Last year The Hammer wrote about Jay “Enviro-Man” Manning’s boasting to boss lady Governor Gregoire about the Executive Order he drafted for her on climate change.  In an internal briefing document stamped “confidential,” Enviro-Mann gloated that Gregoire’s Executive Order (issued 05/21/09) demanding radical regulations to reduce global warming will be so restrictive and costly for the state’s businesses that the “regulated community” (translation: businesses) will practically beg for the more reasonable federal cap and trade regulations.  

Enviro-Mann further bragged in the brief that the Executive Order he drafted for Gregoire goes even farther than climate change legislation Gregoire lobbied for but lawmakers refused to pass, calling the new regulations he tacked on “more controversial.”  Enviro-Mann smugly explained the controversial additions will ultimately “benefit” Gregoire’s global warming agenda because the “regulated community” will be so burdened by the new regulations that federal cap and trade will look like a real bargain. 

The Washington Policy Center estimated Gregoire’s hell bent for leather determination to make the Evergreen State even greener would cost the state tens of thousands of jobs…making the grass in other states a whole lot greener for businesses looking for a place to set up shop. 

Today Representative Dan Kristiansen (R-Snohomish) penned an excellent editorial pointing out the urgent need for job creation in this state, not more job squashing regulations.  Kristiansen rightly notes that Washington is already one of the greenest states in the nation, and further “green job-killing regulations” are akin to “a pebble of sand on an entire beach,” yet could devastate already struggling businesses. 

Kudos to Kristiansen.  But The Hammer thinks he left one important critique of Gregoire’s climate change agenda out of his argument.  The Climate Gate scandal has revealed that the only thing man-made about global warming is the phony science behind it.  So Gregoire is pushing for regulations that will kill jobs in an effort to curb global warming that science doesn’t prove even exists.   

The Hammer thinks Kristiansen and his pro-business colleagues in the Legislature should take a page out of Texas’ playbook.  The Lone Star state is using the Climate Gate revelations to challenge job-killing global warming regulations in the courtroom.  The grass is definitely greener in Texas.