ICECAP

Oct 31, 2010

Prop 23 and the Green Jobs Myth

Californians could protect a million or so jobs by overturning the state’s self-imposed carbon dioxide limits.

By T.J. Rodgers

I have an indelible memory of the one time I was on Rodeo Drive. There she was, a rotund matron dressed in a pink sequined jumpsuit, exiting a limousine and handing her three toy poodles to the doorman at an upscale shop specializing in $1,000 purses. It’s a perfect metaphor for California’s economy: We ignore the important, focus on the trivial, and spend way too much money in the process.

While our state government frets over issues like the disclosure of trans fat on restaurant menus and the habitat of the red-legged frog, our economy - the habitat of homo sapiens - is a disaster. Jobs and the companies that produce them are being pushed out of the state by excessive taxes and regulations. We have borrowed to the limit and at times have been forced to pay state employees and vendors with vouchers until more cash could be secured.

California, which once plowed through recessions, now has 12.4% unemployment, third worst in the nation. CEOs surveyed nationally by Chief Executive magazine recently rated California the worst state for business, for the fifth consecutive year. My company, Cypress Semiconductor, has recently stepped up its contributions of food and money - and even donated an extra warehouse building - so that San Jose’s Second Harvest Food Bank can feed the swelling number of hungry people in Silicon Valley.

Californians have voted to avert economic disaster before. In 1967, we elected Ronald Reagan as governor. After improving our economy, he led the nation out of Carternomics. Then in 1978, we passed Proposition 13, which still limits property taxes to 1% of assessed value, a lifesaver today as our rapacious state government scrounges for revenue rather than cuts spending.

In a few days, we Californians have another chance to restore our competitiveness. We can elect as governor Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO, to make the structural changes necessary to stem the flow of jobs out of California. Or we can elect Jerry Brown, a recycled governor who took interim jobs as state attorney general and mayor of Oakland, where, under his administration, the public schools were taken over by the state for gross mismanagement. For U.S. senator we can elect either Barbara Boxer, another business-hostile veteran politician, or former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who understands the economic problems we face.

Most importantly, Californians have an opportunity to vote for Proposition 23, which will prevent implementation of the California law known as AB32. AB32 is yet another tax, this one on carbon dioxide, the substance that we exhale about 50,000 times per day, that comes from our cars when we drive to work, and from our Silicon Valley plants as we use power for our computers and air-conditioning. Pushed by dogmatic green politicians, the tax would put another burden on California companies that our Chinese and Korean competitors will not have to bear.

The basic premise of AB32 fails a grade-school math test. The latest EPA figures show that total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in 2007 were 5.98 gigatons, of which California contributed 0.40 gigatons. If California had held its carbon dioxide emissions to its 1990 level of 0.36 gigatons, as AB32 mandates by 2020, the 2007 U.S. carbon dioxide emission figure would have been 5.94 gigatons, rather than 5.98 gigatons. For this our state government has chosen to terminate the jobs of 1.1 million Californians (the impact estimated by the California Small Business Roundtable) on top of existing unemployment.

I know firsthand about green jobs. SunPower Corp., a company I chair and the second-largest U.S. producer of solar cells, has produced about 800 green jobs in California. But that’s just a fraction of the 4,700 jobs lost when Toyota pulled the plug on its local Nummi automotive plant due to the high cost of doing business in California.

This is a common unintended consequence of so-called green economies. For example, a recent study by Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid showed that for every green job created in Spain, 2.2 jobs were lost at large. A similar Italian study showed an even worse result. Green jobs, because of the subsidies and regulations that surround them, are often overall economic losers. And there is no guarantee that new green jobs will even be domestic.

When Cypress acquired the 18-year-old, money-losing SunPower Corp. in 2003, I planned to make the company viable by shutting down its high-cost California solar cell factory and moving its manufacturing to the Philippines. One could say that I eventually exported 4,000 green jobs. Yet it’s more accurate to say that SunPower created about 800 new American jobs that would not have existed without its offshore manufacturing capability.

After building its first and second manufacturing plants in the Philippines, SunPower chose to build its third in Malaysia. We never considered a California site due to high cost and red tape.

On Nov. 2, by supporting Prop. 23, Californians can prevent another job-killing tax.

Mr. Rodgers is the founder and CEO of Cypress Semiconductor.

See post and comments here.

