Is denial and failing to address global warming costing us money?

Yes! The U.S. is the country most dependent on oil in the world (at least when looking at per capita numbers) and now the U.S. is paying the price. Just because of the lack of will to change old habits. California is doing the right thing both to tackle climate change and their future economy.

Jim Z: Lol, it's not just extreme socialist countries that addresses climate change and emissions.

Since the 70's, the dependence on oil for heating and electricity production in Sweden has gone down by 90%

Over the period 1990-2006 Swedish carbon dioxide emissions have been reduced by 9% while at the same time GNP increased by 44%. This makes us less vulnerable when the price for oil rises.

The coming ice age is real, oops I meant to call it global warming, no crap I meant to say climate change. Either way you do not get it because you are a big conservative dummy. Just because our scientists have been caught in massive frauds and cover-ups does not mean that global warming does not make it colder. Everything is a sign of global warming! Besides that we have a consensus among scientists. Either way you would not understand that you have to spend trillions on a bureaucracy to save money. I guess you are not as smart as we are.

Why the hell would we follow California's example?? California already has some of the most ludicrous environmental laws on the books. If I'm not mistaken, the state senate out there recently wanted to allow government to control the thermostats of private citizen's homes amongst a boatload of other whacked out laws. Pardon me, but I think I speak for most people who value their rights when I say it's none of California's damn business how much energy I use in my own home. You should read up on what happens when there's energy rationing and strict limitations. Things don't work out well for anyone. It's bad enough that California has one of the highest living standards in the country where would-be middle class people most other places in the country are barely scraping by, but now you think that creating more government to solve your problems is going to actually work? Get real. All government does is create problems, cost jobs, and suck money out of an economy that would otherwise create the jobs on it's own without intervention. It's classic economics. But hell, if you think that reducing your emissions won't send companies running for the hills, then have at it. That just means all California's jobs will be dispersed elsewhere thereby providing more evidence to the already overwhelming pile that government loving socialists such as yourself don't help economies, you destroy them.

It's not just unlikely, but thoroughly impossible to return to 1990 levels of CO2 output (why would anyone want to anyhow?) by 2020 or any time after that. The world has grown too much and 1990 is now almost two decades in the past. Socialists and alarmists have to learn to live in the present.

No not really. California doesn't represent the rest of the world. If you take the time to consider Bonded Events, you would understand most of the true dilemmas were due to occur anyway. The same applies to their economic status. They have a long history of both failure and success. The influx of migrants, and a condensed population doesn't really support eco friendly virtues. 'But they do try.'

Dana,

If you are suggesting that all of the Teddy Bears and Sunshine that you describe can come without any increases in taxes, costs of products and/or services...... then by all means..... I will support California as a 'test-state' for the models.

I just hope that things work out better than they did with the ethanol 'thing'.

Sick ideas like this have cost the state millions of good paying jobs over the last almost 50 years since Pat Brown started the de industrialization program. High paying Industrial and manufacturing jobs have been replaced with low paying service economy jobs while the good jobs have gone to the rest of the world. I am glad I can retire in a couple of years because the company i work for now is being gradually forced to reconsider moving out of state or go out of business.

The notion of "green jobs" is a myth - it's just the latest version of the "broken window fallacy."

The government "creates jobs" with new tax dollars - that in the private sector would have simply created other jobs, actually producing something that consumers demanded, rather than something that the State thought the consumers "should" demand.

If you personally value the "green jobs" over the private sector jobs that are lost, that's your opinion - and you clearly favor imposing it on the rest of us. Whether that's right or wrong of you to do that is a matter of political debate.

Whether as a matter of economics that is in fact what you're doing - replacing private sector jobs with public sector jobs, for a net job creation of zero, is not up for debate. Economics is a science too.

Virtually everything about global warming, particularly spending good money on "scientists" to study it is a waste of time and energy.

I don't know about anyone else, but my part of the country has this continuous influx of Californians because of that states continuing descent into "looney bin" territory. If there's one state to avoid imitating, it's California.

Spring was late here, summer didn't start until July and Autumn seems to be arriving about a month and a half early here, so I'd really like to see some warming.

Socialists, using global warming as an excuse to push government solutions, are going to cost us money. I wish the socialist would move to a socialist country like North Korea and find out how nice the life is there before they try to force it on the rest of us. Even though it fails wherever it is tried, it seems that socialism will not die. It just metastasizes in a new form, the latest version is environmentalism. I notice that socialists can never be honest in their true agenda. What is scary is that are fools out there that think having government control the energy sector will provide jobs. It won't. It will cost jobs and it will cost us far more for every watt of energy. I know leftists want us to do with less, but they just refuse to be honest. Global warming is a minor threat to our way of life. Socialism is a major threat.

Edit: I know that Sweden has abandoned much of its previous socialism since it was severely hurting its economy. I like ideas that save money, make things more efficient, etc. I just don't think that having Barack control my thermostat or what I can drive is going to save the world or save me money. It will cost me money and other things as well.