California Sees Climate Change As Opportunity
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 02. 7.06
According to a recently commissioned report, "climate action in California can yield net gains for the state economy, increasing growth and creating jobs. Preliminary modeling indicates that just eight policies that were analyzed in detail can achieve almost half of the Governor’s 2020 targets while increasing Gross State Product by about $60 billion and creating over 20,000 new jobs". This nugget from the executive summary showed the right stuff: "By acting now, California can gain a competitive advantage by becoming a leader in the new technologies and industries that will come into existence worldwide due to the common goal of reducing GHG emissions". Nothing like a bit of gold rush optimism on the left and Silicon Valley financial accumen on the right to slip the oily veil off the 'dire economic consequences' model.
Misguiding title:
The report does not say climate change is the opportunity, but the climate action, i.e. the action to prevent climate change.
The whole thing seems misguided to me. Whether climate change is caused by humans or not, climate change happens. The real opportunity (for California) is in the technology that enables the flexibility to profit from these changes rather than suffer from them.