The California Legislature’s adoption of Senate Bill 100 – committing the state to have an electricity grid powered by 100 percent renewable energy in 2045 – was billed by Sen. Kevin De León, D-Los Angeles, (pictured) as another landmark triumph for the environmental movement in the Golden State.

But the measure’s relatively narrow adoption in the Assembly – on a 44-33 vote – carries loud hints from Democrats who represent poor communities that they see environmental policies that add to the cost of living as increasingly problematic in the state with the nation’s highest level of poverty.

A Los Angeles Times interview with Assemblyman Adam Gray, D-Merced, hammered home this point:

“This is yet another in a laundry list of bills that are discriminatory to the people I represent,” Gray said. He was paraphrased as “saying that supporters were motivated to impress national progressives rather than poor residents in rural communities who would face higher electric bills as a result of the legislation.”

The Assembly Democrats who opposed SB100 besides Gray: Anna Caballero of Salinas, Jim Cooper of Elk Grove, Tom Daly of Anaheim, Jim Frazier of Oakley, Mike Gipson of south Los Angeles, Sharon Quirk-Silva of Fullerton, Blanca Rubio of the San Gabriel Valley and Rudy Salas of Bakersfield.

The issue of how poor people would be affected was very much part of the debate in the run-up to the 2006 adoption by the Legislature of the landmark anti-global warming Assembly Bill 32, which mandated the use of costlier but cleaner energy sources. As a result, a portion of cap-and-trade fees on pollution permits are designated to go to “disadvantaged” communities.

A 2017 report by the California Climate Investments state website said that $614 million in cap-and-trade fees had been spent on these communities, including helping nearly 30,000 homeowners with solar panels and other energy-efficient projects, as well as funding more than 2,600 affordable-housing units.

Energy costs contribute to state’s high poverty rate

But most of the 20 percent-plus of state residents who are impoverished get relatively little direct help in dealing with overall energy costs that aren’t just higher on average than any other state with a relatively temperate climate; they’re also higher than states with harsh winters like Montana and Colorado. And because of unique state rules and fees, gasoline costs more in California than any state but Hawaii.

California’s emergence as the nation’s most impoverished state only became evident in 2011, when the U.S. Census Bureau began issuing state-by-state poverty statistics that included the cost of living. This has helped create an appreciation in the Legislature of the need to add housing stock to try to slow the sharp increase in rent and home prices over the past quarter-century.

But a recent study by Chapman University’s Center for Demographics and Policy found that state energy policies were also a major contributor to high poverty rates.

The study faulted state agencies, starting with the California Air Resources Board, for their impact studies which have consistently minimized the effects of laws like AB32 on the less affluent.

“Notably absent [in the air board’s ‘scoping plan’ for AB32] is any discussion of how the state’s existing costs, let alone additional burdens, severely harm lower-income and historically disadvantaged communities and households,” the study noted.

Gov. Jerry Brown has so far declined direct comment on SB100, but most Capitol watchers expect him to sign the bill. The governor has called climate change the state’s and nation’s most pressing problem.

It was just nine months ago that Gov. Jerry Brown basked in the

A Sacramento Bee account laid out how the four-tern governor had come to see the issue as vital to his legacy and considered the conference “the crucial event for the future of the world” because of its potential to inspire much broader efforts to curb the emission of greenhouse gases believed to contribute to global warming.

But back home, Brown’s vision is getting a much tougher reception than it did in France. It’s increasingly unclear whether the governor can even garner enough support in the California Legislature for legislation that would build on AB32. While the measure, SB32, won approval from the Assembly on Tuesday and is likely to be approved by the Senate next week, its implementation is tied to the passage of AB197 by Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia, D-Coachella. SB32 can only take effect if AB197 is approved this session.

Garcia’s measure would both increase legislative oversight of the state Air Resources Board and require the air board to put more pressure on local factories and oil refineries to cut their emissions. This, in theory, would respond both to greens’ concerns that the cap-and-trade framework is too passive and to state lawmakers’ anxiety over the air board throwing its weight around in ways that cost local jobs.

Siding with ‘people’ over ‘polar bears’

Such a concern about the effects of environmental laws on local jobs wasn’t raised by many Democrats during 2006 when AB32 was approved. But since California switched to the “jungle primary” in 2012 — in which the top two candidates in the June primary advance, regardless of party — the Legislature has seen a surge in business-friendly Democrats suspicious of the green agenda.

