‘Dumb and Dumber’ is Real in Sacramento

How much fuel do you use on a weekly basis? How much is used simply to get to work? If you were told you must cut your fuel use by half—that’s right 50% -- how would that affect you? If the price of fuel was taxed, so the total was around $10 per gallon – while the rest of the nation paid about $2.50 per gallon – how you feel about that? If you were rationed only enough gas to make it to work three days a week, what would you do? If you were limited by mileage police to drive only an arbitrary number of miles-per-week, what would you do?

If you are okay with any of the above, then you will love SB350 now circulating in the California Assembly. The author, State Senate President pro-Tem, Kevin De Leon and Governor Jerry Brown love the idea. So do Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, and Barbara Boxer. The Pope loves it too.

Following Jerry Brown’s meeting with the Pope, he got the religion of climate change and is proselytizing it throughout government. De Leon converted, but then again he seems to have never seen a goofy idea he wasn’t for.

Now we are stuck with two State Senate bills, SB32 and SB350 intended to make a big dent in the 2 percent of the overall greenhouse gasses generated by California. This is akin to a little boy peeing in the ocean being told to hold it because it might raise the level and flood Topeka, Kansas.

Is the climate changing? Well, duh, it has since the beginning of time, and will continue to change long after the climate zealots are long gone. The Sahara desert was once a lush, verdant, area with species of creatures now long extinct. Was California air the cause? Was any human activity the cause of this phenomenon? I seriously doubt it.

Is the greenhouse effect real? Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, making Californians or even all Americans unilaterally bear the burden and painfully sacrificing to reduce a miniscule amount of greenhouse gas is not merely unjust, it is unwarranted.

SB32 will give the California Air Resources Board unlimited authority to require Californians to do whatever the CARB feels is necessary to meet the arbitrary quotas for greenhouse gas reduction. SB350 will require Californians to reduce use of vehicle fuel by a flat 50%. While the mechanism to enforce that reduction is nowhere spelled out in SB350, SB32 gives the CARB full authority to do whatever it wants to make that happen. You can bet it will result in draconian measures for all of us.

Of course, we could all simply go out and buy electric vehicles – at some $100,000+ a pop. Or we could all carpool, but only on days when the driver can buy gas.

There are good ideas and there are bad ones. On a scale of one to ten (ten being euphoric, and one being horrible) SB32 and SB 350 is a minus-ten. I am convinced that the intent of the Democrats in Sacramento is to reduce the population of this state to zero – zero jobs and zero people. These bills will go a long way toward accomplishing that goal.