Guest essay by Larry Hamlin

The L A Times published a story on May 24th entitled “Gov. Brown tours polluted L.A. neighborhoods to see firsthand where progress lags” which described his clandestine visit with activists who have been critical of the state doing too little to protect the health of people living in these communities.

The Times article explained that:

The visit exposed the large disconnect between Brown’s penchant for prioritizing state resources toward globally directed state climate regulation versus the real world of needs for environmental actions that actually benefit California’s local communities health and living conditions. The Times article notes:

Brown has always claimed that revenues from the states cap and trade (tax) program targeting reduced greenhouse gas emissions would be used to help disadvantaged low-income communities.

Instead the Times article indicated:

Given the unprecedented number of new regulations and policy along with the many tens of billions in expense required for attempting to meet the SB 32 greenhouse gas emissions goals and in view of the trivial global significance of SB 32 emission reductions the justification for the states priorities toward greenhouse gas emissions versus dealing with California’s real front-line pollution issues clearly deserves to be openly challenged and discussed.

As Assemblywoman Garcia noted:

For far too long now Governor Brown has been allowed to misdirect and misallocate the state priorities, resources and expenditures toward globally irrelevant greenhouse gas emissions reductions while ignoring the plight of tens of millions of Californians who receive no benefit at all from the states elitist climate alarmist political agenda.

Its time for California’s climate alarmist elitism to stop and for the state government to instead address and use its resources to deal with the many real and significant issues that are impacting millions of our citizens.