Passing Prop. 23 In California Would Send 'Terrible And False' Message To Rest Of Nation, Says EPA Official

First Posted: 09/01/10 05:32 PM ET Updated: 05/25/11 06:30 PM ET

Prop 23

As right-wing think tanks continue to claim that California's clean energy legislation is hampering the state's economy, EPA official Jared Blumenfeld has come forward to dispel that myth and to protect the environmental regulatory programs the state currently his in place.

At a meeting of the California Air Pollution Control Officers Association on Monday, Blumenfeld urged attendees to vote against Proposition 23, a measure that would roll back climate change legislation in California until the state's unemployment rate stays at or below 5.5 percent for a year. Blumenfeld said the measure would send a "terrible and false" message to the rest of the country by linking climate change legislation with a poor economy.

"The most damaging thing that could be done nationally would be to somehow co-join these two things, that climate change in California was shown to have a negative impact on the economy," he said. "What we need to show, and many people have, is that taking action early on climate change is a good thing for the economy."

Fueling the message wars over Proposition 23, Thomas Tanton, a research fellow at the Texas oil-funded Pacific Research Institute, authored a report earlier this week claiming that AB 32 would cost California an entire year's worth of economic growth.

"Local governments, already struggling to make ends meet and provide critical services, will see these new costs as another reason to restrict vital services like police and fire protection, schools and water supply," the report says.

Tanton, who previously worked for ExxonMobil's lobbying arm in Houston, Texas, also argued on the "Redneck USA" website in 2009 that offshore drilling is environmentally friendly in that it curbs oil pollution from "natural seepage."

"New technology has greatly reduced the risk of oil spills," he wrote. "Reducing oil reservoir pressure through extraction of petroleum will decrease the amount of oil pollution from natural seepage."

Steve Maviglio of the No on Prop 23 campaign pointed out in a memo to the California press that Tanton's "independent" report on Proposition 23 entirely fails to mention the energy efficiency gains from implementing AB 32 and directly contradicts a number of other independent studies on the same issue.

"Junk economics," Maviglio wrote. "Flawed assumptions. Miscalculations. It's just another round of deception from the Texas oil companies behind Prop 23."

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As right-wing think tanks continue to claim that California's clean energy legislation is hampering the state's economy, EPA official Jared Blumenfeld has come forward to dispel that myth and to prote...
As right-wing think tanks continue to claim that California's clean energy legislation is hampering the state's economy, EPA official Jared Blumenfeld has come forward to dispel that myth and to prote...
 
 
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02:21 PM on 10/20/2010
Environmental Hypocrites like James Cameron want to defeat Prop 23 but here is how he lives http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKZ4RolQxec
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Malcolm Hensley
Last of the Reagan Republicans
01:03 AM on 10/20/2010
I supported AB 32 when it was first proposed. I went out and bought a natural gas Honda! But then I saw the effects after L.A.D.W.P. implemented changes to meet the lofty goals set by AB 32 our electric rates at the manufacturing plant I manage went up 60% in 3 years! I took a 12.5% reduction in pay and reduced our work force 33% to 300 employees to keep the plant open! If energy is not a primary cost component in your manufacturing maybe you will be able to keep your job otherwise it will go to China where they will use dirty coal! AB32 does nothing for global warming it makes it worse because here we use lots of natural gas there they use lots of dirty coal! It's that simple! So vote no on Prop 23 and know that all you did was cost your neighbor his job! Yes, be smug about it! Thinking you did the right thing. That's the new California Way! Poverty sure reduces electric demand!
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Malcolm Hensley
Last of the Reagan Republicans
12:06 PM on 10/20/2010
AB 32 will do what George Bush was unable to do for his friends in big oil, raise the price for a gallon of gasoline to $5.00/gal and keep it there!
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Richard2
06:56 PM on 09/29/2010
Taxpayers in California are the persons who will be impacted by the failure to pass Prop. 23, not EPA officials. It is Californians who will pay significantly higher utility bills than residents of adjacent states.

