioxide they and their customers emit into the atmosphere.
The average refinery would pay about $4.7 million and the average cement plant would pay about $150,000 a year, said Jon Costantino, manager of the climate change planning section at the air board. Cement plants would be subject to the fee because the chemical process they use to make cement produces greenhouse gases.
The charge would drop to 9 cents per ton of carbon dioxide in 2014 because loans approved in past years by the Legislature to initially run the program would be paid.
Regulators said the industries asked to pay the fee represent the starting point for about 85 percent of California's greenhouse gas emissions. For example, refineries process the fuel that California drivers put into their cars, and utility plants generate the electricity used to cool and heat the homes of the state's 38 million people.
The approach won the endorsement of environmentalists and public health advocates who have long blamed industry for making products that pollute the air and sicken residents.
“California taxpayers have already borne the burden of this economy,” said Bill Haller, a volunteer with the Sierra Club of California. “It's time for the polluter to pay for the pollution. They created it, they profited from it, and they should pay for it.”
Regulators said industry could pass along the fee to consumers by raising their prices. For example, a family restaurant would see an increase of about $17 a year in its electricity and natural gas costs. The extra cost to each Californian to fuel a car that gets 30 mpg would be about 80 cents a year.
Oil companies and several utilities argued the fee unfairly holds them accountable not just for their emissions but also for those generated by people who use their products. They also warned that regulators were proposing a fee that violates federal commerce laws by assessing a state fee on gasoline and electricity exports.
“There will be potential federal court challenges on the Commerce Clause because you're assessing fees on fuels going to other states — Nevada, Arizona and Texas,” said Catherine Reheis-Boyd, chief operating officer at the Western States Petroleum Association.
A few local government entities have adopted similar fees. Last year, air regulators in the San Francisco Bay Area imposed a 4.4-cent-per-ton carbon fee on businesses that emit greenhouse gasses. In 2006, voters in Boulder, Colo., imposed a carbon tax on their own energy use.
Union-Tribune
In the Union-Tribune on Page A1
JOINT WATER CONFERENCE COMMITTEE
The State legislators are expected to pass legislation to overhaul the CA water system. They have created a 14-member Senate-Assembly committee to get a consensus on the bills that potentially may lead to new canals, dams, and restoration of the San Joaquin Delta.
Let’s hammer these people and tell them to TURN THE WATER BACK ON NOW!!
Senate Members
Darrell Steinberg- (Sacramento) Phone: (916) 651-4006, Fax: (916) 323-2263
Dean Florez-(Shafter) Phone: (916) 651-4016,Fax: (916) 327-5989
Dave Cogdill –(Modesto) Phone: (916) 651-4014, Fax: (916) 327-3523
Alex Padilla- (Los Angeles) Phone: 916-651-4020, Fax: 916-324-6645
Fran Pavley (Agoura Hills) -Phone(916) 651-4023, Fax: (916) 324-4823
Sam Aanestad-(Penn Valley) Phone: (916) 651-4004,Fax: (916) 445-7750
Bob Huff- (Diamond Bar) Phone: (916) 651-4029,Fax: (916) 324-0922
Assembly Members
Karen Bass –(Los Angeles) Phone: 916-319-2047, Fax: 916-319-2147
Anna Caballero-(Salinas) Phone: 916-319-2028, Fax: 916-319-2128
Jean Fuller-(Bakersfield) Phone: 916-319-2032, Fax: 916-319-2132
Jared Huffman- (San Rafael) Phone: 916-319-2006, Fax: 916-319-2106
Kevin Jeffries- (Lake Elsinore) Phone: 916-319-2066, Fax: 916-319-2166
Jim Nielsen- (Gerber) Phone: 916-319-2002, Fax: 916-319-2102
Jose Solorio- (Santa Ana) Phone: 916-319-2069, Fax: 916-319-2169
We are having an enormous event to get the politicians and policy makers in Sacramento to hear us speak on the issue of over regulation and taxation in this state. This policy adopted by our law makers has driven business out of California for years. This will only gets worse with the full implementation of California’s Cap and Trade Bill (AB32). This eco-tyrannical policy was passed three years ago and will be the final nail in the economic coffin of California.
