CA's No on Prop 23: Good for Environment, bad for Supply Chain?

A few weeks ago California voters stepped up and soundly rejected Proposition 23, a measure that would have temporarily suspended key emission-reduction procedures in accordance with the state's Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

The rejection means that California will stay the course towards its ultimate goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent in the next eight years. The emission cuts will go on as planned, starting in 2012.

Sixty-two percent of California voters voted against Prop. 23. On one side you had environmentalists arguing that passing Prop 23 would derail the efforts already put forth by California to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. On the other side of the fence, oil refining companies, who don't want to see the emission reductions go into place, threw out eye-popping statistics about what rejecting the measure would do in terms of job losses and increased gas prices. Although the numbers were a bit inflated, it still seems like they had a valid argument. But so did the opponents of Prop. 23. Don't you just love politics?

Anyways, while It's never easy to make an argument AGAINST the environment, something must be said about how certain environment-related restrictions will impact California's extensive supply chain.

With millions of cars traversing California freeways, there isn't much argument that oil refining companies should create cleaner fuel technologies and should adopt emission reduction policies. But we have to remember that this move would put the burden squarely on the shoulders of drivers, which essentially means higher gas prices.

Higher gas prices means hell for the transportation industry, not only for you and your Jetta, but also for ships, trucks, trains, and freight-moving equipment. We must also remember that California harbors the largest port in the nation, so reduction policies also spell trouble for the massive supply chain networks that operate at the Port of Los Angeles.

Through October, 6.5 million containers had already been in and out of The Port of Los Angeles, which was a nearly 16.88 percent increase with two months remaining in the fiscal year 2010. Isn't it difficult to realistically think about reducing anything with that much freight moving in and out of California? Clearly it is and that's why legislators are toying with the idea of instituting carbon cap-and-trade incentive programs, which again is good for the environment but terribly grave for the supply chain.

According to one study (there are a lot of them, so you have to pick which ones you are going to believe), at $60 per ton, a port that needs to buy 360,556 metric tons of greenhouse gas credits to meet its carbon reduction goal, would pay $21.6 million a year. The Port of Los Angeles' total greenhouse gas emissions for 2008 was 13.1 million tons. You can do the math, because I don't think my calculator is big enough.

Environmentalist and opponents of Prop 23 also believe that the push for sustainability will create green jobs right here in California. The generation of new jobs is a critical matter, with unemployment well over 12 percent. One area that is believed to generate jobs is the manufacturing of solar technologies. The creation of jobs in this market would be immense in California……

You don't actually believe this crap, do you? Take your blinders off. Any manufacturing job that can be done in California can be outsourced to China or India at a fraction of the cost. Anyone that argues this point needs to see a doctor because I think the greenhouse gas emissions are starting to affect their brain functionality.