California voters back weakened climate law
-The opinions are the author’s own-
California voters on Tuesday rejected a measure to suspend the state’s innovative climate change law. But the state’s emission trading scheme has been substantially diluted to buy off opposition from energy-intensive industries and allay fears about job losses.
If it is true that “as California goes, so goes the nation”, the past 10 days have confirmed the lack of political support for tough emissions curbs.
The survival of California’s cap-and-trade scheme has kept alive hopes for enacting a patchwork of state and regional schemes in the absence of a federal program. Supporters hope establishing even a diluted system will lay the groundwork for a program that can be toughened as the economy improves.
But the state government’s last-minute decision to give away most emissions allowances rather than auction them suggests voters and politicians are not ready to embrace the steep increase in energy prices needed to decarbonize the economy.
“NO” ON 23 Proposition 23 would have suspended the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) until the state unemployment rate fell below 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters. Proposition 23 would have effectively killed the law because unemployment is currently over 12 percent and has only rarely dipped below 5.5 percent in the last three decades.
Voters rejected it by a wide margin following a heavily funded campaign pitting clean technology companies, environmentalists and moderate lawmakers against parts of the oil refining sector. With 92 percent of precincts reporting, “No” votes led “Yes” votes by 4.2 million to 2.6 million (61 percent to 39 percent), according to the Los Angeles Times.
U.S., China and eating soup with a fork
-The opinions expressed are the author’s own-
Are economists the world over using an outdated tool to measure economic progress?
The question, long debated, is worth pondering again at a time when two economic giants, the United States and China, are sparring over trade, currency exchange rates and their roles in the global economy.
In the run-up to U.S. mid-term elections on November 2, politicians from both parties, for different reasons, blamed trade with China for American job losses. China responded with irritation and hit back by accusing the U.S. of “out of control” printing of dollars tantamount to an attack on China with imported inflation.
Measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the United States tops the list of countries. China overtook Japan in August to become number two. Depending on whose forecasts you believe, China will overtake the United States in 2020, 2035 or 2040 and therefore turn the 21st century into the long-predicted Chinese Century. It’s becoming conventional wisdom that the United States will play a reduced role on the world stage.
Crystal ball gazers might do well to remember that long-range forecasts have often been wrong in the past. At the turn of the 20th century, eminent strategists predicted that Argentina would be a world power within 20 years. In the late 1980s, Japan was seen as the next economic leader, on the strength of supposedly unstoppable progress. Forecasters extrapolated from past GDP growth rates.
They are widely used to compare standards of living in one country with those in another but critics say GDP is too narrow to be a realistic indicator. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel-prize winning American economist, has complained that world leaders make a fetish out of it and suffer from GDP-obsession.
Illegal immigration is not a problem for China [and there is much from Afghanistan in the west , Myanmar in the south ,Mongolia in the north ,to North Korea in the east [via the US and EU] Why ? Because it can absorb them into it’s growing economy .
Illegal immigration is a problem for the US because the economy is growing very slowly cannot absorb the influx of people following their dreams [or should that be illusions] .
Cheap Labour is a good thing unless they are cheapening my labour is the cry across the the “developed” [read privileged ] world !
Get real we all must learn to share and coexist !
Quickly Please !
DaBear is wrong as usual, its the republicans and the Chamber of Commerce that heavily supports off shoring our good paying middle class jobs, the republicans killed any legislation that punishes companies for doing so.For some bizarre reason they think the minimum wage workers that remain can sustain our government and pay off the national debt. Talk about a bunch of loons, and then they attempt to blame their evil ways on the democrats. Shame on you DaBear, get some education or shut up…