If you can not make it to Sacramento on the 28th, and we hope you can all join us, please phone, fax, email your state representatives and tell them to vote YES on AB 118 authored by Assemblyman Dan Logue of Chico, which is the bill that will repeal the job killing AB 32 legislation.
In addition to calling your representatives please call those members of the Natural Resources Committee that will hear this bill first.
Find below your representatives fax and phone numbers, if you aren’t sure who your rep is please go to www.votesmart.org to locate your Assembly person’s name.
Natural Resources Committee-California
Nancy Skinner: Tel: (916) 319-2014,Fax: (916) 319-2114
Assemblymember.Skinner@assembly.ca.gov
Danny D.Gilmore: 916-319-2030, 916-319-2130 fax
Assemblymember.Gilmore@assembly.ca.gov
Julia Brownley: Tel: (916) 319-2041,Fax: (916) 319-2141
Assemblymember.Brownley@assembly.ca.gov
Wesley Chesbro: Tel: (916) 319-2001,Fax: (916) 319-2101
Assemblymember.Chesbro@assembly.ca.gov
Kevin de Leon: Tel: (916) 319-2045,Fax: (916) 319-2145
Assemblymember.deLeon@assembly.ca.gov
Jerry Hill: Tel: (916) 319-2019,Fax: (916) 319-2119
Assemblymember.Hill@assembly.ca.gov
Jared Huffman: Tel: (916) 319-2006,Fax: (916) 319-2106
Assemblymember.Huffman@assembly.ca.gov
Steve Knight: (916) 319-2036, (916) 319-2136 fax -GOP
Assemblymember.Knight@assembly.ca.gov
These are the representatives that voted for AB 32 three years ago. We need them to know they are getting an opportunity for a second chance by voting YES for AB 118!
Wesley Chesbro:Phone: 916-319-2001 Fax: 916-319-2101
Dave Jones:Phone: 916-319-2009 Fax: 916-319-2109
Tom Torlakson:Phone: 916-319-2011 Fax: 916-319-2111
Ira Ruskin:Phone: 916-319-2021 Fax: 916-319-2121
Joe Coto:Phone: 916-319-2023 Fax: 916-319-2123
Juan Arambula:Phone: 916-319-2031 Fax: 916-319-2131 -I
Karen Bass: Phone: 916-319-2047 Fax: 916-319-2147
Hector de la Torre:Phone: 916-319-2050 Fax: 916-319-2150
Ted Lieu:Phone: 916-319-2053 Fax: 916-319-2153
Charles Calderon:Phone: 916-319-2058 Fax: 916-319-2158
Lori Saldana:Phone: 916-319-2076 Fax: 916-319-2176
(unless otherwise stated all of these reps are Democrats.)
8.9.09
Government Plan to Sell Global Warming as a "National Security Risk", thereby trying to pass Cap and Trade after recess.
THREE YEARS AGO CALIFORNIA LEGISLATORS PASSED (AB 32), THE GLOBAL CLIMATE WARMING CHANGE BILL AND THIS HAS BEEN KILLING JOBS IN CALIFORNIA EVER SINCE:
SUMMARY OF A.B.32 - California’s Cap & Trade
AB32 was signed into law three years ago. The premise of the bill is that Global Warming is scientific fact, and that rising temperatures will have a detrimental effect on some of California’s largest industries, including agriculture, wine, tourism, skiing, recreational and commercial fishing, and forestry.
In other words, the stated purpose of AB32 is to protect industry and save jobs.
To do this, it mandates that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) require businesses report and verify their greenhouse gas emissions, as-well-as monitor and enforce compliance.
It mandates that greenhouse emissions return to 1990 levels by 2020
There is a schedule of fees paid by “regulated resources” (i.e. added costs to businesses) to encourage compliance.