If the EPA wants to support legislation that shuts off cheap sources of electricity and forces the use of untried and expense sources of electricity, then it should support national legislation so that taxpayers in every state face the same inflated expenses that Californians will soon face. In that way, at least Californians will not be placed at a disadvantage compared to their neighbors in other states, which is the situation we face right now in California.
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Richard2
10:19 AM on 09/12/2010
Ill wind for Denmark’s green energy revolution
By Andrew Gilligan, The Sunday Telegraph September 11, 2010

To green campaigners, it is wind farm heaven, generating a claimed fifth of its power from wind and praised by British ministers as the model to follow. But amid a growing public backlash, Denmark, the world’s most wind farm-intensive country, is turning against the turbines.

(Side Note: The Danes must pay very high monthly utility rates for electricity, due to the large subsidies paid to the wind farm operators, to make them financially viable.)

Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/technology/wind+Denmark+green+energy+revolution/3512279/story.html#ixzz0zKBDRtd1
02:03 PM on 09/14/2010
Re: Richard2's record:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Richard2?action=comments&display=all&sort=oldest
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Richard2?action=comments&display=all&sort=newest

Who but a PAID SHILL would post 1,570+ comments exclusively on just one topic, since Day 1?

Richard2 doesn't get paid for honesty.

His comment trail shows that Richard2 posts are nearly exclusively on denying anthropogenic climate change and its myriad impacts, casting false and misleading aspersions, sowing doubt, attacking climate science, science groups, and individual scientists.

Richard2 has all the credibility and moral authority of a recorded phone message from a tobacco marketeer. Why tobacco?

Because Richard2's backers lifted their strategy and tactics directly from big tobacco's old campaign to deny its links to cancer and heart disease. They lost that war, but it took 30 years. Do we still have 30 years?

From an old Brown and Williamson Tobacco internal memo -
"Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the body of fact that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy."

The big tobacco/climate science denial link is well-documented in:

www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming /exxon_report.pdf

But whether you're addicted to tobacco or some fact-free ideology, nobody likes PAID SHILLs.
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04:01 AM on 09/03/2010
Big Oil's disinformation campaign, and their proposition designed to make unemployment a worse problem in my State, are very unpopular with myself, thank you.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Malcolm Hensley
Last of the Reagan Republicans
04:50 PM on 10/20/2010
AB32 will do what George W. Bush could not do and that is to give his buddies in big oil Chevron, Texaco, Shell, and BP permanent $5.00+/gal gas! Noticed how much money Big Oil has spent for this Prop $0.00! Little oil hasn't even kept up with the German investors.
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SilentSolidarity
So what do you need? Besides a miracle.
12:54 AM on 09/03/2010
Passing Prop 23 would ultimately embarrass the US as the superpower that gets nothing done. California is the foot in the door, the only reason we haven't lost face after 8 years of Republicans blocking legislation to save the world.
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Robert Masters
To take my property is to take my means to live
12:15 PM on 09/04/2010
Don't worry. The world was already saved in November of 2008.

"I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth."
Barak Obama
08:43 PM on 09/02/2010
One expects these junk tanks to throw the kitchen sink to gut environment laws.They will push back had against any law that does not visibly harm the environment. If loosening controls can only be seen in charts and thermometers, then these people will keep plugging away. Its only when American gets it's own pea-souper or sets a few rivers on fire that will give these people pause.

Its upto ordinary folks to not forget why these laws are there in the 1st place, and not allow their repeal or gutting.
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BrunswickGaDem
04:46 PM on 09/02/2010
Do any of these suicidal idiots remember what the air in LA looked like before environmental regs went into place.
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10:11 PM on 09/02/2010
I remember. The worst smog I ever witnessed in L.A. was back in the early 1950s. Thank goodness government acted to clean up the air.
11:45 AM on 09/03/2010
The republican party just plain hates California. I am pretty sure they don't give a rip about anyone except the power elite.Cigarettes are still legal in spite of everyone knowing that it is the only product on the market which if used correctly will kill you.Pollution? yeah like they care how nasty the air is to breathe, they aren't going to be living in L.A. especially not in the areas they intend to destroy.
Sell you on no regulations, sell you products that are meant to kill you slowly and then sell you medical care that doesn't cure but only prolongs the pain of dying. Profits for them and pain and sorrow for you. I am sure they find it entertaining.
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04:18 PM on 09/02/2010
More Inconvenience for the hysterical environmental lobby.................

