Our View: State's fever on global warming may be cooling

The state's costly, grandiose scheme to combat global warming is finding resistance from many of the same folks who approved it two years ago. Meanwhile, legislative opposition also is growing to the plan to create a global warming state think tank financed by a utility users' surcharge.

It appears that paying for saving mankind from a projected 1- or 2-degree increase in temperature over the next century already is proving too costly in today's limited dollars.

"Powerful state senators from both parties are challenging Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed spending spree on selected programs to address global warming," the San Diego Union-Tribune recently reported.

That news came on the heels of an opinion by the state Legislature's attorneys that the Public Utilities Commission overstepped its authority by voting to force electricity and natural-gas customers to pay to create a $600-million global warming think tank.

Confronted with a current, undeniable $17-billion budget deficit, apparently even legislative Democrats are finding the price tag for long-term solutions to global warming's alleged threat too big a price to pay, at least for now. We're glad there are representatives in Sacramento who can distinguish between actual, existing problems and computer-generated future projections.

We may be about to discover how committed legislators really are to the hyped concern over climate change, considering that the globe hasn't warmed for about a decade and is projected to cool even more over the next decade, and no global warming-caused calamities yet have occurred outside of contrived computer models. When weighing the concrete crisis of too many government programs operating on too little tax revenue, we're glad to see some legislators prefer to address current, real challenges.

Democrats, the Union-Tribune reported, are concerned that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget borrows too much from other environmental programs to cover costs associated with combating global warming.

Republicans also appear to be girding for a fight. The GOP threatens to hold up the budget until the governor agrees to delay implementing new industry emission-cutting regulations contained in the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act.

State Sen. Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, observed so-called new "green" businesses have yet to emerge, but costs imposed on existing businesses by global warming regulations may drive them to Nevada, where there are no greenhouse-gas reduction laws. Democrats also complain that millions of dollars in services and scores of jobs face elimination, while global warming regulations would still be financed.

Meanwhile, legislators complain that by approving a global warming think tank's creation, the Public Utilities Commission worsened the already difficult task of coordinating state agencies to deal with climate change. They cite a legislative counsel's opinion that there is neither a constitutional nor statutory basis authorizing the think tank's creation. The think tank would spend $60 million a year for 10 years to accelerate research into quickly reducing greenhouse gases, something critics say already is widely researched, and something we suspect is of marginal importance considering man's infinitesimally small contribution to the gases and the unproven link between those gases and global temperature changes.

Lawmakers threaten to require the PUC to get legislative approval before proceeding with the think tank. We would like Sacramento to clean up one mess before it makes another, so we're hopeful legislators can slow the rush to impose costly greenhouse gas regulations. While they are fixing the budget, they may have time to rethink their rash plans to save us from what's likely not to be much of a global warming threat.