After 9 long years of trying to clean up after the electricity mess that we experienced at the turn of the century, the fearless energy regulators of our state are once again going to proceed with electricity auctions.
Nine years after its state-sanctioned energy auction went bust in the western energy crisis, California is preparing to launch another daily electricity auction on Tuesday that it hopes will be more successful.
The new "day ahead" energy market will line up electricity resources for delivery the next day. The market will have a price cap of $2,500 a megawatt hour, about 50 times the going price of electricity in California today. Even a high price is unlikely to wreck the market this time because the state is being divided into more than 3,000 separate pricing points called "nodes." So high prices in one place won't necessarily spill over into another. (Wall Street Journal 3/30/09)
At least they did some more thorough testing of the system this time, and have installed more safeguards. But given our history with electricity on the open market, you would think this would make some news here in California. Perhaps there will be more stories as the actual auctions commence tomorrow, but you would like to see some advance notice for this kind of thing. (Note to media: I did a Google news search and double checked several sites. If you reported on the story, shoot me an email and I will highlight it.)
In theory, there are some decent reasons to believe a market based system would help. It points out flaws in the transmission system, and where we need more generation. That being said, this project needs to be monitored like a hawk. The regulators have said that they will be vigilant in pursuing anybody who violates the rules to game our electricity prices. The fact that they did simulations is great, but computers have a way of underestimating the human capacity to stretch and outright break the rules in the name of greed.
If there are any developments surrounding these auctions, I'll be sure to keep you updated.
Your last word in what's happenin' (apologies to Raj and Rerun):
• Here's George Skelton having some fun and making up statistics to scapegoat immigrants, failing to mention the economic activity they produce and the Social Security payroll taxes they pay but never collect. It's simply wrong to pander to xenophobes the way Skelton does in this piece, under the guise of "being honest." If you want to be honest, explain that, as baby boomers age, the fiscal impact of younger workers in the country is positive, at least so says that left-wing rag the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and countless other studies.
• Debbie Cook has resufaced at the new site OC Progressive, and she writes a strong post about to need to collectively focus on energy as crucial to our future as a sustainable planet. It's really good.
• The Museum of Contemporary Art in L.A. reduced its staff by 20%. Not only construction and manufacturing jobs are affected by the meltdown. The arts and non-profits are among the hardest-hit.
• Just why did the NFL and the Los Angeles NBC affiliate ban an ad on marriage equality, and then lie that they weren't airing "advocacy-based" ads during on Super Bowl Sunday to boot? Someone ought to find out.
• California now has less wind power capacity than Iowa. I don't totally agree with the conclusions for why, but it's worth studying.
• CA-Sen: ZOMG, Chuck DeVore Twitters! And Facebooks! He raised $1,600 on Twitter! He's TOTALLY like Obama! (Is that 140 characters yet?)
By the way, that picture in the WSJ of DeVore checking his Blackberry like a strung-out meth addict should be atop all of Barbara Boxer's campaign literature for the next couple years.
When I lived in San Francisco, though I was out in the Richmond I spent a couple years without a car using public transit without much of a problem. Between BART, Muni, rideshare on the Bay Bridge and the ferries there are plenty of opportunities to get around throughout the city. It can be a bit of an ordeal but it is well within the realm of possibility. That hasn't stopped Bay Area commuters from expressing anger about a proposed congestion pricing scheme.
America's second most congested city could become the first to institute so-called congestion pricing to try to reduce downtown traffic, improve the environment and raise money for further transit fixes. A similar effort failed earlier this year in New York City [...]
The online reaction was fast and furious.
"Why should I have to pay to drive on public streets?" asked one reader. "Driving has gone the way of smoking," wrote another, adding that "it is easy and right to pick on drivers."
Congestion pricing, said a third, "would be a regressive tax on those who don't have good public transit options..."
People pay lip service to wanting to reduce their carbon footprint, and then bristle at tangible steps toward it. I hate to quote Tom Friedman here, but he's right - re-engineering America into a post-carbon future without a specific price signal like congestion pricing or a carbon tax is going to be impossible. There are plenty of different ways to go about this. California is experimenting with raising the gas tax as part of the work-around budget. Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski is mulling over a mileage tax. Congestion pricing has worked in London, and toll roads as a quicker option are present across the country. The point is, as Friedman says:
The two most important rules about energy innovation are: 1) Price matters - when prices go up people change their habits. 2) You need a systemic approach. It makes no sense for Congress to pump $13.4 billion into bailing out Detroit - and demand that the auto companies use this cash to make more fuel-efficient cars - and then do nothing to shape consumer behavior with a gas tax so more Americans will want to buy those cars. As long as gas is cheap, people will go out and buy used S.U.V.'s and Hummers.
