Anti-Energy Rationing Initiative Makes It Onto California Ballot

The "Suspends Air Pollution Control Laws Requiring Major Polluters To Report And Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions That Cause Global Warming Until Unemployment Drops Below Specified Level For Full Year Initiative, [PDF] will appear on the November ballot in California. The Chico Enterprise Register reports:

Assemblyman Dan Logue, R-Linda, was elated this week to learn his initiative to suspend the state's anti-global warming law made the November ballot.

In a phone interview, Logue said he found out Tuesday the initiative had enough valid signatures.

He said the initiative needed 440,000 signatures and it got 800,000. The names were collected by volunteers and paid "signature gatherers," he said.

AB32 became law in 2006. It provides that between 2012 and 2020, greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced to the levels they were in 1990.

Logue's initiative would postpone the implementation of AB32 until the state's unemployment rate stands at 5.5 percent for a year. Now the jobless rate is around 12 percent.

Suspending AB32 only makes sense, Logue said. "We can't afford it. We'll lose another million jobs. It will drive business out of the state."

Robin Huffman, advocacy director for the Chico-based Butte Environmental Council, expressed the opposite view.

Suspending AB32 is not necessary, she said. The law "is the very encouragement and incentive that is needed to create the jobs that we need for the new green economy."

She called AB32 "a very, very reasonable law" and "a step in the right direction."

"I'm sad that it's gotten on the ballot," she said of Logue's initiative.

Whole CER story can be read here. You may also want to take a look at my earlier analysis of the likely effect of California's energy rationing scheme on job creation in the Golden State. Precis: Probably not helpful.