The West Coast Democrat governors—Washington’s Jay Inslee, Oregon’s John Kitzhaber and California’s Jerry Brown—are an interesting bunch. All exhibit political inclinations toward extreme green agendas, particularly a fuel mandate. And, all were willing to sign a carbon reduction pact without the approval of their respective Legislatures in 2013.
In fact, the similarities between the three have made them largely indistinguishable. So, we decided to put that to the test using excerpts of a recent newspaper editorial concerning one of the three. See if you can tell which state/governor the editorial is referring to. From the editorial,
“Our editorials, like those of other news organizations, reflect a set of values with which regular readers are surely familiar. However, ideology has nothing to do with the scarcity of climate-change editorials. We seldom discuss climate change, rather, because we focus almost exclusively on state and local matters. Weighing the costs and benefits of climate-change policy is best done at the federal and international levels.”
“We do sometimes write about state-level climate-change regulation, and almost never favorably. Why not? Because, again, weighing the costs and benefits of climate change policy is best handled at the federal and international levels. ??? represents ??? percent of the population of the United States, which itself represents only 4.4 percent of the global population. It requires either profound myopia or incredible arrogance to pretend that any policy adopted by ??? lawmakers will have a meaningful effect on the earth’s temperature. That’s why supporters so often justify state-level policies as beneficial exercises in leadership.”
“Don’t get us wrong. Leadership is a good thing … except when it’s not. The enduring problem with the sort of “leadership” that urges state-level action on global warming is that the little – or nothing – that is accomplished for the environment tends to come at a high price for ???. The low-carbon fuel standard mentioned above would force ??? to use or pay for more “clean” road fuels like ethanol, even as it did nothing meaningful to help the environment. Nonetheless, imposing it is one of Gov. ??? top priorities.”
“We certainly don’t fault readers for worrying about global warming. From a state and local policy standpoint, though, what ??? should fear isn’t inaction, but the adoption of unproductive measures that either cost them money or reduce employment opportunities.”
And the punch line, that applies to all of our Left Coast governors: “Environmental symbolism too often trumps real jobs and real income.”
You can read the entire editorial and find out whom it is referring to here.
Washington state should establish a true hydrogen program where we give incentives for industry to develop and deploy hydrogen fueled power plants across the state. Design and sell hydrogen powered vehicles, trucks and trains. We worry about climate change but continue to waste funding developing solar and wind when we know it will never meet the demands for power in the future. Science pushes ahead with fusion, but people are so afraid of nuclear power fusion will not be available for some time yet. But the three amigos will continue the democratic policy of throwing away as much funding to their friends as they can get away with funding more research and more development till we decide to stop them