California Gov. Jerry Brown issued an Executive Order Wednesday for a new target for greenhouse gas emissions cuts. Brown said it was critical to address what he called “an ever-growing threat” posed by global warming to California’s economy and well-being. Brown’s order goes even further than Pres. Obama’s radical proposals, but aligns with the European Union and United Nations proposals. Jerry Brown has jumped-the-shark on climate change (Origin of this phrase comes from a Happy Days episode where the Fonz jumped a shark on waterskis. Thus was labeled the lowest point of the show).
Fonzi jumps the shark
Senate Republican Minority Leader Bob Huff correctly replied to Brown’s latest edict:
“The state already has the nation’s most stringent goals. Before moving the goal post, we should be careful about the impact of increased energy costs. These higher costs will hurt the low income and working poor the hardest and will create an even greater divide between the haves and have nots. At what point does being on the leading edge of climate change and environmental reform impact our ability to create or sustain jobs?”
“Those who stand for nothing fall for anything,” Alexander Hamilton famously said. And so it goes with Gov. Jerry Brown and his latest edict on climate change.
Brown has been referred to in statewide media as “ex-Gov. Moonbeam, the Jesuit novice and student of Zen, the man who defined 1970s California, dated a rock star, ran three times for president, worked with Mother Teresa in India, chaired the state Democratic Party, then became mayor of Oakland.” Jerry Brown has reinvented himself more times than a reptilian shapeshifter.
Today, Brown the lover-of-all-things-enviro issued another, stricter greenhouse gas reduction target for the state of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. Because apparently achieving 1990 levels of greenhouse gas levels by 2020 was just too easy. Been there, done that, and did it before the mandated deadline of 2020.
California’s latest moveable green target reflects the latest order set by the European Union, clearly in anticipation of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in December, “aimed at reaching a legally-binding, international climate agreement.”
“With this order, California sets a very high bar for itself and other states and nations, but it’s one that must be reached – for this generation and generations to come,” Brown said in a statement.
I’ve been predicting since 2013 that Brown will attempt another run for the Presidency; it certainly appears he is trying to sound Presidential.
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. ~ Matthew 7:15
Brown Sounding ‘Presidential?’
“Today, our planet faces new challenges, but none pose a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” President Barack Obama said on April 21, Earth Day. He’s used this line many times before, including last January in his State of the Union Speech.
Beware of politicians bearing climate change lies. Jerry Brown, the President, and even Secretary of State John Kerry continue to issue dire warnings of rapidly warming global temperatures and ever-more-severe storms caused by climate change as reasons for urgent action. However, global-temperature increases have been negligible. Worsening-storms, flood, tornado, and hurricane scares have been widely discredited. But Jerry Brown and the Democratic Party in California continue to claim climate change is the most important issue in our state, ignoring the economy, rising poverty levels, the dismal state education system, rising crime, the drought and lack of water storage, lousy highways, impending energy crisis, depleted manufacturing and industry, high unemployment… never mind. The list is long.
This is exactly how to kill the economy of a state, and especially one with an abundance of natural resources: oil and gas, ocean, rivers, lakes and streams, seafood, timber, minerals, plenty of solar, and a beautiful climate in which to grow just about anything. What should be a recipe for producing food, manufacturing, and products for this country, as well as the rest of the world, has become a symbolic ball and chain around the neck of Jerry Brown. You can’t handle the truth! ~ Colonal Nathan R. Jessup, A Few Good Men.
Brown’s “high bar” on environmental policy is bunk, and he knows it. It’s a means to an end; just another revenue producing measure, allowing Brown and the state to tax and fee Californians – especially California businesses. Brown’s warnings on climate change go hand-in-hand with his ludicrous, inadequate drought policy: blame the state’s residents, and then penalize them financially for it. Yet it’s California state government, and specifically Jerry brown, who are responsible for killing important water storage and delivery projects – in his first terms as governor 1975-1983, and again more recently.
If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand. ~Milton Friedman
It was Jerry Brown as California’s Attorney General, who in 2006 sued the county of San Bernardino for its plan authorizing home builders to develop affordable homes for the hoards of people fleeing expensive Los Angeles. And he sent a warning shot to Riverside County and San Diego, warning them to adhere to the state’s greenhouse gas emission reduction policy. Only under AB 32, the California Air Resources Board hadn’t even drafted its plan yet. Who knew what the plan even was?
Brown declared Sharia Law as Attorney General, abusively using lawsuits and the power of his office against any infrastructure project or development he didn’t like.
Anything Goes in State Policy
“Brown’s order requires the state to incorporate climate change impacts into California’s five-year infrastructure plan, to assess how climate change will affect California infrastructure and industry, and to factor climate change into state agencies’ planning and investment decisions,” several newspapers reported. This means anything goes in state policy. How do voters hold Brown accountable with overarching policy statements like this?
The campaign waged against agriculture and industry in the quest for zero greenhouse gas emissions is choking the life out of California. But perhaps that is the end goal. Adding on to the rigid, business killing regulations imposed under AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, will further limit our ability to produce fuel, energy and food products that Californians and all of America rely on.
“Anybody who tells you that carbon dioxide contributes to air pollution either doesn’t know what they are talking about, or worse, they are deliberately trying to deceive you,” COLAB’s Andy Caldwell explained recently. “Carbon dioxide is what each one of us exhales after every breath we take. C02 was never considered a pollutant at all until the onset of climate change theories, and only in that regard is it considered a negative.”
The frequently repeated lie that America is the world’s number #2 polluter behind China comes from the mouths of people seeking to benefit and/or profit from these policies.
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. ~Plato