A recent REW post by SolarFred highlights the latest legislative efforts by dirty energy lobbyists to stop the growth of solar, wind and clean energy industries that Americans favor by more than 90 percent.
As SolarFred writes, Texas-based oil company Valero led a legislative initiative onto California’s fall ballot that links the state’s dirty air to its 12 percent unemployment rate.
Thought its Proposition 23, Valero wants to stop voter-sanctioned efforts to cut the state’s global warming pollution until the unemployment rate falls to 5.5 percent for at least one full year.
Set aside how stupid this, given that cleantech is a job creator. Valero and other dirty energy companies are fretting about clean tech industries and their steady growth, which they have enjoyed since 2006, when Californians voted for lower emission standards in a bill known as AB 32.
Valero is using the “T” word when it talks about AB 32, instead of more accurately calling it an job creator, or, as Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt describes it, "an incubator of innovation.”
In November, it is Californians who will decide the fate of AB 32 and the future of jobs in their state. Do they want more innovative green jobs? Or the type of jobs that Don Blankenship and Tony Hayward create – jobs that are short-lived, dirty and dangerous, and inevitably cost American taxpayers in their wallets and their health?
We have counter proposal: How about an initiative that says California won't allow oil companies operating within its borders to get one more penny in state or federal welfare until the state runs big budget surpluses for over a year?
After all, Valero, with billions in annual profits, doesn’t need government welfare any more than other highly profitable, dirty energy companies do. These companies are some of the biggest welfare bums on the planet, and when California is trying to close record state deficits, and the federal deficit needs to be lowered, why should we give Valero our money?