“It’s great to hear about saving polar bears and hugging trees, and making sure we address global warming from a world perspective,” Garcia told the Los Angeles Times. “But how about people?”

Last year, these pro-business Democrats teamed with Republicans to kill Gov. Brown’s and Senate President Kevin de Leon’s push for a 50 percent reduction in gasoline use by vehicles in California by 2030.

Increasingly, it looks like Brown’s best option to build in on his legacy is a 2018 ballot measure extending AB32. Polling shows Californians support even more ambitious climate change policies than AB32.

In 2010, Proposition 23 — a measure to repeal AB32 — was rejected by state voters, 62 percent to 38 percent.

The governor may also try to use executive orders to extend AB32. But few authorities on California’s government believe a current governor can bind the actions of future governors or legislatures.

Research by UC Berkeley energy scholar Rebecca R. Hernandez and energy researchers Madison K. Hoffacker and Chris Field found that …

the amount of energy that could be generated from solar equipment constructed on and around existing infrastructure in California would exceed the state’s demand by up to five times. …

“Integrating solar facilities into the urban and suburban environment causes the least amount of land-cover change and the lowest environmental impact,” Hernandez explained.

Just over 8 percent of all of the terrestrial surfaces in California have been developed by humans — from cities and buildings to park spaces. Residential and commercial rooftops present plenty of opportunity for power generation through small- and utility-scale solar power installations. Other compatible opportunities are available in open urban spaces such as parks.

Likewise, there is opportunity for additional solar construction in undeveloped sites that are not ecologically sensitive or federally protected, such as degraded lands.

“Because of the value of locating solar power-generating operations near roads and existing transmission lines, our tool identifies potentially compatible sites that are not remote, showing that installations do not necessarily have to be located in deserts,” Hernandez said.

But the research paper doesn’t focus strongly on the costs involved. Even as they add renewable supplies, utilities continue to need inexpensive sources of power because of their obligations to shareholders and because of public pressure. Even as the cost of solar arrays comes down and their efficiency increases, natural gas has never been cheaper in inflation-adjusted dollars.

According to the California Public Utilities Commission, 35 percent or so of natural gas used in California in recent years has come from other states benefiting from the fracking-driven boom in energy exploration.

In 2050, state can’t “be burning much of anything”

At a January conference in Los Angeles, however, top state officials seemed of two minds about California relying on natural gas:

California has been one of the nation’s bigger users of natural gas, employing it as a bridge fuel for some time as it moved away from coal and oil, said Robert Weisenmiller, chairman of the California Energy Commission. The fuel accounted for 60.5 percent of in-state generation in 2013, the CEC has said.

“It’s certainly been a part of our strategy,” Weisenmiller said. “At the same time, we’re certainly looking at a stage now of saying, ‘What’s next?'”

At the same conference, Mary Nichols, the head of the California Air Resources Board had different views. Nichols …

… rejected the premise of the panel she was on, dubbed “Natural Gas — Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?” ARB is “fuel neutral,” she said, when the agency looks at cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The Golden State aims to shrink those to 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 percent below 1990’s point by 2050.

Nichols added, however, that the state needs “to look at the full life-cycle picture of emissions when we talk about any fuel,” including production, transport and use.

“When we do that, we certainly find ourselves in agreement with the [state] Energy Commission that right now, it’s pretty hard to see how in 2050 we can be burning much of anything in the state of California to meet our carbon goals,” Nichols said.

That is from reporting by the Energy & Environment Publishing news website.

We hear plenty of CARB critics from libertarian and conservative circles. Here’s what a sharp liberal critic of CARB sounds like:

Now, say a utility in a carbon market wants to reduce its carbon emissions. It could build renewable energy generation, or launch efficiency or demand-response programs, but gosh, that stuff is expensive and difficult. Isn’t there something easier and cheaper? Why yes! Here’s two other things it could do.

One, it could sell its ownership stake in a coal plant and buy a stake in a natural gas plant. Voilà! The net emissions of its power portfolio has declined.

Or two, it could shuffle power contracts away from coal plants to unspecified sources, which are treated as natural gas. (More sinister yet, it could help a coal plant obscure the source of its power, rendering it unspecified.) Again: voilà! For bookkeeping purposes, its emissions have fallen.

