California Assemblywoman Introduces Bill to Promote ‘Science-based Decisions’ for Climate Response

“Assemblywoman Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) introduced legislation that would ensure the state’s actions and investment on climate change adaption is science-based,” reads a press statement from Friedman. “The measure, Assembly Bill 2371, creates an advisory team of distinguished scientists that would make recommendations on California’s climate adaption plans and investments.”

“California is a world leader on climate change,” said Friedman. “It is critical that our decisions are rooted in science and that we invest wisely in transformative projects that will protect our citizens and our ecosystems from the future impacts of climate change.”

“There’s a time and place for all good ideas.  This one’s time, if it was ever, was 2006, when AB32 was first passed…California could have used some real science back then,” said Tom Tanton, Director of Science and Technology for the Energy and Environment Legal Institute. “But today, the ship for real science has long ago sailed.  Global warming, errr climate change, has become so politicized there’s no room for actual science or dissenting view.”

Assemblywoman Friedman’s bill

Here’s what Friedman says her bill is for:

California’s changing climate increases the risk of catastrophic wildfire, drought, floods, extreme weather, biodiversity loss, and sea level rise.  These changes are a major threat to the health and safety of all Californians, and they will have potentially devastating consequences for California’s agriculture, water supply, unique ecosystems, and economy.  The economic cost to California for these losses by 2050 is estimated at over $100 billion – each year.

This year, the Governor has proposed a $4.75 billion climate adaptation bond measure that would appear on the ballot in November.  Investments from this bond would be a down payment on the California’s future and help the state prepare for and adapt to the impacts of a changing climate. 

Should the voters approve a bond, the science team created by AB 2371 would guide the spending of these funds, ensuring that climate investments are cost-effective and make major gains toward protecting the state from current and future climate damages.

Unfortunately, the political elites in charge of California are exempted from hypocrisy. In 2016, I explained: “The inconsistencies of California Gov. Jerry Brown’s climate change policies, together with his immigration policies, are formidable and deceptive—one policy is driving taxpayers and businesses out of the state, and the other is driving droves of unskilled, unemployed aliens into the state.”

Brown claimed in his final term as governor that California had an overpopulation problem, and the ongoing drought the state was experiencing at the time was proof that the explosion of population in California has reached the limit of what the states’ resources can provide:

“We are altering this planet with this incredible power of science, technology and economic advance,” Brown told the publisher of the Los Angeles Times. “If California is going to have 50 million people, they’re not going to live the same way the native people lived, much less the way people do today…. You have to find a more elegant way of relating to material things. You have to use them with greater sensitivity and sophistication.”

Yet Jerry Brown and now Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s Democrats continue to put out a welcome mat and a long list of taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal aliens and refugees. According to former Gov. Brown, inviting more people to live in California should only make it harder to meet the strict lower carbon emission goals of California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, AB 32.

Most Californians want politicians to stop promoting these ineffective and costly climate change bills which do nothing to lower or increase the earth’s temperature, or prevent wildfire, drought, floods, extreme weather, biodiversity loss, and sea level rise.

Friedman’s Assembly Bill 2371 merely creates a bureaucratic panel to disperse to climate-friendlies the anticipated $4.75 billion climate adaptation bond measure funding. AB 32 already authorized the creation of the Climate Action Team, an Environmental Justice Advisory Committee, and an Economic and Technology Advancement Advisory Committee.

And if that is not enough committee work, there have been numerous other related bills and policies in created to augment AB 32 including:

• Assembly Bill 1493PDF Download (Pavley, Chapter 200, Statutes of 2002) – GHG Standards for Passenger Vehicles
• Senate Bill 375PDF Download (Steinberg, Chapter 728, Statutes of 2008) – Sustainable Communities
• Senate Bill X1-2PDF Download (Simitian, Chapter 1, Statutes of 2011) – Renewables Portfolio Standard
• Assembly Bill 341 (Chesbro, Chapter 476, Statutes of 2011) – Commercial Recycling
• Senate Bill 535 (De Le�n, Chapter 830, Statutes of 2012) – Disadvantaged Communities
• Governor’s Executive Order S-3-05 – 2050 GHG Reduction Goal
• Governor’s Executive Order B-16-12 – Goal for Plug-In Vehicles
• Governor’s Executive Order B-18-12 – Energy Efficiency of State-Owned Buildings

“This bill will just lead inevitably to worsening cronyism,” Tanton said. “A panel of ‘scientists’ charged with doling out billions of taxpayer funds?  Maybe they’ll make a movie starring Timothy Bottoms and John Houseman. Better yet, why not pool California’s taxpayer money with national efforts at DOE/EPA to increase leverage.  That’d improve ‘bang for the buck’ but limit the ability to fund pet projects and politicians’ friends. Or even better still, return the money to the taxpayers, and encourage researchers to actually develop real, rather than political, solutions unfettered by ‘government grants.’ Private researchers and technology development is doing twice as good as state mandates and subsidies in reducing greenhouse gasses and government funding is perhaps the least efficient and least effective type of R&D.  Let’s spend our money where it might do some good.”

For a more complete list of California’s climate change related legislation, and climate change related Executive Orders, the California Air Resources Board recommends visiting these web pages: http://www.climatechange.ca.gov/state/legislation.html and http://www.climatechange.ca.gov/state/executive_orders.html, But both web pages have been taken down.