Our View: California's cap-and-trade slush fund

We warned long ago that California's war on global warming never really had much to do with the globe getting warmer. Rather, it's always been about control and money.

Now the pretense should be obvious to all. The nonpartisan Office of the Legislative Analyst reported last week on Gov. Jerry Brown's intention to raise money from a carbon emission cap-and-trade scheme through the regulatory might of the California Air Resources Board, enabled by the arrogantly titled Global Warming Solutions Act, approved in 2006 as Assembly Bill 32.

The act will not reduce global warming, even if warming is caused by greenhouse gas emissions, a dubious claim. That's because developing nations like China and India in coming years will vastly increase their emissions, the natural byproduct of industrial growth, something they are fully committed to do. Their increased output will vastly overwhelm whatever slight reductions California might be able to achieve.

But California's proposed cap-and-trade scheme, essentially a tax on industrial emissions, is expected to generate as much as $14 billion a year, according to a recent report from the Legislative Analyst. For California that represents a huge bailout for a perennially pressured state budget projected to be billions in the red this year, and for years into the future unless new revenue is found.

The tax-and-spend legislators, who stand to be enriched through this scheme, must be delighted. The state controller also reported last week that the state's January revenues were $1.2 billion below what lawmakers optimistically had expected in their current budget.