See what’s wrong here? In both cases, the utility reduced the emissions for which it is responsible, but real-world emissions did not decline at all. The same amount of dirty energy is still feeding into the western grid. The emissions just got “shuffled” off the California utility’s books.

For obvious reasons, resource shuffling is bad news for carbon markets. It makes carbon emissions into a meaningless shell game, exactly the sort of shenanigans cap-and-trade critics are always warning about.

CA regulators saw problem coming

Liberal lawmakers have long downplayed this potential problem. But Roberts says CARB was aware of it and wrote AB 32 to avoid it — at least in theory:

AB32 contains strong language on leakage, saying that regulations must “minimize leakage” and that emission reductions achieved under the program must be “real, permanent, quantifiable, verifiable, and enforceable by the state board.”

And the initial guidance document written by regulators (which details the mechanics of how AB32 is to be implemented) stated clearly that “resource shuffling is prohibited and is a violation of this article.” In fact, the initial guidance contained a provision that would have forced utility executives to testify under oath that their emission reductions were real and not merely shuffled. Powerful and unambiguous stuff!

UC Berkeley research fellow Danny Cullenward tells the story of what happened next:

“[Banning resource shuffling outright] proved controversial. In the months leading up to the beginning of the market’s first compliance period, several stakeholders objected to the resource shuffling rules and began agitating for reforms. The first public proposal came from California’s investor-owned utilities, which in September 2012 advocated a series of exemptions to the prohibition on resource shuffling. The following month, [the California Air Resources Board] directed its staff to develop modifications to the resource shuffling regulations, providing 13 fully developed ‘safe harbor’ exemptions to the definition of resource shuffling directly comparable to, if not more permissive than, the Joint Utilities Group proposal. A few weeks later, CARB staff released a new regulatory guidance document that incorporated these safe harbors, almost word for word.”

So the new AB32 regulations now say that resource shuffling is prohibited … except “when the substitution occurs pursuant to the conditions listed in section 95852(b)(2)(A).” Just a little tweak, right? Except 95852(b)(2)(A) contains loopholes wide enough to sneak a coal plant through. (To see for yourself, check out the current regulations, pp. 106-108.)

In other words: California regulators caved.

CARB’s self-reverence may not be deserved

One person’s view of what constitutes caving might well be another person’s reasonable compromise. But it’s still interesting to see a liberal, deeply informed out-of-state journalist — Roberts lives in Seattle — investigate the air board and conclude that the agency’s high opinion of itself isn’t warranted.

David Roberts will find lots of libertarian and conservative Californians probably agree with him on this, starting with Cal Watchdog contributor … Dave Roberts.

It’s awfully easy to be green and consider yourself both smart and morally superior when you think green policies won’t hit your family in the pocketbook.

But now that it’s become clear that gasoline prices will go up sharply because of AB 32’s key provision — the cap-and-trade program in which companies trade pollution rights — the Democratic consensus in the Legislature has been destroyed.

That 16 Assembly Democrats signed a letter warning that cap-and-trade shouldn’t push gas prices higher means that a majority of the Assembly is on record as objecting to AB 32’s central objective — forcing Californians to turn away from fossil fuels.

The air board minimizes the AB 32 hit on gas prices as being “only” 10 to 20 cents per gallon. But for two years, AB 32 aficionados have pointed out that’s not what a well-regarded state consultant believes.  In 2012, the Boston Consulting Group predicted gas prices in California would go up 43 cents to $1.59 per gallon due to cap and trade,

An a la carte objection — or beginning of a revolution?

Now the question is whether this is just an a la carte objection to California’s green orthodoxy — or if California Democrats are finally going to become more like Dems in America’s other megastates of Texas, Florida and New York.

I’ve been pointing out the following for years:

In Austin, there are plenty of Dems who want to help Texas’ energy, export-import and ranching industries. In Tallahassee, there are plenty of Dems who want to help Florida’s tourism and international trade industries. In Albany, there are plenty of Dems who want to help New York’s financial, ag and tech industries.

That’s from my Calwhine whining in 2012.

This  emerging Dem disillusionment with green-energy policies precisely mirrors what’s happened in Europe, where many nations are rolling back renewable-energy policies or trying to untangle policies that have had vast unintended consequences.

