Climategate.com’s home state of California is in serious trouble. After years of overspending and environmental do-gooding, we’re broke, we’re unemployed, and we’re still mostly out of our minds. But we are seeing the stark economic conditions bringing some sanity back to the great political middle of the Golden State. And we think it could be enough of an awakening to actually garner enough support to pass a ballot initiative that would repeal our own version of a cap-and-trade carbon tax.

Our RINO governator Arnold Schwarzenegger passed the original law in 2006. when our 5% unemployment rate helped the majority say yes to just about anything with the word green in it. The law requires that starting in 2012 we must begin to bring down carbon emission to 1990 levels by 2020.

Well, now one out of eight of us are out of work (and that’s just the official number), and we face tens of billions of dollars in deficits in the coming years. State, county and city workers actually could lose their “lifetime” jobs. The mood has changed, and people are paying attention to fiscal matters.

Enter Republican Assemblyman Dan Logue. He is collecting signatures for a ballot initiative that he has very cleverly named, “The Global Warming Solutions Act.” Considering many of the not-so-intelligent greenies we have here who walk into the ballot booth completely unprepared, and simply vote on a proposition title, it should garner a few extra million votes by those who actually oppose it. Well done, Dan.

The initiative itself is very simple: it would suspend the cap-and-trade law Ahnuld and Company passed, until the unemployment rate in California falls below 5.5%. He is aiming for this November’s ballot and we think he’ll make it on rather easily.

What’s at stake? Here’s how the Wall Street Journal puts it:

A 2009 study by economists at the California State University at Sacramento and commissioned by the California Small Business Roundtable found that the implementation costs “could easily exceed $100 billion” and that the program would raise the cost of living by $3,857 per household each year by 2020. So much for the free green lunch.

The law all but encourages outsourcing to Nevada, Texas, China and India. Even the liberal Sacramento Bee, which supports the law, says that policy makers should be “candid about the real costs of the transition it is contemplating. . . . Industries that are energy-intensive will move elsewhere.”

Meanwhile, a new study commissioned by the Governor’s Office of Small Business Advocacy estimates that the direct cost of current California regulation is $175 billion, or nearly twice the size of the state general fund budget and about $134,000 per small business each year. The Golden State already has the second most business-unfriendly regulatory climate in the nation, after New Jersey and before the cap-and-trade law.

The battle will be hard-fought. Silicon Valley is filled with companies that are aligned ideologically, financially and politically with the green movement. As Al Gore sinks in credibility, he can still count on his Silicon Valley friends to stay with him and his schemes until the bitter end. And there is also the very powerful California Teachers Association, which spends huge sums on campaigns to thwart any initiative that saves money or makes common sense. But this year, with the state threatening to cut government jobs, maybe even these voting blocks could begin to crumble as people think harder about the consequences of their votes.

If you’d like to help by gathering signatures, donating money, or just telling him to keep it up, please go to his Dan Logue’s website.

Mr. Logue, if you are reading this, if we can help in any way, just let us know, we’re right down the coast from you.

Source: Wall Street Journal