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.
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