Report: Texas-based refiners to spend millions on effort to convince voters to kill California global warming law

Texas-based oil interests will spend millions of dollars to gather signatures on petitions aimed at giving voters in California a chance to repeal the Golden State's groundbreaking effort to lower the greenhouse gas impact of fuels burned there.

The Los Angeles Times has a report on the infusion of money by two companies, Tesoro Corp. and Valero Energy Corp., this morning.

Signature-gathering started this week on the petition, which would subject AB 32 to a referendum this November if enough signatures to qualify it for the ballot are gathered.

More than 400,000 valid signatures would have to be obtained by April 24 to get the measure before California voters in the autumn.

Proponents of the referendum want the emission-limiting provisions of AB 32 suspended until the state's unemployment rate drops to 5.5 percent. Right now it exceeds 12 percent.

A recent report concludes that California is likely to experience rising sea levels, higher temperatures, loss of snow accumulation in the Sierra Nevada mountains and more frequent wild fires as global warming proceeds.