Posted by
BLOGASSAULT on Saturday, March 14, 2009 11:50:04 AM
Property damage caused by more devastating wildfires and sea level rise — the water damage is alone estimated $100 billion in property loss by the end of the century — could push the costs far higher.
The projected financial toll comes from a compilation of 40 studies commissioned by the governor's Climate Action Team. The final reports, which will be released at the end of March, are intended to provide a comprehensive snapshot of global warming's potential costs to property owners, businesses and state government.
"The numbers indicate that we have a lot at stake," said Michael Hanemann, a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. "Californians need to pay serious attention to control our
greenhouse gas emissions, and they need to start thinking about adaptation."
Now, can you imagine how much the state of California will spend over the next 40 years to try to combat something that will more than likely not happen? A $100 Billion maybe? I bet it ends up being more than that.
Of course that is not what they are saying...
"It will cost significantly less to combat climate change than it will to maintain a business-as-usual approach," Adams said.
(
Here is a list of all the California climate programs currently in operation.)
But here is a better one. This
economic analysis of the new law AB32, or the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 shows just how much it is expected to cost to implement the program. After fishing through the documents, you read that it will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $25 to $30 billion dollars in less than 5 years to get it started. Of course they say that they will, through energy savings and higher taxes save around $37.5 billion. But the average consumer will, of course, soak up most of the costs with more expensive appliances, a state run cap and trade program that will raise the cost of electricity, and the implementation of emission caps on business, the costs of which will be passed on to the customers. Interestingly, the study conviently left out the price of implementation of the proposed high speed trains and solar panel initiative that is part of the plan to meet the standards the law requires by 2020.
Much of the savings they say they are going to recieve are bordering on fantasy. The amount of money needed to start the program, coming from a state that is nearly baknrupt, is laughable. Add another 50 to 75% more money for the parts not in the program (argueably some of the most expensive parts) and you have $40 billion to $55 billion in expenses to initiate the program.
Well, that is around half of the $100 Billion climate change will cost the state of California. Business owners and everyday tax payers will make up the difference with higher prices in just about everything they purchase, from fuel to energy to food, or just about everything they purchase since all things are tied together. But by the states calculations, it will save the state billions in climate change damage, even though some say it may be to late to change the climate now. But at the other end of the spectrum, California may spend all this money for no reason, being that a
global cooling trend is now a possibility.
Of course, the real issue here is whether or not the money needs to be spent at all. Climate change is an unproven theory, that facts of which keep changing as climate scientists keep making new discoveries. The idea that you would want to spend bankrupting amounts of money on something that has not been fully examined or understood is, for lack of a better word, insane.
Moving away from fossil fuels to more renwable sources of energy is admirable and maybe even necessary, but to stress your local economy to the point that citizens will leave because of the price of it all, on top of the incomplete science of climate change, and you have a recipe for a financial disaster. Well, actually California is already
flirting with bankruptcy because of runaway programs and uncontrollable spending.
So where will the money come from to fund AB32? California citizens will need to open their wallets just a little more for a program with results that will never be known if they actually worked or not.