Eventually, California Democrats who don’t represent the whiter parts of the Bay Area and Los Angeles County are going to realize their constituents are hurt by air board control of economic regulation.

Or at least that’s what we have to hope if we want California to lose its status as most impoverished state any time soon.

But two years later, however, Schwarzenegger — in full legacy-hunt mode — didn’t say squat when the California Air Resources Board released a “scoping” plan of the economic impact of AB 32 that was full of happy talk that depicted the law as akin to a job-creation program.

Professional economists pushed back. The “peer review” of the findings was harsh. The panel included Harvard’s Robert Stavins — perhaps the world’s leading environmental economist. Stavins backed AB 32 but considered its happy talk ridiculous. “I have come to the inescapable conclusion that the economic analysis is terribly deficient in critical ways and should not be used by the state government or the public for the purpose of assessing the likely costs of CARB’s plan,” he wrote.

Stavins later told The Wall Street Journal that if shifting to cleaner-but-costlier energy were good for businesses, they would have already done it.

That’s such a crisp, simple Occam’s Razor way to frame this issue.

Unfortunately, in the California of 2014, when it comes to economics, we’re in a post-common sense era.

‘Skimp’ on wages? You’ll make less money!

This is playing out in San Diego, where the City Council’s liberal supermajority wants to make a big splash before November elections in which they are likely to lose their power to impose legislation over a veto by Republican Mayor Kevin Faulconer.

The main way they want to make this splash is by sharply increasing the minimum wage in the city. The initial proposal was to make it $13.09 cents an hour by July 2017. That would be nearly one-third higher than the $10 that will be the minimum state rate effective 2016.

Business interests point out that this will hurt San Diego on competitiveness grounds. Advocates initially responded by saying job losses from a minimum wage hike would be minimal. But somewhere along the way, the spirit of the loony air board infected their thinking, and now San Diegans are being told that a minimum-wage hike is, yes, a rising tide that will lift all boats.

Consider this nugget from this op-ed defending the City Council’s plan. The gist is that business operators who try to keep costs down are idiots who don’t know what they’re doing:

“Employers who skimp on wages and benefits don’t make more money, they make less. They have greater turnover, resulting in more training, and they engender less loyalty and more cheating.”

Oh, give me a break.

CA activists lecture business on how to make money

According to this one-size-fits-all theory, Wal-Mart and carwashes and taco stands and all the non-union companies in the world that try to keep wages down are simply buffoons who are lucky to still be in business.

The arrogance of this is stunning.

The truth, of course, is that — as the world’s leading environmental economist told The Wall Street Journal — businesses won’t reject strategies that make them money. They will embrace such strategies.

But as I said, we’re in a post-common sense era in which activists and liberal pundits who have never made a payroll or run a business look at successful businesses and say something akin to the following:

Hey, you idiots, you don’t know what you’re doing.

Surreal. And so California-ish.

On May 30, the U.S. EPA in Dallas ordered the Clean Harbors waste incineration facility in El Dorado, Ark., to pay a $39,900 penalty for manufacturing and using “16 regulated chemicals in excess of established reporting thresholds” in 2011. The EPA had previously fined Clean Harbors $581,236 for other violations of hazardous waste standards.

The day before the EPA’s latest fine, the air board had already issued a notice to industrial holders and traders of renewable energy certificates from Clean Harbors that their certificates could be invalidated because the facility may been noncompliant in 2011. CARB can invalidate credits for up to eight years after implementation of a pollution reduction project.

Offset credits are tradable energy commodities that represent one ton of avoided ozone emissions. California industries can buy them to meet air pollution reduction requirements in the Golden State — even if the avoided emissions are in another state. None of the questionable credits were issued under California’s cap-and-trade emissions reduction program.

Retiring refrigerators in Arkansas to comply with CA rules

The credits in question were issued for retiring old refrigerators that contained chlorofluorocarbons (also known as CFCs or Freon) that are believed to contribute to ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere. This kind of credit is called an Ozone Depleting Substance or ODS credit.

The ODS credits sell for $5 to $10 per ton. That means the California firms’ potentially invalidated credits cost from $6.5 million to $13 million. State holders of these credits include EOS Climate, Diversified Pure Chemical, Environmental Credit Corporation, Wilshire Standard Offsets and Pure Chemical Separation.

