Bypassing the legislature, Schwarzenegger last month signed an executive order mandating drastic cuts in so-called greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. "The debate is over," Schwarzenegger wrote July 3 in a
But the Governator is thinking with his biceps, and clearly taking cues from his über-environmentalist Cabinet Secretary Terry Tamminen who seems to be living the title of Schwarzenegger’s film, True Lies.
We don’t even know for sure that any warming is man-made, rather than the earth’s natural cycle that brought on both the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. Were it man-made, even trying to slow it would be devastatingly expensive, as Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg and others have cogently argued.
But Schwarzenegger and Tamminen know better. "Many people have falsely assumed that you have to choose between protecting the environment and protecting the economy," he wrote in the British paper.
Yet signers of the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 pact to roll ba
Schwarzenegger says he would reduce gas emissions with increased energy production from windmills, solar panels, geothermal power and biomass conversion. But all are far more expensive than the fossil fuels they replace. According to calculations by Competitive Enterprise Institute adjunct scholar Joel Schwartz, based on federal Energy Information Administration data,
That’s more than a meal for four in
Further, says University of
How did Schwarzenegger become Conan the Greenarian, determined to wield and ultimately sacrifice his state to slay a beast that’s either mythical or invincible?
Think Tamminen. When Schwarzenegger appointed him California EPA secretary in 2003, environmentalists rejoiced. He “may hold the most powerful environmental job in the
Tamminen is greener than the Jolly Green Giant. Until the
He’s on the board of directors for the Wishtoyo Foundation, which he approvingly says is “making the environment a cultural and not a scientific issue.” Lovely.
Schwarzenegger never promised a “pro-science” administration, but did say he was pro-business. Tamminen’s appointments therefore would seem awfully curious except that he admitted to an interviewer that much can be attributed to being a longtime friend of Schwarzenegger’s environmentalist wife Maria Shriver, who is also a cousin of outspoken environmentalist and long-time Tamminen colleague Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Blood is truly thi
But some analysts see Tamminen as just the first Kudzu plant that will rapidly spread and eventually choke off
How many new laws will these Kudzu characters ram through that will send taxes soaring, force businesses to fail or flee, and leave employees with notices stating: “You’ve been terminated!”