Under this proposed ballot measure, California's climate change law would not be implemented until the state's unemployment rate that is now 12.4% is reduced to 5.5% and maintains the lowered rate for one year. California has not had a 5.5% unemployment rate since 2007.

In true Bush-double-speak form, the teabagging sponsors want to call their ballot measure the "California Jobs Initiative" when in reality it will simply protect the polluters while preventing California from "staying No. 1 in the country in creating clean tech jobs."

Fortunately, the official wording of the initiative lies with Attorney General Jerry Brown, who discarded the short propaganda title of "jobs initiative" for the more cumbersome and accurate title of "Suspends Air Pollution Control Laws Requiring Major Polluters to Report and Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions That Cause Global Warming Until Unemployment Drops Below Specified Level for Full Year." Now, that's a mouthful! The climate deniers are so pissed that they are threatening to sue Brown for messing with their propaganda title.

Nixing this climate deniers' ballot measure is crucial for California's economic health:

Suspending AB 32 "would be the real job-killer," said Susan Frank of the California Business Alliance for a Green Economy. "The mere passage of AB 32 has generated green job growth even as the rest of the economy has contracted." A December study by Next 10, a San Francisco-based think tank, found that jobs in California green businesses grew 36% from 1995 to 2008, while total employment expanded only 13%. A report on the proposed rollback of AB 32 by the state's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office last month said that the measure could lead to greater short-term profits for some businesses, but would dampen investments in clean technology and green jobs. The report said the initiative would invalidate a Schwarzenegger executive order requiring that a third of all retail electricity sellers get their power from renewable sources by 2020. And it would suspend the regulation to slash carbon intensity of fuels by 10%.

While they need 433,971 signatures to qualify for the ballot, supporters claim "solid commitments" of almost $600,000 to pay people to gather signatures. Should they need more money, it was reported today that think-tanks take oil money and use it to fund climate deniers.

Both supporters and opponents predict this will be the "most intense campaign the state has seen in 50 years." The Chair of the Air Resources Board says if this initiative prevails, "it would put all our efforts at energy efficiency and renewable energy in the deep freezer for a long time."

Coalitions are being formed to fight this battle. Businesses that will benefit from GHG reductions are meeting with environmental groups to establish a coalition to defeat the initiative. On the teabagger side, ballot measure sponsors include "Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Granite Bay), Ted Costa of the People's Advocate, a Sacramento-based anti-tax group, and Thomas Hiltachk, an attorney with Republican Party ties... ." Costa promises that his "group's Internet outreach will spawn 'a new coalition'" of tea party/climate deniers living in la-la land.

The deniers want success in California to be a model for a "national backlash against climate regulations." Utah is already onboard. A Utah legislative committee has passed 10-1 a resolution denying climate change because, as one lawmaker declared, "global warming is a conspiracy to control world population."

The resolution, sent to the House on a 10-1 vote, would urge the Environmental Protection Agency to drop plans to regulate the pollution blamed for climate change "until a full and independent investigation of the climate data conspiracy and global warming science can be substantiated."

Right. No investigation of Bush officials for crimes and illegal acts for which there is a multitude of evidence for torture, wiretapping, illegal Iraq war, etc., but let's investigate baseless conspiracy theories.

The crazy teabagging/deniers are not just trying to use government or political processes to validate their BS in California and Utah. News this weekend also includes the report that the Alaska Legislative Council OKs state PR campaign to "curb the Endangered Species Act and the listing of polar bears."

Legislative Council Chairman John Harris said the idea behind the public relations effort is that the designation of polar bears as threatened and the listing of Cook Inlet beluga whales as endangered could result in economic damage.

Our country and our Democratic party cannot afford to lose this battle in California.

Fortunately, according to a new survey, Americans support strong climate, energy policies.

Despite a sharp drop in public concern over global warming, Americans ---regardless of political affiliation ---support the passage of federal climate and energy policies, according to the results of a national survey released today by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities. The survey found support for: • Funding more research on renewable energy, such as solar and wind power (85 percent)

• Tax rebates for people buying fuel-efficient vehicles or solar panels (82 percent)

• Establishing programs to teach Americans how to save energy (72 percent)

• Regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant (71 percent)

• School curricula to teach children about the causes, consequences, and potential solutions to global warming (70 percent)

• Signing an international treaty that requires the United States to cut emissions of carbon dioxide 90 percent by the year 2050 (61 percent)

• Establishing programs to teach Americans about global warming (60 percent).

Americans are asking to be educated about climate change. For the past 1½ years, there has been a trend of decreasing support by the public in the belief of climate change and the science. These poll results support my position that President Obama could be key to reversing this trend if he would address the public to explain why climate science is valid and that climate impacts are happening now and will continue to worsen.

These poll results are also a significant indicator that the public knows that the deniers' misinformation campaigns are BS, but they just need more information to make sense of an important and sometimes complicated subject. In other words, while the polls show decreasing public support in the belief of climate change, the intensity of those beliefs may be weak, indicating that these views might be flipped if Americans are provided sufficient information to be able to understand climate change.

Well, one educational program to teach Americans about climate change is called the Daily Kos Eco Community.

Additional climate change news this weekend:

WATER & NATURAL RESOURCES

CLIMATE CHANGE & ENERGY