According to a chemicals and energy trade website, 87 percent of the 5.5 million ozone depletion credits issued by CARB were from the Clean Harbors facility. The 1.3 million credits now being reviewed are for the period that Clean Harbors was deemed potentially non-compliant.

In 2009, Clean Harbors was cited by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality for 47 violations of its operating permit.

Among the many problems: chemical clouds and leaks;  explosions and fires; mishandling of waste materials;  failure to respond to a hazardous waste emergency; failure to design, construct, maintain and operate the facility to minimize fire, explosions, releases of materials into the air, soil or water; failure to provide adequate liability insurance; and poor record-keeping.

In December 2012, neighboring residents of the Clean Harbors plant were subject to a voluntary evacuation due to a chemical fire.

Clean Harbors and client defend company’s record

Clean Harbors officials downplayed the actions of regulators. “We have compliantly destroyed hundreds of thousands of kilograms or chlorofluorocarbons at our state-of-the-art hazardous waste incineration facility,” a spokesperson said.

Jeff Cohen of EOS Climate, a San Francisco-based pollution credit brokerage firm that did business with Clean Harbors, also downplayed the penalties. He said the actions that led to the fines against the company had “no impact” on its ozone-reduction operations.

“I expect ARB will ultimately conclude that too and all the credits will remain valid,” Cohen said.

The state air board will issue a determination on whether the credits are acceptable 30 days after officials believe they have received all necessary information on the matter.

But it you wanted to pick the one state agency that most consistently advocates a radical view of government power, you’ll never top the California Coastal Commission. It was founded and run for a quarter-century by a green zealot named Peter Douglas — a guy who really and truly didn’t believe in private property rights and who pushed the commission to ridiculous extremes. I wrote about one of his crusades in an editorial in 2006:

“Consider the case of San Luis Obispo engineer Dennis Schneider, who hoped to build his dream home on a cliff above the ocean in a remote area north of Cayucos. Incredibly by normal cognitive standards, typically by Coastal Commission standards, the agency blocked his plans on the grounds that the home would be such an aesthetic affront to passing kayakers, boaters and surfers that it would violate their rights. We are not making this up.”

But the courts backed Schneider up, thankfully. So there was a way to deal with Douglas’ assault on conventional notions about property, individuals and government control of property and individuals.

Not just power to assess fines, but limited checks and balances

Now, the San Diego Democrat chosen to be the next speaker of the Assembly wants the commission to be given more powers with fewer checks and balances. CalWatchdog alum Steve Greenhut talks about Toni Atkins’ scary legislation in his latest U-T San Diego column.

“Last year, the Atkins bill (AB 976) was controversial enough even among some environmentally minded Democrats that it was rejected in the Assembly. But as Atkins ascends to the Assembly speakership, it’s likely that this legislative priority will rise again.

“Is it needed? The vast majority of the commission’s complaints against homeowners already are resolved before going to court. If the commission still meets resistance, it petitions the state attorney general for legal action.

“If the Atkins bill passes, the commission can decide on its own to begin assessing daily fines. The property owners can attend a public hearing before commissioners, but it’s not a neutral proceeding with witnesses and due process. The burden of proof would shift from the agency to the individual property owner.

“Not many owners could risk the bank account by challenging the agency. Some critics say the bill would provide an incentive for the commission to target picayune issues because the more fines it imposes, the more money that fills up an environmental-restoration fund.”

Groan. This is not what California needs — further empowering the Peter Douglas disciples who still run the Coastal Commission two years after his death and who still think Douglas’ views about property rights are what matters — not that minor clause in federal law known as the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

By Chris Reed

Seven years ago the California Legislature passed AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, a landmark law forcing California to shift to cleaner-but-costlier forms of energy by 2020 to reduce the emission of the gases believed to cause global warming. The assumption was that, as it had with so many other environmental regulations, the Golden State would inspire the world to follow our lead.

There were cautionary voices. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told lawmakers he wouldn’t sign the bill unless it gave a future governor the option to suspend its enforcement in times of economic distress. This amounted to an acknowledgment of a basic fact: California’s economy would be at risk if the state forced the cost of energy to go higher, requiring businesses to pay more for a large basic budget item than their competitors in rival states and nations. The Golden State needed others to follow our lead for our policy to make economic sense.

