Why the November, 2010 election in California is so important....

Today's post: Wednesday, 8-11-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both. Kuwaiti scientists recently predicted peak oil in 2014 – just 4 years from now.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Today’s post:

Since California passed AB32 & Governor Swarzenegger signed it showing that California was serious about cutting back on CO2 emissions and rapidly and massively increasing renewable and sustainable energy, literally millions of dollars of venture capital have gone into companies that will help do the job. Most of those have been in California and have added new jobs here that would otherwise not have existed.

Even more important, if AB32 says in place and is implemented two very desirable things will happen. These positive trends will continue and thousands of new jobs will be added. Secondly, when California pioneers a new trend that works, often the federal government and/or many other states will emulate California’s success.

That’s extremely important -- and I think may be critical for preventing economic collapse in the United States. Peak oil is predicted for 2014 & at today’s prices, production has already flat-lined. This trend towards very expensive and less available oil will keep growing rapidly now. Economic growth is expanding in the near term and even if it stalls, population growth will not stall and will keep increasing demand.

In addition, it turns out that more expensive oil comes from places like deep water oil drilling such as the well in the Gulf of Mexico that caused such severe problems. And, it comes or may come from oil from shale. It turns out that extracting oil from shale is one of the worst polluting ideas mankind has ever conceived. It manages to add strip mining to risks of pollution spills comparable to the recent oil spills in the Gulf and in Michigan. People who live in the areas affected are beginning to fight this, understandably. Their efforts are likely to decrease the amount of oil from these sources and make them cost more. This will NOT be a positive for the economy if we haven’t cut back on oil use and begun to bring clean energy alternatives online and on a large scale.

AB32 is not perfect. But given how important its goals are and that it has begun to make a real dent in this problem and will start to bring solutions online when little else of comparable size has yet been done, I think it is critical to put it into place and give it a fair trial. The good news is that the initial results have been quite good. In part because of the promise of AB32, solar and other clean technology companies have been the one sector in California that has consistently added jobs during the recession.

When you add in the facts that had the credit markets not collapsed to slow that job growth, it would have been two or three times as high and the credit markets are now in better shape, it seems clear to me that the LAST thing someone who cares about adding jobs in California would want to do is to stop AB32!

So, how does the upcoming November election in California relate to that?

Some people DO want to stop AB32 including some who SAY they want more jobs here in California.

If they succeed, none of this positive progress will happen or it will become an anemic, tiny part of what it would and should have been.

The buggy whip manufacturers went out of business when the market changed from buggies to cars by thinking of themselves ONLY in those narrow terms instead of as makers of useful components for vehicles. In almost the same way exactly, today’s oil companies think of themselves as oil and gas companies and have not really done the diversification they would and should have done into renewable energy had they actually realized they were in the energy business. The management at Exxon even heard this from most of their shareholders from the Rockefeller family and declined to do much. (They have added to their position in Natural Gas which I think will help them in the short run as that natural gas is used to make some of the electricity for electric cars. But I think of their stock as a long term sell unless their management improves.)

The problem is that in California, that management style has caused two Texas oil companies to fund Proposition 23, which is worded as if it is a postponement of AB32 but also includes a restart clause that is quite likely never going to happen. In essence, this means that they are funding a disinformation campaign to turn off AB32 entirely.

Please do job creation in California a favor and vote NO on Proposition 23!

Next, we have two races one for our next Governor and one for one of our two US Senators.

For Governor, we have Jerry Brown who, as our attorney general for California, thinks that increasing the solar part of renewable energy is important enough he just sued the Federal Agency that shut down an innovative funding plan to add the cost of building solar on your home to your property taxes.

Meg Whitman who is running against him said that even if Proposition 23 was defeated by the voters, one of the first things she will do if elected will be to suspend AB32. She can rationalize all she wants about this not slowing job growth in California. To me, it means she is so poorly informed she is not qualified to be our Governor.

I think that choice is quite clear, because even if you aren’t super sold on Jerry Brown in other ways, we will have more jobs in California and a more stable and secure economy if Jerry Brown is elected.

For US Senator, the choice is even clearer.

Barbara Boxer, the incumbent, has seniority and has been one of the strongest and most effective supporters in the country for clean and renewable energy.

Meanwhile her opponent, Carly Simon, is getting funded by oil and coal executives who not only are trying to avoid the needed changes in energy policy due to peak oil, they don’t believe that the data collected by scientists showing global warming is real.*

Here again, if you want more jobs in California and the United States and you want our future economy to be safe and secure, Barbara Boxer is dramatically more likely to deliver that.

*In my view, they are showing themselves to be close-minded, very poorly informed, and incompetent managers in so doing. I’d very strongly prefer we have a US Senator who they are not influencing with their money.

The data DO show global warming has been happening; and some of effects we are seeing are scary such as the current heat wave and fires in Moscow and the ones that happened not that long ago in Greece and near Oklahoma City in the United States. The percentage of CO2 in the earth’s air has been documented as going up and up and up.

I respect someone who says that there may be other reasons for these effects or that the CO2 burning fossil fuels has put into the air may not be the main cause. One book writer even has argued that global warming driven by fossil fuel burning may not wind up being that harmful. You often don’t find out the whole truth in science unless contrarians make you look for data that might fit these kinds of ideas. Even though none of the current data seem to support those views, some might exist. And, if we don’t look for that data, we may miss something real.

But these folks are certifiably incompetent managers. They may be not quite sane due to their lack of connection to reality.

Jack London once said that the contest is not always won by the strong nor will the victory in a race go to the swift, but that’s the best way to bet. The data show so far that it’s about 100 to one that global warming is real, has extremely dangerous effects, and is so far mostly triggered by burning fossil fuels.

If these executives said that they were holding onto some of the old ways in case the one chance in a hundred comes up, that’s fine. If they say that in their local community, the jobs doing it the old way are important and those workers and their local economy need some kind of protection, that’s reasonable and even responsible management.

But the ones that simply aren’t able to look at the data, understand they are likely real and make the best bets they can to move to a future they can be a part of if they are real are, in my view not competent managers and their connection to reality is suspect.

Since peak oil and global warming do look real and that dangerous and threatening to our economy and total amount of jobs, I strongly urge all voters in California to vote NO on Proposition 32 and to vote for Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer.