California Carbon Law Fight Takes a ‘Giant Step’ (Update2)
May 03, 2010, 5:08 PM EDT(Adds Schwarzenegger comment in the final paragraph.)
By Simon Lomax
May 3 (Bloomberg) -- An oil industry-supported group that wants California voters to suspend the state’s global warming laws said today it has collected nearly twice the signatures needed to get the proposed delay on the November ballot.
More than 800,000 signatures have been gathered in support of an initiative to halt enforcement of the Global Warming Solutions Act until the state’s unemployment rate falls to 5.5 percent from its current 12.6 percent, the California Jobs Initiative Committee said in an e-mail.
To get the initiative on the Nov. 2 ballot, the committee must collect the signatures of at least 433,971 registered voters who support it, according to the California Secretary of State’s website. Getting more than 800,000 puts the initiative “a giant step closer” to qualifying, the committee said.
The California global warming law, passed in 2006, requires that the state cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions that scientists have linked to climate change to their 1990 levels by 2020. The law authorized the state Air Resources Board to set up pollution-cutting programs, including a carbon cap-and-trade system, starting in 2012.
Oil Money
San Antonio-based refiners Tesoro Corp. and Valero Energy Corp., Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp., and the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association in Washington have contributed more than half of the $2.24 million raised so far by the committee, according to state records.
George Shultz, who was secretary of state in the Reagan administration, was named today as honorary co-chairman of Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs, a group that is campaigning to defeat the ballot initiative.
While some companies in California have said they’re worried about the cost of the planned greenhouse gas limits, the new regulations will boost the state’s economy by creating “clean-tech jobs,” Shultz said in an e-mail.
“This misguided proposition will seriously harm our effort to encourage the growing entrepreneurial ventures that hold the promise of important change toward cleaner energy,” he said.
Postponing the climate-change law until California’s unemployment rate falls to 5.5 percent will effectively repeal it, Shultz said.
Shultz’s group will have the help of California’s Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said in an e-mail today he will “push back” against the campaign to suspend the greenhouse gas limits he signed into law in 2006.
--Editors: David Marino, Richard Stubbe.
To contact the reporter on this story: Simon Lomax in Washington at [email protected].
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at [email protected].
