The TV police

California has enacted strict mandates for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, despite the fact there's little reason to believe this will have any impact on "global warming." And needless to say, "green" California wants no part of the only major developed energy technology that emits no carbon gases -- nuclear power.

What to do?

Easy. Golden State regulators restricted the size of toilet tanks, banned gasoline-powered leaf-blowers, outdoor charcoal barbecues and smoking outside on the beach or on restaurant patios, didn't they?

Now, California regulators are about to put into effect new regulations that would effectively ban about a quarter of currently available television models -- for using too much power.

Televisions account for 10 percent of residential energy use in California and 2 percent of electricity consumption overall, a percentage expected to steadily increase thanks to surging demand for large-screen TVs. (The average plasma screen uses more than three times as much energy as a bulky, old-fashioned, cathode-ray-tube TV, you see.)

So the California Energy Commission unveiled its first-in-the-nation TV efficiency standards last week, launching a 45-day public comment period. The measure -- which the commission is expected to approve in November -- would require electronics retailers to sell only low-energy models starting in 2011. Even tougher efficiency criteria would follow in 2013.

The rules could save consumers $30 per year per television set on their electric bills, commission officials brag.

The change could raise television prices, put home theater installers and wholesalers out of business and destroy jobs, warns Doug Johnson, senior director for technology policy with the Arlington, Va.-based Consumer Electronics Association, which represents TV makers, distributors, retailers and installers.

The association also warns the regulations could drive customers to buy banned sets from out-of-state dealers over the Internet, depriving California retailers of customers and state and local governments of needed sales tax and corporate income tax revenue.

Do we smell an opportunity here to create a new cadre of government employees? The California Television Police?

Nah. Other flat-panel TV makers pooh-pooh such concerns, predicting they'll have no trouble hitting the higher efficiency threshold and that TV buyers won't see prices rise.

"The average Californian should not see a cost premium," Bruce Berkoff, chairman of the LCD TV Association, said in a letter to the Energy Commission. "They will, however, benefit from dozens to hundreds of dollars in energy cost savings over their TV's lifetime, thus making the proposed standard extremely cost-effective for the state of California."

Once again, though, government regulators are picking the winners and the losers, rather than leaving consumers in the free market to decide whether the more energy-efficient sets will save them enough money to be worth the change.

And if that doesn't work? Californians can always tell each other stories while forming shadow pictures on the wall of the cave by holding their fingers close to the fire -- unless fire itself is banned, of course.

Does anyone still wonder why -- barring immigration, most of it illegal -- California has been suffering a net out-migration?

Now if only we could make them sign a pledge when they arrive here, vowing not to try and re-create any of the regulatory nonsense that drove them to our desert to recover a modicum of their lost economic freedoms.