With a new slate of climate bills awaiting action by Gov. Newsom, it’s raising questions about the short- and long-term impact of the measures and the degree to which California and its residents are able to afford them.
It could be the new policies are under consideration to mitigate the failures of earlier ones, Kerry Jackson, a fellow with the Center for California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute (PRI), told the Northern California Record by email.
“The climate package sent to Newsom’s desk is political grandstanding by Sacramento lawmakers meant to distract Californians by blaming man's greenhouse gas emissions on problems their policies have caused,” Jackson said. “For instance, water has become scarce not because of man-caused global warming but because policymakers have long chosen to do little to nothing to increase water storage in the state. Fixating on climate bills lets them dodge the blame.”
Jackson noted that the full fiscal impact has yet to be calculated.
“It's safe to say that, like every other government project, the costs of climate legislation will be much higher than the initial estimates, especially in cases in which lawmakers promise there will be savings,” Jackson said. “Newsom’s package codifies into law the state’s goal to achieve carbon neutrality by no later than 2045, a law that is unrealistic and will become costly for Californians. The array of energy regulations, taxes, and subsidies that will be needed for the state to be living off all-renewables by 2045 is going to inflate electricity prices, which two years ago were already 56 percent higher in California than the U.S. average.”
Jackson noted there's nothing that California can do to lower the global temperature.
“It's the same with the entire country,” Jackson said. “If somehow the whole country permanently stopped producing CO2 tomorrow, the impact on the climate would be indiscernible.”
As noted in recent publications from the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, “Because some degree of climate change already is occurring and more alterations are inevitable, these reports focus on the response to resulting impacts—referred to as climate adaptation—rather than efforts to lessen the magnitude of climate change through reducing greenhouse gas emissions—referred to as climate mitigation.”