“Physicist Dr. Denis Rancourt, a former professor and environmental science researcher at the University of Ottawa, has officially bailed out of the man-made global warming movement.
Dr. Rancourt declares that the entire man-made global warming movement is nothing more than a “corrupt social phenomenon.” “It is as much psychological and social phenomenon as anything else,” Rancourt, who has published peer-reviewed research, explained in a June 8, 2010 essay. (Rancourt's email: claude.cde@gmail.com)

Watch Rancourt video here. http://allpainnogain.cfact.org/default.asp
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lbsaltzman
Permaculture and Sustainability
06:04 PM on 09/02/2010
For Denis Rancourt to say that global warming is a psychological and social phenomenon is to ignore decades of peer reviewed literature and fall back on a sensationalistic charge. If you review his record Dr. Rancourt is not an expert in climate change.
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09:19 PM on 09/02/2010
Of course it is.............
t's very inconvenient for the folks that used to buy into the AGW BS are questioning the WARMING............
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09:23 PM on 09/02/2010
p.s. it might be nice if the AGW folks may be actually answer any Q that the folks have asked.......................
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DocSkull
My questions aren't rhetorical.
08:20 AM on 09/03/2010
"Dr. Rancourt declares..."

All he does is declare, he doesn't provide any evidence to back his assertions.
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janie@atthelake
Keep Austin Weird
03:11 PM on 09/02/2010
This article mirrors the mind of Texas Governor Rick Perry. He calls it an "EPA takeover". The word takeover hits the minds of Republican Texans hard.
One smell of the air over Houston, Deerpark, or the Nederland Beaumont area begs different.

But, then again he also said that the" BP oil "spill" was an act of God."
01:57 PM on 09/02/2010
I remember the days when breathing the air in the San Fernando Valley was like smoking a pack of tobacco per day. Republicans want to keep that in place?
mothergrace
If they knock you down, bite 'em on the ankle.
01:19 PM on 09/02/2010
I'm getting a mixed message here. I think some posters believe a "Yes" vote protects our clean air but this is incorrect. This is one of those backwards propositions put on the ballot to stop our efforts.

A NO vote keeps the Global Warming Act of 2006 alive and intact.
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Red45
We can turn the tide
04:00 PM on 09/02/2010
You're absolutely right. This needed to be said. F&F
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HUFFPOST BLOGGER
Jan McGirk
12:14 PM on 09/03/2010
This potential confusion was highlighted in an editorial published by the San Jose Mercury
http://tiny.cc/o6u78

Thomas Elias says "The anti-23 campaign, which will likely spend almost as much as the yes side, has one big advantage in this contest: In order to vote no on AB 32, voters will need to vote yes on 23. That kind of confusion usually leads to defeat for ballot propositions.If it does this time, California will once again assert itself as the world leader in the search for both clean air and renewable energy."
11:58 AM on 09/02/2010
I say that CA make the clean air regs even tighter.
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TommyObama
Abuse of power comes as no surprise.
12:10 PM on 09/02/2010
The rest of the USA, and even the world, owes alot to California for its auto emission standards push. The air in PHX is clearer today than in the 1980s, when we had half the population. Thanks Cali, again.
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yeaobama
jesus was a liberal
10:52 AM on 09/02/2010
THE OIL INDUSTRY SEES THE WRITING ON THE WALL.
THEY ARE LOSING THE ARGUMENTS BECAUSE CITIZENS CAN SEE THE TRUTH.
NO COMPETITION AND GREED ARE NOT GOING TO BE TOLERATED BYCITIZENS TOO MUCH LONGER.
THE GREEN MOVEMENT IS MOVING STEADILY AHEAD.
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janie@atthelake
Keep Austin Weird
03:12 PM on 09/02/2010
I agree, but some of the politicians line their pockets with oil money.
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Red45
We can turn the tide
04:00 PM on 09/02/2010
Just about all of them, actually.
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John Mainstream
I'm a Clinton Democrat that is now an independent.
10:43 AM on 09/02/2010
EPA should focus on the immediate need to reduce smog. Even the IPCC says that man-made global warming will at worst increase sea level an additional 10 inches over the natural baseline over the next 90 years. CO2 is not an immediate problem, and will easily be solved through renewable energy sources and conservation. Smog is an immediate problem.