Toni & Arnold

The Tony (Blair) and Arnold (Schwartzenegger) show gets NY Times editorial and LA Times approval. The boys tell us that they will increase regulations beyond the federal government. They say they will build on past California leadership in automobile and powerplant emissions. In fact, other states such as Washington and its largest county are crafting environmental regulations where they once ran their own foreign policies.

But who's studying history here? Nobody, absolutely nobody!! The Wall Street Journal ran a front page article titled: "How California Failed in Efforts To Curb Its Addiction to Oil" on Wednesday, August 2nd. The WSJ says that: "For a quarter century, California has pursued petroleum-free transportation more doggedly than any other place in the U.S. (and probably the world). Even with today's "$75 per barrel oil, and increasing concern about the role fossil fuels are playing in global warming, 99% of its cars and trucks still run on petroleum products."

Truth is that the president's voluntary emission reduction programs lead the world in results. Seems the tighter the regulations, the more costly the regulations, the less effective the results. Some now believe that forcing the unwilling to change their behavior only generates additional hot air. The WSJ agrees that the markets responded opposite of the way the hard core regulators believed.

The auto industry and the petroleum companies forced California to set some benchmarks of pollution improvements and standards for clean cars. Then the markets produced fossil fuel running cars and trucks that operate within the guidelines. Truth is that since California began serious pollution enforcement in 1980, its numbers of cars have more than doubled; its driving mileage is up by over 125% while fuel use in barrels is up only over 50%. The best is yet to come.

Today California has over 26 million gasoline or diesel only cars and trucks. It has about 250,000 ethanol flex-fuel cars and trucks; and about 88,000 hybrids. Yet in the past 15 years, emissions of oxides of sulfur have been reduced by almost 93%; Oxides of nitrogen reduced by over 43%; and carbon monoxide is reduced by 67%. Only carbon dioxide emissions, what some believe to be pollution and others believe to be earth's most critical plant food, are up about 17%.

California's regulatory fun-fest has cost more than $50 billion without reducing fossil fuel consumption by even a single pint. Yet the fossil fuel industry and the automobile industry will continue to roll out more fuel efficient and much more environmentally sound cars without cost to taxpayers. So how do other states and communities respond to this dismal failure? They too want to tax the people to build a huge bureaucracy that has the power of the government to demand social changes that are not based on any scientifically supported research.

Here in Western Washington we too see that the big government tax addicted are struggling to get ahead of the spending wave. In fact, Seattle, King County, and Washington, the big spender tri-fecta, are fighting to create more oppressive and costly regulations than the other. Stay tuned for the results from the jack-booted "Soviet of Washington."

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