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Prop 23: Will California Reject Climatism?
By Steve Goreham

On November 2, American citizens will go to the polls to elect our political leaders. One state measure demands the attention of environmental and energy interests across the nation: Proposition 23 in California.

Proposition 23 would delay implementation of AB32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act, until state unemployment drops below 5.5 percent. Over $25 million has been raised by advocates and opponents of the measure. In a desperate attempt to save AB32, environmental groups have turned up the propaganda machine.

Assembly Bill 32 was signed into law in September, 2006 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bill requires a reduction in state greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. As tasked, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) developed a “Scoping Plan” in 2008, making AB32 the toughest U.S. climate legislation.

The Plan calls for a Low Carbon Fuel Standard for vehicle fuels, and includes regulations for tires, engine oils, paints, window glazes, and vehicle insurance. New fees and regulations are required for housing, businesses, trucking, refrigerated vehicles, cargo vessels, rail freight, and chemicals. California must participate in the Western Climate Initiative cap-and-trade system. AB32 is a blizzard of new regulations for California consumers and businesses.

But Climatist opponents of Prop 23 (advocates of AB32) are clothing the debate in totally different language. It’s remarkable that the website of “NO on 23,” the leading opponent, never mentions greenhouse gases, and mentions climate change only once. Instead, the site talks about air pollution, dirty energy, and green jobs. It appears that fighting global warming, the stated purpose of AB32, is a loser with California voters.

The League of Conservation Voters declares Prop 23 a “threat to California’s landmark air pollution standards.” This is nonsense. California has a long history of reducing air pollution. The first statewide standards were enacted in 1956, CARB was created in 1969, and the California Clean Air Act went into effect in 1988. Ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon particulates, and other pollutants have been steadily dropping for the last 30 years. The Reason Public Policy Institute finds that emissions from the state automobile fleet are dropping each year by 15% for volatile organic compounds, 13% for carbon monoxide, and 9% for nitrogen oxides. Suspension of AB32, scheduled to take effect during the next two years, would not interrupt the ongoing decline of any of these pollutants. In fact, the act is primarily aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions in a futile attempt to reduce global warming.

Climatism, the belief that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are destroying Earth’s climate, has declared war on carbon dioxide and labeled it a “dirty pollutant.” But CO2 is neither dirty nor a pollutant. CO2 is an invisible, harmless gas. It does not cause smoke or smog. In fact, CO2 is plant food, essential for life on Earth, and the best compound humans can put into the atmosphere to grow the biosphere.

In speaking of the Prop 23 fight, Governor Schwarzenegger stated: “This is not just about California. It is about America’s economic prosperity and leadership in the years ahead. California is America’s last hope for energy change.”

California citizens should ask: Why is AB32 so urgently needed to promote green energy? The reason is that AB32 includes a mandate that 33% of California’s electricity be from renewable sources by 2020. Despite decades of subsidies for wind, solar, and biofuels, in-state renewables provided only 9.6% of the electricity demand in 2009. California windfarms delivered only 1.7% and solar fields only 0.3% of demand. Imported electricity from nearby states met 30% of the need. Without AB32 mandates to force utilities to buy expensive and intermittant renewable electricity, “energy change” would not be possible.

Even though California is blessed with hydropower, geothermal sites, wind-swept ridges, and sunlit skies, electricity rates are climbing with renewable usage. California retail electricity rates are now 12.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, significantly higher than all other western states, and 28% over the national average. AB32 will again boost electricity rates. In the words of movie character Dirty Harry: “That’s a heck of a price to pay for being stylish.”

The growth of “green jobs” is touted by advocates of AB32, who regard Prop 23 as a threat to these jobs. The organization “NO on 23” claims “If we roll back our clean energy standards, California would lose hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in investments to other states.” But evidence shows that the California green energy revolution is not going well.

For the last 30 years, California has employed heavy subsidies and promotional programs to establish the nation’s most favorable green energy environment. The state led the way in wind power, installing 17,000 wind turbines by 1990. The first large-scale solar systems, the SEGS facilities, were installed in the Mojave Desert in the 1980s and 1990s. More than 50,000 roof-top solar systems have been installed, supported by a feed-in tariff and tax credits. But green job growth has not been able to offset the loss of jobs from other industries, burdened by mounting regulations and poor energy policy. Today California has a 12.4% unemployment rate, compared to a national average of 9.6%, flat economic growth, rapidly rising electricity rates, and must import 30% of its electricity. The mountain of AB32 regulations will only add to this deteriorating economic environment.

