It's all good, from Diego to tha Bay

Throw up a finger if ya feel the same way, Now let me welcome everybody to the wild, wild west:

Mr. Marston acknowledged that a system adopted by the European Union in response to the Kyoto Protocol to curb global warming gases had not been very effective.

“No system we have works perfectly,” he said. “The cap-and-trade system in Europe has some flaws because they didn’t do a great job with the baseline. California will learn from what went wrong in Europe.” ...

Yup, this is exactly the right time for California to enter into something like this. Of course it won't stop our friends at CEI [Consistantly Endorsing Inefficiency] from commenting:

Myron Ebell, director of energy policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group in Washington, and a prominent critic of efforts to curb global warming, also dismissed the California plan.

“We cannot reduce our carbon emissions by making ourselves poorer,’’ he said. “That is not acceptable in a democratic society. It might work in North Korea, but it will not work here. If global warming turns out to be a problem, we have to work on technological changes. All of that is something California has tremendous capacity to do — not by going on an energy diet.”

Always a ray of sunshine, thanks guys. And kind of missing the point: a relatively modest approach to incorporate industry-friendly cap-and-trade strategies will likely propel California's economy to meet the challenges of the future, not bring it on par with North Korea. Energy-intensive companies relocating from the 6th largest economy of the world to some backwards desert to make themselves less competitive in that new economy? Yeah, right.