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Bill Gates joins California climate law war

Silicon Valley’s richest barons are lining up to fight for California’s climate change laws, as the good, the bad and the ugly all pick sides in the fight over ‘Prop 23’.

Voters in California are deciding on 2 November whether to pass Proposition 23, which would suspend laws clamping down on greenhouse gas emissions.

Now the Sac Bee reports that Bill Gates has coughed up $700,000 for the no campaign. He joins other IT luminaries Sergey Brin ($200,000) and Gordon ‘Moore’s Law’ Moore ($1 million) in fighting for the climate law.

While oil companies can normally count on out-financing opponents in legislative campaign battles, in this case they may be out gunned. Film-maker James Cameron has previously put $1m into the no campaign, and the No On 23 group lists a plethora of healthcare groups, clean-tech businesses, local governments and others. More importantly, the LA Times lists “Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Shultz, Robert Redford, … Leonardo Di Caprio and Al Gore” as backers.

Their opponent, the Yes On 23 group, describes itself as “a Coalition of Taxpayers, Employers, Food Producers, Energy, Transportation and Forestry Companies, with major funding supported by [oil companies] Valero and Tesoro”. They say they do care about global warming, but at the moment the state just can’t afford the current legislation.

Another no-man is David Arquette, who has starred in this rather spectacular(ly bad) advert. (The yes advert is rather more traditional.)

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