THREE YEARS LATER...THE TRAGIC EFFECTS:
In the past year, California has lost 100,000 manufacturing jobs. Exacerbating the 250,000 already lost in the last 7 years. Companies are fleeing to less regulated states like Nevada, Texas, Arizona, and Oregon. The annual costs of AB 32 being implemented on small businesses will be a loss of more than 1.1 million jobs, $76.8 billion in labor income, and $5.8 billion in indirect business taxes.
Small businesses drive the California economy. The small business work force is comprised of 99.2 % of all employer firms in our state and make up 99.7% of all employer firms.
The logging industry is no longer able to use key equipment that are deemed to emit criminal levels of greenhouse gasses. California now imports 80% of it’s paper products. It cost 30% more to bring a 2x4 to market in California than anywhere else in the nation.
The implementation costs of AB 32 could easily exceed $100 billion upfront The cost to California families will be $3,857.00 per year and will require families to reduce their expenditure costs by 26.2 % annually.
AB 118, as introduced, Logue. To Repeal California Global Warming Solutions
Act of 2006.
The California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 requires the State Air Resources Board to adopt regulations to require the reporting and verification of emissions of greenhouse gases and to monitor and enforce compliance with the reporting and verification program, and requires the state board to adopt a statewide greenhouse gas emissions limit equivalent to the statewide greenhouse gas emissions levels in
1990 to be achieved by 2020.
The act requires the state board to prepare and approve a scoping plan for achieving the maximum technologically feasible and cost-effective reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The state board is required by January 1, 2011, to adopt greenhouse gas
emissions limits and emission reduction measures by regulation to
achieve the prescribed emission reductions.
This bill would repeal the California Global Warming Solutions Act
of 2006.
Save California From Big Government Eco-Regulation
on August 28th - Tea Party Patriot March on Sacramento
In California's vast and fertile central valley, the federal government has shut off the water to farmers. Fields lie fallow, and once thriving orchards are dry and dead. After generations on the land, families are losing their farms. In some areas unemployment exceeds 40%. All this to protect a "minnow." Generations of human effort and dreams are destroyed, we become more and more reliant on imported food, and prices rise for all of us. The government is putting fish before families. This insanity must end.
In the mountains, family owned timber operations, working and managing our forests for
generations, are being forced into bankruptcy by the state. The government has made their equipment illegal, and regulations are so onerous that it now costs 30% more to bring a standard 2x4 to market in California than it does in Oregon or Washington. Even the large timber companies struggle to survive. In a state rich with timber resources, we import the vast majority of our building materials from other states, because the cost of local production is simply too high due to severe overregulation. The timber industry is literally being driven out of business by the politicians in Sacramento.
Industries from mining to construction, transportation to ranching, and farming to concrete are suffering under impossible burdens placed by unaccountable bureaucrats and arrogant politicians intent on the complete destruction of California's once world class economy. When politicians in Washington DC decide that minnows are more important that the lives of California farmers, something is terribly wrong. When bureaucrats in Sacramento regulate the California timber and construction industries to the brink of extinction, without concern for the families, towns and entire
regions they are devastating, something is terribly wrong.
Yes, something is terribly wrong. Our politicians and their appointed cronies are strangling this great state. Businesses are leaving California in an unprecedented exodus of capital and talent. Productive citizens and their businesses are fleeing to places like Texas and Nevada, which have more business friendly policies, less regulation and lower taxes. Meanwhile, California's unemployment rate skyrockets, our cost of living increases, and our politicians respond by passing even more stringent legislation and higher taxes...even when we vote against it!
The laws may be different for each industry. The regulations may vary, but they are all symptoms of the same disease. We are all being crushed by burdensome regulations and taxes imposed by politicians who care more for causes and political gamesmanship, than people. This is our battle; all productive people belong in this fight. When the loggers suffer, that is the farmer's battle too. When the farmer's have no water, and food prices rise, that is everyone's problem. For too long the politicians have divided us, and used our division to keep us down. But we will be held down no longer. But the game is up. Now we understand what they are doing, and we see where it leads.
We are the productive Americans, and we will stand together, shoulder to shoulder, ready to face the politicians who stand in the way of our productivity.
Mark Meckler
Attorney At Law
Tea Party Patriots
Sacramento Organizer