There has to be a system that permanently changes consumer demand, which would permanently change what Detroit makes, which would attract more investment in battery technology to make electric cars, which would hugely help the expansion of the wind and solar industries - where the biggest drawback is the lack of batteries to store electrons when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining. A higher gas tax would drive all these systemic benefits.
The congestion pricing proposal in San Francisco has another appeal - reducing traffic and allowing people to increase their productivity simply by getting to where they need to go faster. That includes the street-based public transit options as well. Ultimately, if the congestion pricing money is used smartly, to enhance mass transit options, it makes complete sense to try it.
I guess Henry Waxman, a key ally to Nancy Pelosi, wouldn't have made the move to unseat John Dingell if he didn't count the votes.
Rep. Henry Waxman (Calif.) has ousted Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell (Mich.), as Democratic lawmakers voted 137-122 Thursday morning to hand the gavel of the powerhouse panel to its second-ranking member.
This, more than anything, could be the biggest change in the federal government in 2009 and beyond. Waxman's Safe Climate Act sets the targets needed to mitigate the worst effects of global warming. It now becomes the working document in the House for anti-global warming legislation. And his constituency doesn't include a major polluting industry.
From a policy standpoint, it's a major progressive victory.
This is a very big deal. Henry Waxman has been nominated by the House's Steering Committee to be the head of the House panel on Energy and Commerce, ahead of longtime chair John Dingell. The implications for such a change would be huge, but it's not over yet.
The House Democratic Steering Committee has nominated Henry A. Waxman to be chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee next year - a stinging rebuke of the sitting chairman, John D. Dingell .
Waxman won a 25-22 vote over Dingell in a closed-door meeting Wednesday by the Steering panel. Because Dingell got more than 13 votes in the secret balloting, he can be nominated to run against Waxman at Thursday's Democratic Caucus meeting, at which all of the Democrats elected to the 111th Congress are eligible to vote.
That means we have one day to whip our Congresspeople on this vote. Waxman, who wrote the Clean Air Act and who has an understanding of what is needed to be done on global warming and the post-carbon future, would make a great chairman, as opposed to the Dingellsaurus, who is still trying to protect the auto industry from moving into the 21st century, even as the verdict on their approach is defined by their trudging to Capitol Hill for a bailout. A majority of the caucus has signed a letter to Nancy Pelosi asking for greater efforts to combat climate change. Waxman at Energy is a key to that happening. We must eliminate this roadblock.
Marc Ambinder sets the scene (this was written before today's vote)
Waxman wants the job for obvious reasons: the committee will be the most powerful in the new Congress, one that'll deal with health care and energy legislation. (Ways and Means? Pleghghgh.) A lot of impatient liberal Democrats want to see Dingell go; he is too old, too blinkered in his thinking and too at odds with the party on energy, they say; just as many, it seems, want him to say, including some influential members of the leadership, even if for reasons of preserving the integrity of the seniority system.
Senior Democratic aides expect that the vote will go to the full caucus; all the loser of the steering committee vote has to do is present a letter with 35 House members. The full vote would be Thursday via secret ballot.
Lots of members of Congress put themselves in the position of someone like Dingell, who earned his chairmanship with seniority, and they don't want to see him pushed out because they wouldn't want it to happen to them. That's the kind of institutional thinking that must be vanquished, as it restricts change. The enviro groups are backing away from this fight because they don't want to feel Dingell's wrath if he wins. There is nobody else left to step in but us. I was skeptical that House Democrats would be pushed in the direction of progress, but with Waxman's former chief of staff, Phil Schiliro, in the Obama White House, some pressure may be coming down from the top. It's in all of our interests to have Henry Waxman atop this committee.
Call Congress and tell them you want to see a committee chair with bold ideas on energy as the head of the Energy Committee. If you want some extra incentive, read the smugness of the Blue Dogs who are fighting for their roadblock:
Dingell's supporters said they are not worried by the vote of the Steering panel, which they say is stocked with left-leaning members who do not represent the broader makeup of Democratic caucus.
"If you look at the makeup of that committee in terms of geography and political leanings, this is not the same dynamic as our whole caucus," said Jim Matheson , D-Utah, who is part of a team working the phones for Dingell, D-Mich.
