Californians just found out this week the new gas tax initiated by the California Air Resources Board, is 10 cents per gallon of gas. However, it will grow.January 1, California began including transportation fuels – gasoline, diesel and propane – in the nation’s first carbon emission cap-and-trading scheme. However, no other state or country in the world has attempted to regulate the sale of gasoline and diesel under a cap-and-trade program, and byAB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act,which requires cutting greenhouse gas emissions in California to 1990 levels by year 2020.

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On Monday, Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford, and more than 20 other Republican lawmakers announced the introduction of theAffordable Gas for California Families Act,legislation to exempt transportation fuels and natural gas from the California Air Resource Board’scap-and-trade program.

“We struck a nerve!” Patterson told me. Patterson said he was surprised at the media response, and how many in the media did not know the gas tax is starting Jan. 1 – next month.

Patterson is working on issues like… Read More

California, the state obsessed with being first at everything, is aiming to add another first to its record books — Not content to be the first state in the country to tax the air we breathe, California will be the first in the nation to impose a cap and trade tax on transportation fuels.

In response, Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, and Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford, and more than 20 other Republican lawmakers, announced Monday, the introduction of theAffordable Gas for California Families Act,legislation to exempt transportation fuels and natural gas from the California Air Resource Board’scap-and-trade program.

The move afoot by the radical left to strip Americans of their cars under the guise of environmentalism, knows no bounds.

With the second highest gas taxes in the country, and a flailing cap and trade program, whose only trading partner is Quebec,California is already paying the price.

While the rest of the country is currently enjoying lower gas prices, Californians will be faced with a hefty new… Read More

Someone recently asked me what Cap and Trade and Carbon Trading is. The simple answer is the State of California is taxing the air we breathe. However, it is also one of the biggest taxing schemes perpetrated on Americans, Californians, and businesses.

The beginning

Carbon trading is actually emissions trading by businesses forced into these “agreements.”

When California’sGlobal Warming Solutions Act,AB 32, was passed in 2006, it was sold to the public as a necessary step to reduce dangerous carbon emissions. California politicians gloated over being the first state to enact such an aggressive policy.

The state’s unemployment rate was very low at the time at only4.8 percent. It… Read More

Wednesday the California Air Resources Board announced the first joint cap-and-trade carbon credits auctionbetween California and Québechas been postponed due to “technical difficulties.” Some carbon followers say the new auction will be scheduled in the next three working days.

Under AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, the 2006 legislation signed into law was to supposedly lower the state’s carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. CARB recently added to the carbon reduction plan the goal of 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, because California already reached 1992 levels just with technological advances in autos, as… Read More

The Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Justice just ‘settled’ an historic lawsuit with Hyundai, Kia, et.al. over alleged Clean Air Act violations, based on the carmakers’ sale of vehicles that are anticipated to emit more greenhouse gas emissions than certified to the EPA.

The EPA and DOJ are hitting the automakers with collective penalties valued at around $300 million for Clean Air Act violations including $100-million in civil penalties, the largest such fines in EPA history.

The $100 million… Read More

Part ll in a two part series. Part l can be found here.

Last week I wrote about a recent Senate Budget Committee cap and trade hearing and the billions of dollars expected to be generated by the Air Resource Board’s cap and trade auctions.

One of the issued I posed was the original purpose of passage of AB 32, the legislation under which the cap and trade hearings are conducted.AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, established the goal of reducing… Read More

With billions of dollars expected to be generated by the California Air Resource Board’s cap and trade auctions, many in the Legislature are excited with ideas of how to spend the money.

But rather than scheming on foolhardy, unsustainable spending plans, if the real goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, experts involved in the process say the Legislature should give the money back to the businesses it taxed, with the proviso the money is spent helping the companies lower their emissions.

What is AB 32 and Cap and Trade?

Last week, the Senate held a very… Read More