Absurdity on the left coast

Lest you think California's madness is restricted to the antics of Hollywood celebrities who are sentenced to community service time at the county morgue while they pose nude for magazine spreads, or to out-of-work television actors who think of themselves as "winners," or even the abundance of sensationalized trials of celebrity doctors or former football heros, there is an even zanier plan about to be introduced in the union's most left-leaning state.

Cap-and-trade – the system that was dreamed up by the United Nations and included in the Kyoto Accords of 1997, the scheme that was delivered to our United States Senate, which voted NO by simply ignoring it – is about to be introduced into one of America's most floundering economies: the Golden State, California.

Signed into law by Gov.r Arnold "Schwartzen-housekeeper" in 2006 and called "The California Global Warming Solutions Act," the cap-and-trade scheme has been cleared by the courts, and the first phase of the ill-conceived program goes into effect on New Year's Day.

Never mind that the state is broke. Sure, California's economy can be reasonably called the eighth-largest on planet Earth. But the state is in the bad habit of bleeding red ink. The annual state budget deficit is so massive, not even the state's bookkeepers can, with any certainty, estimate its size. Some say the annual budget deficit is $16 billion a year, while others put it in the low 20s. Either way, California – like the United States – has been running in the red for years ... only California can't print money.

The real-estate market tanked half-a-decade ago, and the paper value of every home in the state has been reduced by 20 to 30 percent. California's unemployment rate sits at about 12 percent, but some blue-collar labor unions – construction workers in particular – report the jobless rate at an estimated 40 percent.

All things considered, the California Air Resources Board – unbridled by the environmentally correct state Legislature and encouraged by its green governor, Jerry Brown – has failed to reign in any of the new pollution standards that are about to be imposed, economy-wide, in the first phase of cap-and-trade that will start Jan. 1.

One such rule demands that in eight years, by the year 2020, California's oil refineries must reduce the sale of so-called "dirty oil" in the state to address the problem of air pollution. Will the oil companies simply stop manufacturing the dirty oil? Hardly; there is money to be made. The oil firms will simply ship their products across state lines to be sold elsewhere in the country. That will stop air pollution for sure. Meanwhile, to produce fuel for the state's mobile population, those same California oil companies will import "clean oil" from outside the state for use under the new cap-and-trade standards.

Diesel-truck owners have already been forced to comply with these stringent new air standards. Under new state guidelines, trucks that are older than 2005 models must be replaced, and newer-model trucks require extensive – and expensive – retrofitting. And every truck licensed in California will be required to filter exhaust emissions through expensive new filtering systems. The new costs of truck emission compliance regulations – like the cost of cleaner fuels – will be passed along to consumers, perhaps significantly delaying any hope of a New Year economic recovery in the state.

California passed its first balanced budget in many years last summer, but the descriptive term "smoke and mirrors" was used to describe it. Revenues to balance the budget were to be supplied by a luxury tax on wealthy residents who purchased larger homes, bought new limos and added new yachts to their toy boxes. But with the bad economy, the big buck boom failed to materialize, and this week Gov. Brown was forced to introduce end-of-year funding cuts for schools, state-run universities, help for the needy and other state programs, totaling $1 billion.

But even with the new budget cuts and unemployment that's growing while the real-estate market continued to tank, Mary Nichols, the director of the California Air Resources Board, returned from the United Nations' climate meetings in Durban, South Africa, determined to continue the state's slash-and-burn cap-and-trade program. When a San Francisco judge, Ernest Goldsmith, finally removed the last hurdle to implementation, cap-and-trade was good to go. And go it will on Jan. 1. Pardon the pun, but cap-and-trade gets the "green flag" to begin.

Yes, California is the land of Solyndra and other alternative-energy boondoggles. Yes, this is the place where thousands of acres of pristine desert land (and the protected tortoises that roam among the tumbleweeds) will soon be home to endless fields of solar panels and wind mills, millions of them, as the state harkens back to the days of 2006 when global warming was thought to be a natural disaster waiting to happen and the state Legislature ordered CARB (California's Arbitrary Rules of Bankruptcy) to institute cap-and-trade.

Oh sure, the state is still dependent on oil to power the turbines that generate its energy and to delivery water to most of the desert land that Los Angeles and Southern California occupies. And yes, most of those power plants have been fueled by coal. But now they must convert to natural gas to turn the turbines, and anyone can imagine who will pay the costs of the switchover.

"Heedless of the wind and weather," the California Air Resources Board moves on with the massive cap-and-trade scheme, and America smiles with slight amusement. "California is at it again." The state that made famous the courtroom drama line, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit" has now created a new one: "We're sure glad we passed medical marijuana in our state. No one could take this madness – unless they were high."

Warren Duffy is a radio talk-show host and president of CFACTSoCal.org.