In particular, if your member is in the Congressional Black Caucus or the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, both of which are supporting Dingell, ask them if they want their constituents to breathe clean air in the future.
That's if you believe Tim Fernholz, who talked to a couple people in the know.
2. At least two people who would know (blind quotes suck but that's the way of the world) don't expect the Waxman challenge to Dingell at the Energy committee to get anywhere, in part because the last two classes of new representatives are more conservative on the whole than other members and will support the incumbent. The leadership hopes that it won't come to a vote, because Waxman, who is more closely identified with Pelosi (who isn't taking a position on the challenge) will drop out when he realizes he doesn't have the votes.
I want to push back on the idea that the most recent classes of Reps. are all conservative, because while that is ossified conventional wisdom inside the Beltway it's simply not true. Alan Grayson is not conservative. Tom Perriello is not conservative. Larry Kissell is not conservative. In fact, in this cycle the four Democrats who lost Congressional elections were all deeply conservative - Tim Mahoney, Nick Lampson, Don Cazayoux and Nancy Boyda.
This isn't totally about right-left, it's about those in the status quo who want to protect the seniority system in the event that they stick around Congress look enough to secure a plum post. That's why you have liberals in the Congressional Black Caucus like John Lewis pushing for Dingell to stay in his chairmanship. Dingell is trying to sucker new members by saying he is good on health care, but of course that's not totally true.
But Dingell is good on health care. Well, by good, I mean he has pushed 'single-payer' for literally decades, while preventing action on drug prices and appointing most of the members of the Energy and Commerce Committee that killed Clinton's health care plan, because they were reliable pro-auto industry votes on other issues Dingell prioritized (there aren't a lot of single payer pro-polluting members out there). But health care is all Dingell has, so he's emphasizing his willingness to work on health care with Obama in return for keeping his chairmanship of the enormously powerful Energy and Commerce Committee.
With the Senate appearing to take the lead on health care anyway, and Waxman just as solid on the issue, this is an irrelevant argument. What should be far more central to the debate is this:
The California economy loses about $28 billion annually due to premature deaths and illnesses linked to ozone and particulates spewed from hundreds of locations in the South Coast and San Joaquin air basins, according to findings released Wednesday by a Cal State Fullerton research team.
Most of those costs, about $25 billion, are connected to roughly 3,000 smog-related deaths each year, but additional factors include work and school absences, emergency room visits, and asthma attacks and other respiratory illnesses, said team leader Jane Hall, a professor of economics and co-director of the university's Institute for Economics and Environment Studies.
The decades of shameless defense of a heavily polluting auto industry should be grounds for Dingell's resignation, not just for booting him from this key committee (especially because it's resulted in the car companies being broke and looking for a government handout). But it's awful hard to impact an insider caucus battle with anything resembling reason.
However, we must keep trying. Call Congress and tell them you'd rather have someone concerned about catastrophic climate change in charge of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, instead of someone who uses it as a pretext to keep his failing auto industry executive buddies happy.
A couple weeks ago I wrote about three looming battles that we had to think about after the election. Two of them have already fizzled. The open primary ballot initiative filed with the state has been withdrawn. That's probably because the Governor wanted to present it himself, so we'll see where that goes, and a lot of it might have to do with whether or not Prop. 11 actually passes. Second, Bush Republican and rich developer Rick Caruso decided against running for Mayor of Los Angeles against Antonio Villaraigosa. There is now no credible candidate running against the incumbent. Caruso may figure that Villaraigosa is primed for bigger and better things (he's in Washington today with President-Elect Obama's council of economic advisers), and if Villaraigosa vacates the seat he'd have a better shot of capturing it.
However, there are a couple other looming battles that are out there. First, Jane Harman, Congresswoman from the 36th Congressional District, is in line for a top intelligence post with the Obama Administration, and the odds are extremely likely that she'd take it. Laura Rozen has a profile here. After a tough primary against Marcy Winograd in 2006, Harman has been a moderately better vote in Congress, but this represents a real opportunity to put a progressive in that seat. Winograd has recently moved into the district, and would certainly be my first choice if it comes open (or if it doesn't - Harman voted for the FISA bill this year).
