"Green Jobs" in California, and other Hollywood Fantasies

Sounds like we dodged a green bullet here in Canada in the last election. Fortunately the shooter was no marksman.

Stephen Moore's Wall Street Journal op-ed on California's variation of that social-engineering boondoggle, unaffectionately known up here as "the Green Shift" --

The environmental plan was built on the notion that imposing some $23 billion of new taxes and fees on households (through higher electricity bills) and employers will cost the economy nothing, while also reducing greenhouse gases. Almost no one believes that anymore except for the five members of the California Air Resources Board (CARB). This is the state's air-quality regulator, which voted unanimously in December to stick with the cap-and-trade system despite the recession. CARB justified its go-ahead by issuing what almost all experts agree is a rigged study on the economic impact of the cap-and-trade system. The study concludes that the plan "will not only significantly reduce California's greenhouse gas emissions, but will also have a net positive effect on California's economic growth through 2020."

This finding elicited a chorus of hallelujahs from environmental groups. The state finally discovered a do-good policy that pays for itself. Californians can still scurry around in their cars, heat up their Jacuzzis, and help save the planet. But there was a problem. The CARB had commissioned five economists from around the country to critique this study. They panned it.

Read the whole piece here.

So it turns out that jobs and taxes actually do have an inverse relationship in real-life economics. I'm shocked ... shocked I tell you. And imagine -- even environmentalists will lie about both economics and science, just to advance their political agenda. I'm double shocked ... shocked, shocked I tell you.