Pro: 'Green' strategy can generate greenbacks galore for Calif. economy

Copyright 2006 The Salt Lake Tribune
All Rights Reserved
The Salt Lake Tribune

September 14, 2006 Thursday

SECTION: OPINION; Columnists

LENGTH: 729 words

HEADLINE: Pro: 'Green' strategy can generate greenbacks galore for Calif. economy

BYLINE: By Wayne Madsen

BODY:


(The writer is addressing the question, "Will California's new limits on greenhouse gas emissions help the state's economy and reduce global warming?")

WASHINGTON - A "green economy" represents the best of two disparate worlds - safeguarding the environment while creating a new industrial base resulting in economic growth and prosperity.

And the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, passed by Democratic and Republican legislators and signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, takes a huge step in bringing California into line with the emission caps and greenhouse gas reductions mandated by the Kyoto Protocol.

Despite claims to the contrary, the nation's first sweeping carbon curbs law - far from hurting California's huge economy - will provide a boost to its burgeoning "green business" sector. Other states should consider following suit.

California, as the world's 12th-largest greenhouse gas polluter, simply bypassed the foot-dragging Bush administration in adopting its own environmental policy in line with reigning international standards.

The state is set to cap its carbon-dioxide emissions by 2020 at 1990 levels - an eyebrow-raising 25 percent reduction. Mandatory reductions come into effect in 2012. Under the new law, the California Air Resources Board will monitor greenhouse gas emissions and set policies for carbon credit trading.

Although there is an opt-out clause in the California law if an economic crisis is declared, the new emissions mandates provide an impetus for eco-friendly, profit-making businesses.

Creating what likely will be the world's largest "green industrial" base will spur the construction of power plants that do not burn environmentally-destructive coal and oil.

Clean-burning natural gas utilities will be among the first to get a much-needed economic boost from the new law. Under the act, natural gas-powered plants that emit less pollution can sell "carbon credits" or "carbon permits" to more pollution-intensive coal and oil-burning plants that will be more expensive to clean up.

Already, the Chicago Climate Exchange, the first greenhouse credit trading market in North America, is seeing business pick up in the trading of credits by companies that are voluntarily participating in the program. California's law is spurring other states to adopt similar measures and will pump even more cash into Chicago's exchange and perhaps create other eco-commodity trading centers in the United States.

California provides numerous incentives for businesses to go green and, so far, the program has been successful. Many environmentally conscious customers opt to do business with green-certified companies. Venture capitalists, seeing the potential for huge profits in the growth of less-polluting industries, championed the global warming bill's passage.

The new law also will provide a kick-start for the renewable energy industry, including solar, wind and geothermal power generation. There will be incentives to develop cleaner fuels, such as those containing ethanol and other cleaner-burning ingredients.

A University of California at Berkeley study concluded the California law will pump as much as $74 billion into the state's economy and create 89,000 jobs by 2020 - creating, in effect, a boom that rivals the state's original Gold Rush.

And California's new green industries may find lucrative overseas markets for eco-friendly technologies with China and India looming as potential cash-rich customers - a development that should dramatically slow America' skyrocketing trade-deficit.

California's mammoth power-generating industry also is required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The technology it develops to meet that objective holds promise of becoming a lucrative cash crop as well.

However, new ideas on eco-friendly energy initiatives are not popular with many obstinate oil industry and chamber of commerce leaders - individuals, who, under the Bush-Cheney administration, all too often have become pampered fat cats.

The tide is finally turning against the corporate naysayers who've repeatedly sabotage the drive to produce a cleaner, healthier planet.

California - always a global trendsetter - now has found one trend that transcends surfboards and Barbie Dolls and just may eventually save Mother Earth.

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Wayne Madsen is a contributing writer for the liberal Online Journal http://www.onlinejournal.com.

LOAD-DATE: September 15, 2006