by Bill Neuharth
Some years ago the marquee at the Del Oro theatre in Grass Valley billed the movie "Inconvenient Truth." At the same time, an article in a local Lake Tahoe newspaper headlined "UC Davis scientists discover pollution from China in Tahoe-Truckee."
This movie and subsequent horror about Global Warming led to the passing of the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 also known as A.B. 32. The result of these occurrences was the empowerment of the California Air Resources Board with unlimited authority over all commerce within the State. As businesses flee the state in record numbers to escape this undue regulation the State's revenue base shrinks proportionately. Recently State Senator Doug LaMalfa wrote an article stating "that a primary researcher behind the California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulations had falsified his PhD., yet Mary Nichols, CARB Chairwoman, chose to not share this with other board members. Statistics were falsified on diesel truck emissions, resulting in regulations that will cripple the movement of raw materials and finished products." Senator La Malfa has exposed a government agency promoting their agenda regardless of it's impact on our economy, and regardless of an individual's lack of integrity and exageration of the data developed.
This deceptive behavior caused “we the people” to make our decision on Proposition 23 at the ballot box in November without knowing the truth or the real world impact of our votes.. We do not know what effect CARB's regulations will have upon pollution produced in China and other third world nations. And, we can only surmise what the effect on the State's businesses will be. Adhering to ideas that are not substantiated is a condition not absent from human history. Humankind once believed that the world was flat, the solar system revolved around the earth, and draining significant amounts of your blood would cure your ailments! Most folks scoff at those ideas today, but some still cling to the belief that mankind affects climate change more than the universe or the solar system. Perhaps a California greenhouse gas law (AB 32) applies to Mars and the Sun. Incidentally they are also warming. If so, what regulations has CARB developed for those bodies?
Whatever your opinion, the fact is that the new regulations adopted by CARB will drive prices up at every consumer level including food. Countries like China will produce more of our goods and in the process create more pollution than California businesses, negating any perceived world-wide greenhouse gas reductions. Moreover, these bureacratic machinations will not impact the sun, the solar system, the universe, or China. Mars will continue to warm or cool regardless of which vehicle you drive, and whether it is powered by fossil fuel or electricity. China will continue manufacturing without consideration for California's greenhouse(?) legislation. It's time to have a civil but spirited debate about this issue before we destroy the last vestiges of the free enterprise system that once made California the Golden State. We should manage our lives based on facts that are not inflated, and expect government agencies (CARB) to earn our trust accordingly. If such agencies do not manage their operations with complete honesty and full disclosure, the state Attorney General should investigate them to the fullest extent of the law. In this way we can send a message to the bureaucracies that we the people will no longer tolerate biased, factually incorrect and agenda-driven research.