Opinion: Poll: Suspend environmental protection laws to reduce unemployment?

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In response to California’s stubborn 12%-plus unemployment rate, Republicans lawmakers are proposing to roll back a few environmental protection laws -- including a temporary suspension of AB 32, the landmark 2006 bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 -- as a way to create jobs. The Times will take up this issue on its editorial page Thursday; in the meantime, here’s part of a Wednesday story by Times staff writer Alana Semuels painting a pretty grim unemployment picture for California:

Employment is still elusive in California, especially in eight counties where more than one in five people didn’t have jobs, according to county-by-county numbers the state released Wednesday.

Joblessness has surged throughout the state, giving California the nation’s fifth-highest unemployment rate in January at 12.5%, up from 12.3% in December. And it reached new highs in areas such as the Inland Empire, where the unemployment rate hit 15% in January, up from a revised 14.1% the previous month. Plumas, Colusa, Imperial and Merced counties were among those where unemployment rates topped 20% in January.

In Orange County the unemployment rate grew to 10.1% from 9.1% in December, and in Los Angeles County the rate rose to 12.5% from a revised 12.3% in December, according to new numbers from the Employment Development Department.

‘The numbers suggest there is no relief in sight for a few more months,’ said Esmael Adibi, an economist at Chapman University.
Click here to read the whole story.

Republicans want to forestall AB 32’s implementation until the state’s unemployment rate dips below 5.5% for a full year, a provision that -- if you look at California’s unemployment data over the last 30-plus years (you’ll have to enter the search parameters yourself to yield the right spreadsheets) -- would likely kill the bill outright rather than merely delaying its implementation. The last time the state saw an unemployment rate that low for any significant period of time was between April 2005 and August 2007; before then, the jobless rate last dipped below the 5.5% threshold for a 27-month period ending in August 2001. For nearly all of the 1990s, the state’s jobless rate never touched -- let alone averaged for a year -- 5.5%. The state’s recent history suggest that low unemployment rates are the exception, not the norm, for California.

What do you think about suspending (or killing) such laws in hopes of spurring job growth? Does curbing joblessness take precedence over environmental stewardship? Take our poll, leave a comment or do both.

-- Paul Thornton

Update, 10:16 a.m., March 11: The Times’ editorial can be found here.