As right-wing think tanks continue to claim that California's clean energy legislation is hampering the state's economy, EPA official Jared Blumenfeld has come forward to dispel that myth and to protect the environmental regulatory programs the state currently his in place.

At a meeting of the California Air Pollution Control Officers Association on Monday, Blumenfeld urged attendees to vote against Proposition 23, a measure that would roll back climate change legislation in California until the state's unemployment rate stays at or below 5.5 percent for a year. Blumenfeld said the measure would send a "terrible and false" message to the rest of the country by linking climate change legislation with a poor economy.

"The most damaging thing that could be done nationally would be to somehow co-join these two things, that climate change in California was shown to have a negative impact on the economy," he said. "What we need to show, and many people have, is that taking action early on climate change is a good thing for the economy."

Fueling the message wars over Proposition 23, Thomas Tanton, a research fellow at the Texas oil-funded Pacific Research Institute, authored a report earlier this week claiming that AB 32 would cost California an entire year's worth of economic growth.

"Local governments, already struggling to make ends meet and provide critical services, will see these new costs as another reason to restrict vital services like police and fire protection, schools and water supply," the report says.

Tanton, who previously worked for ExxonMobil's lobbying arm in Houston, Texas, also argued on the "Redneck USA" website in 2009 that offshore drilling is environmentally friendly in that it curbs oil pollution from "natural seepage."

"New technology has greatly reduced the risk of oil spills," he wrote. "Reducing oil reservoir pressure through extraction of petroleum will decrease the amount of oil pollution from natural seepage."

Steve Maviglio of the No on Prop 23 campaign pointed out in a memo to the California press that Tanton's "independent" report on Proposition 23 entirely fails to mention the energy efficiency gains from implementing AB 32 and directly contradicts a number of other independent studies on the same issue.

"Junk economics," Maviglio wrote. "Flawed assumptions. Miscalculations. It's just another round of deception from the Texas oil companies behind Prop 23."