Listen Up Feds: California's Economy is Growing From Strong Climate Policy

Ever wonder if the citizens of California have reaped economic benefits from its green reputation and their governor’s ambitious foray into climate solution stardom? Check out the non-profit group Next 10 and its Inaugural California Green Innovation Index for the answer. The data is starkly positive. A few eye-poppers:

• Californians, per capita, pay lower utility bills - less than half of what residents in Texas pay.
• Tougher building and appliance standards saved the state $56 billion by 2003 and are expected to save another $23 billion in the next five years.
• Energy efficiency allowed the state to avoid building 24 power plants in the last 30 years. Good for climate, good for public health.
• Among states, California has the second lowest emissions per capita while generating the nation’s tenth highest gross domestic product per capita.

These numbers fly in the face of accusations by opponents of climate action who claim aggressive climate policies stifle economic growth. Here’s President Bush just one month ago:

"Whatever we're doing is working because last year we grew our economy and the gross amount of greenhouse gases we put in the environment actually went down."

Nice sound bite. Couldn't be less true. Hopefully, yesterday’s IPCC report will officially blow this kind of thinking out of the water. The Nobel Prize-winning team of scientists offer one of the strongest, scientific indictments against business-as-usual we’ve ever seen. In sum, status quo policies, especially from the world’s biggest carbon polluters, like the US, will be catastrophic for the global economy. And climate aside, God knows the US economy could use a boost.

Mindy Lubber, president of the investor group CERES, in her weekly blog on World Changing today, gets at the real value of the Next 10 report:

“The report gives something scientists and policy makers clamor for: Long term data.”

California’s work to slow climate change actually began in the 1970s. The report is a rare look at what sustained climate policy can bring to an economy, one that's more representative of a country than a state.

In that, Next 10 shows us in pure dollars exactly what the US Congress and the White House pass up each day they continue to put national climate policy on the back-burner.

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