Regulations: A California legislator pushes a November ballot initiative to free the state from the job-killing shackles of a 2006 law designed to fight climate change. The other choice is freezing in the unemployment line.

At last report, California's unemployment rate was 12.3%, with 2.25 million residents looking for work. So one would assume the first rule of holes would apply — when you're in one, stop digging.

Yet there was Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger touting his state's green initiatives in Copenhagen as California barrels toward full implementation of its own version of job-killing cap-and-trade.

"The desire and hope and desperate need for planetary transformation is what brought me here," Schwarzenegger said. "Is it a dream, a fairy tale, a false hope? If not, how can we make it real?"

"It" is Assembly Bill 32, signed by the governor in 2006, and Assemblyman Dan Logue wants it to go away or at least be put on hold.

Logue, who has advocated AB32's outright repeal, is busy collecting signatures for a November ballot initiative that would block full implementation of the measure, scheduled to take effect in 2012, until the state's unemployment rate falls below 5.5%.

California's animus toward fossil fuels has blocked further development of its considerable offshore oil resources, and its fear of nuclear power has denied the state access to nonpolluting nuclear energy. This has helped contribute to what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says is the second most business-unfriendly regulatory climate in the nation after New Jersey.

Logue, a Republican from the state's Central Valley, believes this is not the time to implement AB32. He believes, correctly, that the law's effect on climate will be about the same as a drop of water in the Mojave Desert, where Sen. Diane Feinstein has moved to block a solar power project.

Increasing evidence, such as snow in Malibu, suggests the earth has been cooling for the past decade at least and will continue to do so for decades to come. So why further wreck California's economy in a futile gesture while we drive electric clown cars to the unemployment office?

A 2009 study by economists at California State University, Sacramento, commissioned by the California Small Business Roundtable, found that implementation costs for AB32 "could easily exceed $100 billion" and that the program would raise the cost of living by $7,857 per household each year by 2020.

"This has been the blind leading the blind, political correctness that has collapsed the economy in California," says Logue. "California already has the fifth-cleanest air in the country, so why are we doing this when no one else is?" California obviously wants to lead by example, even if it means going over an economic cliff.