So what about mitigation of climate change? Today, China is uses three times the coal of the U.S. and is now the top global emitter. If California is able to achieve their 2020 target of 427 million tons of CO2 equivalent, it will be less than a 0.4% change in world emissions. Even this is meaningless, since science increasingly shows that man-made carbon dioxide emissions do not drive global temperatures. No wonder Prop 23 opponents have abandoned arguments about stopping climate change. See more here.

Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of Climatism! Science, Common Sense, and the 21st Century’s Hottest Topic.

Oct 30, 2010

Ministerial meetings

Bishop Hill Blog

The government now publishes details of meetings between ministers and outside bodies. They are published separately on each department’s website. I thought I’d take a look at the DECC one and see who has been bending Howlin’ Mad Huhne’s ear.

In essence it’s simple: with very few exceptions, Huhne gets to meet only:

energy companies asking for subsidies
environmentalists.
I think this could explain a lot about government energy policy, don’t you?

I found it particularly interesting that Huhne (and indeed his predecessor, Ed Miliband) seem to grant a regular monthly audience to groups of environmentalists.

In June, he entertained Friends of the Earth, Green Alliance, Greenpeace, RSPB, and WWF.
In July it was Cafod, Christian Aid, Friends of the Earth, Green Alliance, Greenpeace, Oxfam, RSPB, Tearfund, and WWF.
The records have only been released up to July, but if we look back in time, we can see that under Miliband the same pattern was there (sources, 1, 2):

October: Green Alliance, E.ON, RWE Npower, Scottish Power, Scottish & Southern Energy, Greenpeace & European Climate Foundation
November: WWF, Greenpeace, ActionAid, Oxfam & Friends of the Earth
Again in November: Meeting with NGOs including RSPB, Christian Aid & WWF
Still in November: Oxfam, WWF, Greenpeace, RSPB, Tearfund, E3G, Christian Aid, Cafod, Friends of the Earth, Green Alliance
And yet another: PIRC & 10:10.
February: WWF, Greenpeace, Green Alliance, Cafod, RSPB, IPPR, E3G, Tearfund, Oxfam, TUC, Christian Aid, Friends of the Earth.
March: TUC, Cafod, Oxfam, WWF, Christian Aid, Tearfund, RSPB, IPPR, E3G.
April - no record of any meetings, presumably because of the election
There is no sign of anyone who might give a different point of view getting through the door at DECC. This is rather remarkable. We know that the majority of the British public are unconvinced by the manmade global warming hypothesis and yet it appears that, whatever the stripe of the government, only groups with vested interests get through the front door at DECC. The views of the majority are not to be heard.

Is Mr Huhne dancing to the greens’ tune?

See more and comments here.

Oct 30, 2010

New Election for Calif. Prop. 23?

By Paul Chesser

That’s the talk, as hundreds of thousands of ballots in Fresno County contained illegal, politically-charged language describing the global warming act-postponing measure. The Sacramento Bee reports:

Ballots printed for the county’s roughly 380,000 registered voters say Proposition 23 would suspend laws requiring “major polluters” to report and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That language was thrown out by a Sacramento superior court judge, who ordered several edits to the original language drafted by the attorney general’s office, including changing “major polluters” to “major sources of emissions.”

The Proposition 23 campaign has demanded that the county “take immediate steps to reprint the ballots remaining to be sent to vote by mail voters as well as ballots to be distributed on election day.”

“Fresno County is a county of significant size in California and in a close election, its vote, now tainted by this serious error, could call into question the state results and possibly give rise to an election contest and require a new statewide election on Proposition 23,” attorney Colleen C. McAndrews wrote in a letter to the Fresno elections officials.

Officials say it’s too late to do anything about the 140,000 mail-in ballots that have already been distributed, and that they will post signs with the correct language at polling places.

This is not insignificant; environmental extremists have been trying to label carbon dioxide emitters (that would be me and you also, readers) as “polluters” to push their fraudulent global warming scenario since they took up the cause. If you were just faintly familiar with the issue, would you be more likely to vote against the measure if businesses were identified as “polluters” rather than “sources of emissions?”

A major screw-up that could require a new election. Not surprisingly, the opponents of Prop. 23 are pooh-poohing the significance of the error.