Big oil companies are trying to suspend a California green-house gasses law, which sets limits on such emissions until the state unemployment rate falls below 5.5 percent, according to NBC Los Angeles. [Correction]: The unemployment rate has to dip to 5.5 percent and stay at or below that number for one year. A ballot initiative will put the issue of suspending the law before voters in November.

Proponents of this effort, who call their measure the “California Jobs Initiative,” argue that a suspension of the environmental bill is necessary because of Calfornia's current unemployment rate.

The bill, AB-32, was signed in 2006 and aims to encourage clean energy and renewable resources to achieve the maximum, technologically feasible, and cost-effective reductions in greenhouse gases by 2020.

Some, however, believe that the law hinders California's economy.

“The state's economy can't sustain AB 32's enormous costs and additional job losses,” the website for California Jobs Initiative state. “Sacramento politicians passed AB-32 which amounts to a new $60 billion energy tax that will kill jobs in California. It's being implemented by legions of bureaucrats and a huge bureaucracy.”

Clean energy activists however, argue that there is no evidence supporting that claim.

“In fact, the evidence is overwhelming that the real job growth in this economy is in the green sector,” San Franciso Mayor Gavin Newsom told SF Gate.

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