The other major news is that Henry Waxman, my Congressman, is looking to oust John Dingell from his post atop the Energy and Commerce Committee. This is a long time coming, and I don't think Waxman would go for it without the support of the Speaker. The Dingellsaurus, while a decent liberal on most issues (and also a former representative of mine in Ann Arbor, MI), has blocked progress on climate change and modernizing the auto industry for years. We were finally able to get a modest increase in CAFE standards last year, but Waxman, who wrote the Clean Air Act of 1990, would obviously be a major step up. And with the auto industry on life support and asking for handouts as a result of the old ways of doing business, it's clearly time for a Democratic committee chair who isn't protecting their interests at the expense of the planet. Waxman's "Safe Climate Act" introduced last year would mandate a cut in greenhouse gases of 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. That's exactly the right attitude from the committee chair, and with energy issues obviously so crucial in an Obama Administration, we need someone in that post who recognizes the scope of the problem. It should also be clear that the committee has likely jurisdiction over health care reform.
There was a lot of excitement in the IAM (Int'l Assoc. of Machinists) union hall this morning in Huntington Beach, where DFA's Jim Dean and a host of local officials testified to the worthiness and strength of Debbie Cook, the Democratic candidate in CA-46, seeking to retire certified nutjob Dana Rohrabacher in Congress. But the best reaction was for the candidate herself, who gave a straight-shooting, no B.S. speech that made clear the stakes in this election.
"Do-Nothing Dana has been in Congress for 20 years and hasn't done a thing," Cook, the mayor of Huntington Beach, said to a pancake breakfast of around 120 volunteers who were ready to precinct walk for her. Referring to a claim from the campaign's latest ad, that Rohrabacher has sponsored a bill to protect the country from an asteroid, she said, "he needs to worry less about asteroids and more about planet Earth."
Cook has really matured as a speaker. She is great on her core issues - energy, the environment, and health care reform - but she's also endorsed the Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq, and really foregrounds smart growth and development issues. State and local governments are so stressed by this financial crisis that it's incumbent upon us to send lawmakers to Washington who understand local concerns. I've heard again and again from local lawmakers in that district - and again today from Katrina Foley, running for re-election to City Council in Costa Mesa - that Rohrabacher is openly dismissive of any federal help for local governments, and refuses to work with his counterparts. At this point that's downright dangerous, creating choke points that will gut basic services and the smart policies we need - in mass transit, for example - to weather this economic downturn and create a 21st-century infrastructure.
You'll notice that Foley, the Costa Mesa city councilwoman, is a Democrat. Gus Ayer, the mayor of Fountain Valley, a Democrat. Debbie Cook, the mayor of Huntington Beach, Democrat. Orange County is changing, and those who ignore this reality and rest on their laurels, like Dana Rohrabacher, will live to regret it. "This is the first time he's had to get off his lazy a$% and campaign," she said. And he was slow to do it. He only spent $38,000 in the third quarter, but once internal Republican polls have shown the race to be a dead heat, he has swamped the district with money. He's got 4 positive ads on the air and a bunch of negative mailers attacking Debbie as an "extreme liberal" on various issues. If it's liberal to advocate for quality and affordable health care for all, as she has done in earning the endorsement of the California Nurses Association, because to ignore the crisis welcomes a "fiscal nightmare" that risks blowing a hole in the federal budget for good, so be it. If it's liberal to recognize that our current carbon-based economy is unsustainable, and that we must encourage policies and practices that move us off fossil fuels, there you are. If it's liberal to understand that smart density with mass transit can improve quality of life, the environment and the economy, well OK then.
The best part of the speech was when Cook talked about all the support she was getting throughout the district, and she mentioned that some people gave her their economic stimulus checks from the government. "To stimulate what? Buying more crap from China?" While a new stimulus is needed, rather than handing out money as a band-aid we need to direct that spending into something useful, something that will create jobs and get the economy moving again. We need to make things again in America.
After the speeches, the volunteers were sent out to walk precincts. CA-46 is a very long and narrow district that hugs the coast from Long Beach and the Palos Verdes Peninsula in L.A. County down to Costa Mesa in Orange County. Putting those blue areas up north into the district to neutralize their power is a big mistake in this wave election. As the Cook campaign finds new voters everywhere, turning out folks in Long Beach is part of the strategy. So I walked part of a precinct in Long Beach and got a very good response. Rohrabacher simply does not have a good reputation among anyone but the wingnuts, and his record on Social Security (pro-privatization), the military (voted against improving veteran's health care) and the environment (he's a global warming denier) is quite extreme. (There's also the dressing up in drag to solve the RFK murder and about a thousand other lunatic stories) I talked to people today who said "We're Republicans, but we don't like Dana." Very few people turned me away.
