Not long after North Carolina allowed its global warming commission to expire with little fanfare, California might be ready to move in the same direction.

John Gizzi discusses California’s Proposition 23 campaign in a Human Events column:

In an exclusive interview with HUMAN EVENTS, [Dan] Logue, a Placer County legislator, recalled how he decided to write Proposition 23 last year as the ?Climategate? scandal was breaking and doubts about the veracity of the scientific data behind global warming mounted.

?I felt that the whole issue of global warming could be a scam,? he said, ?and that as a result of it, our economic growth in California was being strangled by Schwarzenegger?s ?cap and trade? regulations.?

He was referring to the ?06 legislation, encouraged and signed into law by Schwarzenegger, which made California the lone state to implement rigorous measures to lower greenhouse emissions. 

The law empowered the governor to appoint a seven-member panel to set regulations dealing with greenhouse emissions. Noting that the panel could ?regulate the air in our tires and the size of our homes and tax the mileage we drive every year,? Logue said that ?most critically, the legislation creating the panel has been a job killer. Unemployment has risen from 4.8% to 12.2% here. Our manufacturing industry has been particularly hit hard by compliance with A.B. 32, losing more than one million jobs since ?06.?

A study of the economic impact of A.B. 32 by California State University Business School Dean Sanjay Varshney for the Business for the California Business Roundtable confirms Logue?s charge that the legislation is a ?job killer.? 

According to the study, ?The direct A.B. 32 cost of $24.878 billion results in a total loss of output of $71.464 billion annually for the State of California (after including indirect and induced costs). The direct cost of $52.194 billion cost to consumers results in total lost output of $149.2 billion annually. The direct cost of $63.895 million to small businesses results in a total loss of output of $182.649 billion annually. In terms of employment, this output loss is equivalent to the loss of roughly half a million jobs for the state. …