Prop 23: California's Dirty Air Act

By 1Sky blogger Nick Santos. See his bio at the end of this post.-- Luis

As a Californian, I thought the broad debate on whether to act on climate change solutions was over in 2006 when the state legislature passed AB 32, California's Global Warming Solutions Act. In 2008, the legislature even passed follow-up legislation that directed specific emissions cuts to come from changes in how we use urban land.

Yet, now I see the most negative portions of the national climate debate back in California. Using our state's powerful and damaging initiative process, opponents of climate change solutions have placed an initiative on the ballet, Prop 23, to repeal AB 32 until unemployment drops below 5.5% for consecutive quarters. California is a state whose monthly unemployment rate in good times, let alone a down economy, tends to ride around 5.5%, so this initiative amounts to nothing more than an effort to kill the bill entirely.

Three things about this initiative get me worked up and angry. First, I see a mirror of the Dirty Air Act efforts in the Senate this last year. Progress has been made on climate change in California and through Clean Air Act requirements nationally, but there are also have major attempts to destroy that progress and the opportunities it presents.

The second, and probably most important thing in my mind, is that this proposition is the pet project of a few wealthy out-of-state donors who don't live in California -- they just stand to make oil money off of it. We're talking here about Valero (upwards of $3.5 million), Tesoro (upwards of $.5 million), a small, Missouri-based foundation ($498,000), Flint Hills Resources (an oil refiner) of Wichita, KS ($1 million), and the recently infamous Koch brothers ($1 million). These companies have given millions of dollars to advance Prop 23 in order to keep their profits flowing at the expense of Californians. On a deep level, that's disgusting to me.

My final major problem with this proposition is that, just like in the debate surrounding EPA's authority under the Clean Air Act, it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what carbon reduction does for us and the jobs it can create. As the New York Times writes "The Kochs and their allies are disastrously wrong about the science, which shows that man-made emissions are largely responsible for global warming, and wrong about the economics" (emphasis mine). Maybe that's why California businesses support keeping AB 32 intact. The clean energy jobs sector in California grew 10 times faster than the statewide average since 2005, with the clean technology sector receiving $2.1 billion in investment capital last year.

As a Californian, I want this law. Our state needs it. We have a 12.5% unemployment rate and can't afford to kill one of our most successful sectors through misleading ballot initiatives funded by out of state oil companies. I stand with a broad coalition of groups representing health professionals, economists, environmentalists, and in-state businesses. AB 32 is good for us and Proposition 23 is absolutely toxic. Please support the No on 23 campaign's efforts!

Nick Santos is a former 1Sky policy fellow and now works with The Environmental Consumer in California. The author's opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the 1Sky campaign.