The Green Nanny State will make all of your choices for you.

It will choose the car you drive and how fast you drive it. It will dictate what kind of energy you buy for your home or business. It may well decide whether your business is “environmentally appropriate” or “sustainable” and determine if it has any right to exist in the first place.

Sound like the premise of a futuristic science fiction movie? We wish it were. Unfortunately, it is an accurate description of what has been unfolding in California and, to a lesser extent, across the country.

The Global Warming faithful want us to change the way we live, regardless of our personal preferences. They have decided that greenhouse gases are the world’s greatest evil, even though there is a direct correlation between carbon emissions and gross domestic product, and even though reigning in CO2 will cost us jobs and make us poorer.

Bay Area liberal Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, has just introduced legislation to impose a national speed limit of 60 mph on freeways in urban areas and 65 mph in less populated areas. Ms. Speier says that reducing highway speeds could save us hundreds of dollars worth of gasoline. “There is no need to wait for OPEC or the oil companies to help us out,” she says. “Every driver can effect change simply by easing up on their right foot.”

Drivers have that choice already. There is nothing to stop them from dropping back into the right-hand lane and slowing down. But this is not enough for Ms. Speier and the other Green autocrats. They want the Highway Patrol to ticket those who won’t comply with the latest Green diktat.

They believe that it is better to force us to drive more slowly than to actually decrease the cost of gasoline by ramping up domestic exploration and development of oil.

This same kind of effete thinking can be found in Proposition 7, which is on the November ballot. It isn’t enough that California’s electric utilities have a market incentive to produce the most reliable power at the lowest costs. This measure will force them to generate 20 percent of their energy from “renewable” sources by 2010, increasing that proportion by two percent every year thereafter toward a goal of 50 percent by 2025. The Green Nannies want Californians to use more electricity from wind, solar and biomass, even if it is more costly and less dependable.

It reminds us of the old joke about the Chinese restaurant in Nazi Germany where the menu instructed, “You WILL take one item from column A; you WILL take one item from column B.”

The Greenies know what’s best for everyone. Our duty, simply, is to obey. And this time, it’s no joke.

The Green-dominated Dem-ocratic Party has decided, for example, that at their national convention in Denver this August, all balloons and hats must be biodegradable and union made.

Now the Greenies are casting about for other human activities to regulate, control and criminalize. The cattle industry may be next. The Nannies note with alarm that livestock accounts for 18 percent of all greenhouse gases and that grazing occupies 26 percent of the planet that isn’t covered by water or ice.

So don’t be surprised if they seek to ban grazing and restrict our consumption of red meat.

When will this stupidity stop? When we have finally had enough of it.