But soon after, Schwarzenegger’s legacy hunt revved up, and he saw the opportunity to be Al Gore’s successor as a pin-up of global environmentalists. When California’s economy went into its deepest recession in 70 years, instead of invoking his executive authority to delay AB 32’s implementation, the governor began asserting that AB 32 amounted to a job-creation measure. This was talking point No. 1 of the Schwarzenegger administration for years.

The expects trashed the AB 32 happy talk

To say this was dubious is an understatement of immense proportion. A “peer review” of the California Air Resources Board’s upbeat analysis of AB 32’s economic impact released in late 2008 scorned the report as painting a rosy scenario. A specific warning noted the risks to manufacturing in California because energy played such a huge role in cost of operations.

One of those peer reviewers — Harvard’s Robert Stavins, perhaps the world’s leading environmental economist — shredded the happy talk from the air board (and implicitly from others) in a memorable January 2009 interview with Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal.

“None of us knew who the other reviewers were, but we all came up with almost the same conclusion. The report was severely flawed and systematically underestimated costs,” said Stavins, who chaired the U.S. EPA’s economic advisory committee during the Clinton administration.

Stavins asked a common-sense question: If this approach were such a job-creator, why would it have to be imposed on private industry?

But instead of heeding Stavins, his fellow peer-reviewers and common sense, the Los Angeles Times made an extremely curious journalistic decision. In its news pages, it either downplayed the possibility that AB 32 could backfire enormously, or treated the question as hotly debated, with experts on both sides. On its editorial pages, it usually treated the will-AB-32-backfire thesis as partisan rhetoric, exaggerated or flat-out wrong.

Never was this more evident than in its coverage of Proposition 23, the 2010 state ballot measure that sought to roll back AB 32 until unemployment was 5.5 percent or less for four quarters in a row.

The savaging of Prop. 23

Prop. 23 amounted to a straightforward extension of economists’ no-duh critique: Higher energy costs put California at a competitive disadvantage, and we shouldn’t want to dig ourselves a bigger hole with unemployment at the time already above 12 percent — far higher than the national rate.

But to the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times, Prop. 23 was nothing more than psycho Texas-style policy extremism. This is from the LAT’s Sept. 28, 2010 editorial:

“In 2006, taking a brief hiatus from the usual Sacramento gridlock, the Legislature passed and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB 32, a pioneering law designed to reduce California’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. This year, a proposition that aims to kill the law was put on the Nov. 2 ballot by two Texas oil companies with a lot at stake. The cynical, misleading argument the companies are using to make their case is that AB 32 will deter job growth at a critical moment in the state’s economic recovery.

“Proposition 23 would suspend AB 32 until the state’s unemployment rate falls to 5.5% or below for four consecutive quarters. Backers insist that this wouldn’t negate the law because the rate is achievable — joblessness hit that mark just four years ago. Yet a global recession, which had nothing to do with California’s environmental standards, caused statewide unemployment to skyrocket to 12.4%, and it will take many years to recover from such a severe economic blow. Because meeting AB 32’s 2020 deadline requires immediate action, delaying implementation by even a year could render its goal impossible.

“Of course, the question of most concern to voters is whether AB 32 would worsen joblessness and slow the state’s recovery. Supporters and opponents of Proposition 23 draw on studies that reach opposite conclusions; the yes side says AB 32 would cost the state 1 million jobs, while the no side says it has already led to the creation of 500,000. We’re not convinced by either. The economic impact of AB 32 will depend on how it’s implemented by regulators, as well as variables outside anyone’s control or ability to forecast.”

Higher energy costs aren’t necessarily bad, you see, if you have enlightened regulators.

The Times channels Emily Litella: ‘Never mind.’

Now comes a moment that simultaneously brings to mind George Orwell, Emily Litella and the ninth season of “Dallas”: “We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.” “Never mind.” It was all a dream.

In Monday’s Los Angeles Times, the paper gave high-profile play to an 1,100-word analysis of AB 32 by reporter Anthony York. Six years and six months after the passage of AB 32, and four years and four months after the release of the peer review savaging the happy talk about AB 32, York treated as a given that the critique of Robert Stavins — and of Prop. 23 supporters — was accurate.

“When Gov. Jerry Brown called on his fellow governors at a conference in Washington last week to embrace a California-style pursuit of cleaner air, he was doing more than reinforcing the state’s image as an environmental trailblazer. He was trying to protect its economy.

