In a New York Times interview, Peter A. Darbee, CEO of Pacific Gas and Electric in California, makes the business case for getting on board with his state’s greenhouse gas reduction initiative:

Rather than sitting there and denying that global warming is a problem and climate change is a problem, my reaction was to accept it and to go with the flow to understand the trend, and then say, how can I position PG&E to deal with that challenge, and then how can I turn a challenge into an opportunity.

Darbee points out the historical folly of the argument that emissions standards in California will weaken the state’s economy:

In the past, California has stepped out and been a leader on environmental legislation, and its economy has continued to grow probably faster than the average state economy in the United States. California will find a way to continue to grow, notwithstanding this piece of legislation.