Republican lawmakers in California are circulating a ballot initiative backed by business interests that would suspend California’s landmark law to cut greenhouse gas emissions, a signature policy of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s tenure.
The secretary of state’s office this week cleared the sponsors’ petition, giving them until July 5 to collect the 433,971 signatures needed to qualify it for the November ballot.
If passed by voters, the measure would suspend the 2006 law signed by Schwarzenegger until the state unemployment rate falls to 5.5 percent and stays there for a year.
The law, called the Global Warming Solutions Act, but commonly referred to as AB32, mandates that California cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
Republicans, some small businesses and major industries have argued since the law’s enactment that jobs could be lost, companies might leave the state and energy prices will skyrocket.
Republican State Assemblyman Dan Logue said on Thursday it would be unfair to ask businesses to comply with new regulations in such a poor economy. California’s unemployment rate is 12.4 percent.
Beginning in 2012, manufacturers, cement plants, oil refineries, utilities and other polluters will be asked to start lowering their emissions or pay for the carbon they emit.
Logue said Californians’ electricity rates and gasoline bills would go up when the expenses of oil companies and utilities rise to comply with the law. He said businesses have committed US$600,000 to the initiative, although he declined to identify them.
Adam Mendelsohn, a spokesman for Schwarzenegger’s campaign team, said the governor would fight the initiative if it qualifies.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not