“Brown needs other states and the federal government to adopt key elements of California’s environmental agenda, such as reaping more energy from renewable sources and capping greenhouse gas emissions, if those programs are to be successful here.

“The state’s aggressive pursuit of environmental goals has provided a new impetus for green jobs and federal subsidies. But the programs are costly to businesses, raising the price of their energy and forcing them to upgrade to cleaner manufacturing technologies.

“If others don’t go green, California could become an outlier, saddling businesses with costly new power while neighboring states continue to use traditional, cheaper energy, experts say. If the efforts under way in California spread to become the new normal, however, all will benefit from economies of scale.

“If more states order power companies to limit their use of fossil fuels, for example, the incentive will grow nationwide for firms to develop cheaper alternatives, leaving California consumers less exposed to spikes in electricity rates.”

Journalistic irresponsibility on an epic (fail) scale

So California’s leaders enacted a law that puts our industries and jobs at sharp risk unless other states copy us, and other states aren’t following us. And the most powerful newspaper in California refuses to acknowledge this basic fact until 78 months after the law was enacted?

Given the economic pain this state has gone through, this isn’t just a minor journalistic faux pas. This is epic in its irresponsibilty.

If reverse Pulitzers were given for coverage of a major issue, the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of AB 32 wouldn’t just be the winner. It would be recalled as the 1927 New York Yankees or the 1996 Chicago Bulls of horrible journalism.

Or, as the kids say, epic fail.

By Chris Reed

Trying to preserve and help create manufacturing jobs should be a primary goal of a party that bills itself as being about social justice. Manufacturing jobs often offer middle-class wages, but don’t require college degrees — providing a great way up the ladder for disadvantaged minorities. Shouldn’t this be catnip for Democrats? One would think.

So what is absolutely crucial to manufacturers? The cost of energy. This is why one of the academics who peer-reviewed an air board study on the economic effects of AB 32 gave it low marks for downplaying what would happen as California forced a broad shift to cleaner-but-costlier energy. Here’s what UCLA economist Matthew Kahn had to say:

“According to page 39 of the Scoping Plan, there are 1.5 million people employed in manufacturing in California. Thus, a key issue is how this sector will be affected by AB 32 regulation. The results reported in Table II-8 claim that manufacturing employment will grow by .4% because of AB 32 regulation. Given that electricity prices are expected to rise by 14%, this is a surprising finding. The micro-econometrics literature has concluded that increased energy prices retards manufacturing employment growth. The manufacturing results reported here contradict the findings from the micro-econometric literature on firm locational and employment choice (see Carlton 1983 and Davis and Haltiwanger 2001 …). In his detailed study of the Fabricated Plastic Products Industry (SIC 3079), Communications Transmitting Equipment (SIC 3662), and Electronic Components (SIC 3679), Carlton demonstrates the importance of metropolitan area electricity prices as a factor in attracting job growth. Cities with high electricity prices lose jobs in each of these industries …”

So we are now ramping up AB 32, and surprise, surprise, guess what? Manufacturers are leaving California even as manufacturing rebounds nationally:

“Manufacturing is staging a big comeback in the United States, according to a new U.S. Commerce Department report, but a new state employment report indicates that manufacturing is continuing its years-long slide in California.

“The federal report says that between the start of 2010 and the end of 2012, manufacturing accounted for 500,000 new jobs. …

“Meanwhile, a monthly report on employment in California, also released Friday, shows that government and manufacturing are among the categories to show declines over the past year.

“Manufacturing, once a major component of the California economy, now accounts for less than 9 percent of the state’s non-agricultural payrolls. It shed 11,400 jobs between December 2011 and last month.”

That is from the Sacramento Bee.

Two questions:

1) Now will the California media finally stop buying the goofy spin that higher energy prices are somehow good for the state’s economy?

2) Do you think it bothers greens in West L.A./Brentwood/Malibu and Bay Area one bit that AB 32 is destroying a path to prosperity for the less-educated and their families?

The answer to the first is probably not. Only The New York Times, strangely enough, has reported that AB 32 is risky. The L.A. Times, Sac Bee, Mercury-News, etc.? They are in the green tank.

The answer to the second is of course not. Manufacturing, you see, creates “dirty” jobs. So greens say good riddance. The poor? Let them eat cake.