AB 32: Climate Change Fight Begins

26 July 2010 |permalink | email article

A multimillion dollar effort to save AB32, California’s groundbreaking climate change law, has caught fire. The San Francisco Chronicle reportedly exclusively that major Democratic donor Tom Steyer will put in $5 million and hook up with Ronald Reagan’s former Secretary of State, George Schultz, to fight the November ballot measure which would suspend the landmark law in a bipartisan coalition.

Steyer’s financial muscle has helped presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and is now supporting Democrat Jerry Brown for governor. Schultz, who backed John McCain for president in 2008, is co-chair of GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman’s campaign.

Schultz’s opposition puts both Whitman who has suggested that AB32 “is a dangerous job killer,” and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, who’s urged the law be scrapped entirely, in very awkward positions. Neither has any political experience while touting their pro-business expertise. ““They’re wrong,” said Schultz. 

AB 32, signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006, requires California’s greenhouse gas emissions to be slashed to 1990 levels by 2020. The governor told The Chronicle that the issue trumps partisan politics in a crucial election year. “This is the people’s issue…it shouldn’t be a political issue.”

Proposition 23, backed largely by two Texas oil companies, would suspend AB until the state’s unemployment rate drops to at least 5.5 percent for a year; that’s happened just three times in the last four decades. Business groups argue that it will kill more than a million jobs.

 

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