Cook's volunteer base is the edge in this election. But she also needs some financial help. The campaign estimates that they need $75,000 to meet their budget and get the last few targeted mailers into the field. Debbie is a Blue America candidate and a Better Democrat. You can donate to her on ActBlue. Please do - we have a real chance here. I'm hoping to get Debbie on Calitics Radio next week.
And if you're in the district, consider volunteering by visiting their website.
Democratic Nominee for Congress Debbie Cook (CA-46) was honored today with the Roscoe Bartlett "Speaking Truth To Power" Award at the ASPO-USA Conference in Sacramento.
Randy Udall, an ASPO-USA (Association for the Study of Peak Oil) board member, announced the award at the conference on Tuesday afternoon, citing Cook's willingness to talk frankly about energy issues.
"We honored her for her courage, for speaking honestly about energy realities and for promoting an energy program that makes sense," said Udall, who is the director of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency (CORE), a nonprofit organization in Colorado that promotes energy efficiency and renewable energy.
Cook, the mayor of Huntington Beach, is a nationally recognized leader on energy, and also a board member of ASPO-USA. She was instrumental in bringing the conference to California for the first time. The conference ends Tuesday evening.
The award was named in honor of Republican Representative Roscoe Bartlett (MD-6), who leads the effort in Congress for an energy policy based on the challenges of peak oil.
That one liner pretty much sums up the sentiment at the 2008 ASPO-USA Conference in Sacramento.
ASPO, for those who don't know, is the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas. Once on the fringes, Peak Oil has shed much of its tin-foil-hat reputation, as T. Boone Pickens and Shell Oil have jumped on the bandwagon, and as world events, rising oil prices and the panic at the pump have focused more attention on the world's growing energy crisis.
Peak Oil simply: there is a finite amount of oil in the ground and our capacity to produce it has peaked, leaving us with a declining supply of oil, while world demand becomes greater.
Still there are many who don't acknowledge the reality of Peak Oil and what it means for our society and the world. Politicians fear the discussion because it means being visionary and most of them cannot see beyond the next election. Neither Presidential candidates' energy plans address growing supply shortages.
That's part of the reason why Huntington Beach Mayor Debbie Cook is one of the best candidates Democrats have for Congress anywhere. She is willing to say what many won't and she's willing to lead where others fear to tread. Cook, the Democratic nominee for Congress(CA-46) is playing a leading role at the ASPO-USA conference, which began yesterday in Sacramento.
Cook, a member of the ASPO board of directors, was instrumental in bringing the annual conference to California for the first time, which brings together scientists, educators, and policy makers from around the world to plan for future energy constraints.
"Energy affects every aspect of our lives: food production, transportation, land use patterns, and our economy. Governments at all levels haven't done enough to plan for an energy constrained world," said Cook. "This conference is a chance to hear current energy data and trends from experts in government, industry, and research."
The E-Revolution From The Jorgensen For Congress Campaign
Building A New Energy, Economic, Environmental, Educational Future
For Our Country and Our Planet
Democratic candidate for California's 24th Congressional District, Marta Jorgensen has formulated a bold new campaign platform called E-Revolution. She believes this platform, so named for its focus on the strong and productive reform of federal energy, economic, environmental, and educational policies as well as on citizen engagement, is necessary for the United States to compete and survive in the new millennium.
The first pillar of E-Revolution is energy reform. As our older energy sources continue to pollute our environment, make us dependent on foreign governments, and slowly get used up, we must adopt clean, independent, and renewable forms of alternative energy like solar power, wind power, tidal power, geothermal power, and biofuels.
Countries like Denmark, which already gets 25% of its energy from wind power, and Germany, which expects to get 45% of its power from renewable energy sources by 2030, have already recognized the dangers of an addiction to oil and coal. But Marta Jorgensen believes that the United States can meet this challenge head on; we can take back the mantle of energy pioneer we once held by supporting these new technologies with tax breaks and federal mandates.
The second pillar of this platform, economic reform, seeks to return the American economy to the robust strength it once had and to create new Green and higher paying jobs for American workers. This can be done by steering our economy toward alternative energy sources, by making our economy more efficient, by working to overcome global warming, and by creating more favorable trade agreements.
While the American oil and coal industries are losing jobs, renewable alternative energies can create and support millions of new jobs. According to studies, wind power can account for nearly 350,000 jobs, solar power for over 260,000 jobs and $45 billion in economic investment, tidal power for thousands of jobs per plant, geothermal energy for over 20,000 jobs; and biofuel for over 200,000 jobs. California is the natural home for many of these industries, and with them our state's economy, already one of the largest in the world, will surely grow even larger.
