REALLY, MEG? Suspending Climate-Change Legislation AB32 is Backwards Thinking
Meg Whitman penned an op-ed last week stating she’d suspend California’s landmark climate-change legislation, AB32, on her first day if elected governor. This is backwards thinking, and I disagree.
Experts estimate that the four largest clean-energy industries (solar, wind, biofuels, and fuel-cell) will have combined annual revenues of $255 billion by the middle of the next decade. The question isn’t whether the world will move towards cleaner living – the question is how soon this trend will take hold.
There is no better, more fertile place in the United States for green technology and green-collar jobs to take shape than California.
California’s challenge is competitiveness, grasping as much of the share of these markets as possible by being the industry leader in greenhouse gas abatement technology. To date, we’ve done a great job – California captured $6.6 billion in green capital between 2006-2008. And all these start-ups need workers; so green jobs have the potential to be for California what the defense industry was in 1980s.
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According to the Pew Charitable Trust, between 1997 and 2007, “clean energy spurred the opening of 10,209 businesses with 125,390 jobs in California.”
That’s 125,000 people working on protecting our environment and earning family-sustaining wages at the same time. And all these new jobs came about before AB32 really kicked in! The potential employment upside to AB32 is staggering. Growth in green-collar jobs outpaced overall job growth nationwide by 250 percent – astounding.
Clearly, being on the cutting edge of innovation is a net positive for California’s economy, not a negative. As we mark the three-year anniversary of AB32’s signing today, we should acknowledge that its oft-vilified targets are not only achievable but also actually good for California’s economy. The Governor’s own Climate Action Team reported back in 2006 that AB32 would provide “billions of dollars in savings for businesses and residents, and tens of thousands of new jobs by 2020.” It’s both affordable and plausible.
We’re proving as much in San Francisco. Our Local-Global Climate Action Plan sets the ambitious target of reducing our greenhouse gas levels 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Well, we’ve already achieved a 5 percent reduction below 1990 levels, and we’ve still got a few more years to get all the way to 20 percent… (continues on page 2:)
I’m personally terrified of Meg Whitman. All my conservative friends love her but no nothing about her history.
I am confused about Meg Whitmans role here. The article needs more information on her role.
Climate change is effecting every country. Is there
anything we can do at our level to control it? While at high school, I signed a campaign to “Go Green, Promote Green” but nothing big ever happened. This is one cause we all would certainly like to get involved into if only we know how?
What Climate change are you guys talking about? The one that’s been changed from Global warming? Hmm, how many more months do we have until the big catastrophe? Get a life !! Al Gore did a number on too many of you. The earth has been slowly cooling for the last 10 years. The climate has been changing for billions of years. All this Global warming climate change whatever they call it is just the way for politicians to grab more power and control over the sheeple, don’t you guys see it? It’s all about money, more taxes… They don’t care about science, but who cares. Their GREEN is just NEW RED !!! Do your own research and study more about what’s going on, don’t just blindly listen to these nutjobs.
This bill is a farce. California has no effect on global warming. Read the science.
Climate has changed in California. Jobs and growth are severly needed. Anything that keeps prosperity and growth out of california should be reconsidered. We work so hard to be green when the majority of the world is in development and spewing pollution, while we think what we do here could really make a difference!
For those who want to argue the science or politics of global warming - is it real or not? - I ask you to think instead of the bacteria in the petri dish. Whether or not “global warming” is happening, we still have an absolute “sustainability” issue: Western civilization uses resources at a rate that it’d take NINE planet earths to sustain. Yet, we have only this one. (Google “nine planets” to learn more). I personally chose to focus on this fact - it transcends all politics and competing theories. We bacteria can argue forever, and do nothing, but we will eventually over-grow our petri dish. And that’s it - when the food’s gone, its gone; when the trees are gone, they’er gone. It’ll happen regardless of who’s in office, what party controls what resource, what the planet’s temperature is…none of that’ll matter in the end. And, no, it won’t happen next year or even, maybe, next century. But it WILL happen, as inevitably as the bacteria multiplying in the petri dish - unless we change how we operate on a number of levels…. It really is that simple. We can start doing something now, or we can leave it to future generations. It seems that there are plenty of people in each camp - only time will tell.