hey are raising your taxes again. Check your next utility bill.

Californians live in the epicenter of the bursting housing-market bubble. They already pay the highest taxes in the nation. And the economy is now in a recession. Yet the California Public Utilities Commission last week brazenly approved a surcharge on utility ratepayers to fund a $600 million global-warming think tank.

Commission President Michael Peevey led the charge for the new tax. “California, with all of its resources, can afford to be bold,” declared Peevey after the surcharge vote. Which resources does he refer to? The dwindling household budget? Or California’s state budget, which is $16 billion in the red?

They are not Peevey’s resources to give away. They belong to the hard-pressed taxpayers and ratepayers of California, who were never consulted as to whether they wanted to contribute to the development of yet another academic institute to spin out doomsday jeremiads on greenhouse gases. And there is nothing “bold” about using other peoples’ money to finance someone’s pet academic scheme.

The truth is that America’s current 18 percent share of global carbon emissions has been declining since 2006, without any help from the government or unsolicited advice from government-subsidized think-tank wonks.

The commission has adopted a disguised tax, apart from the Legislature and without input from taxpayers themselves. We urge the Legislature to immediately rescind this unauthorized, and arguably illegal, new tax.

Commission apologists will argue that utility ratepayers will hardly notice the small surcharge as it will be applied incrementally to each kilowatt-hour and natural gas therm they use. We remind them that Californians find themselves in current budget straits, not because of a few bad fiscal decisions or a handful of oppressive taxes, but because of a myriad of small, cumulative expenditures and accompanying taxes, many strongly resembling this one.

It is time to draw the line. Stop raising our taxes, even if it amounts to “just a few pennies more per month.”