We can also make our economy more efficient. For example, one study found that an increase in fuel efficiency standards starting in 2001 could have saved drivers in upstate New York more than $2.4 billion in gas by 2012; the savings for California, with its much bigger economy and many more residents, could have been astronomical. Calling for stricter fuel efficiency standards and supporting the creation of new cars with alternative forms of power like electricity, hydrogen, or fuel cells can make our economy more efficient and each of us better off.
Switching to alternative energies and making our economy more efficient as well as working to reduce pollution and instituting a carbon tax will have the additional and very important effect of helping to ward off the effects of climate change. The costs of untreated global warming is an increase in wildfires, water conservation, public health, agriculture, and flooding could be incalculable; if we take steps now to mitigate those effects, we will be able to sustain and grow our economy far into the future.
In addition, we can take steps to keep our thriving international trade alive and growing while fixing bad trade agreements so that our only exports are American products, not American jobs. We can also address the issue of our crumbling dollar by reducing the federal deficit and paying down the federal debt. These policies form an important part of Marta Jorgensen's platform.
Such sweeping economic reform may sound difficult, but it is nowhere near as hard as keeping our economy beholden to the old energy sources, old technologies, and bad trade agreements that have made our economy so weak. But America is no weakling, and Marta Jorgensen believes that we are strong enough and motivated enough to do what we must to secure success for our economy.
The third pillar of change in E-Revolution, environmental reform, is closely related to Jorgensen's call for both energy and economic reform. We face serious peril from the effects of global warming, including a catastrophic rise in sea level, widespread drought, and myriad extinctions in plant and animal species all over the planet, effects that will change our world for the worse. But Marta Jorgensen thinks we can change the world for the better; Marta Jorgensen has a plan.
First, she calls for freezing carbon emissions and instituting a carbon tax, which will go a long way to reduce any further impact we might have on the atmosphere. But we also need to further reduce our creation of greenhouse gases by instituting a moratorium on coal plants not outfitted with carbon capture features, calling for the replacement of inefficient incandescent light bulbs, and building a more efficient electrical grid. In concert, these changes will drastically reduce our negative impact on the environment.
Of course, while we in the United States bear well more than our fair share of responsibility for global warming, we cannot address this problem alone. That is why Marta Jorgensen will call for a new and stronger global treaty, more effective than the Kyoto Protocol and with a closer compliance date, and she will do all she can to make sure that this time, we sign on and we stay on.
The final pillar of E-Revolution, educational reform, centers on the need to teach our children how to succeed in an E-Revolution world. We need programs to teach them how to work on a wind farm, how to design a better solar panel, and how to build a more efficient energy grid. We need to make sure that they know how important our environment is what they can do as individuals to make sure we maintain it. In short, we need comprehensive environmental education, and we need to do it on the national level.
The four pillars of E-Revolution are closely related; if one of them fails, the success of the whole project would be cast into doubt. Without energy reform to create new jobs in alternative energies and to make the economy more efficient, true economic reform is impossible, and without a switch to cleaner energy sources, true environmental reform is impossible. Without economic reform to create and maintain alternative energies, true energy reform is impossible, and without a more sustainable economy, true environmental reform is impossible. Without environmental reform to wean us off our addiction to fossil fuels, true energy reform is impossible, and without an environmental policy that seeks to overcome the problems of global warming, true economic reform is impossible. And unless we have educational reform to teach our children how to thrive in this new world, all the gains of the rest of the project will be for naught.
We need to make E-Revolution a reality; we need to elect Marta Jorgensen.
Please support Marta Jorgensen's campaign to unseat Republican Elton Gallegly in California's 24th Congressional District.
For more information, visit her website at: www.jorgensenforcongress.com.
(Charlie's coming back after this with a vengeance. - promoted by David Dayen)
As you know, Charlie Brown just released his energy plan ---a pragmatic, "all of the above" strategy that calls for more domestic oil supply, a new energy economy that creates thousands of new jobs, and an end to the practice of spending taxpayer dollars on Middle-East oil.
Hundreds of people from across the political spectrum have signed our petition to put Charlie's plan into action.
It's been more than 12 years since Brian Bilbray first took money from Big Oil to fund his political career. Back then, gas was $1.27/gallon in the 50th district, and after a dozen years of Bilbray and his Big Oil Republican buddies, gas is well over $4/gallon. Bilbray and his cronies think the solution is to give more tax dollars to oil companies, which makes sense since that money comes back as campaign contributions- a convenient way to launder taxes into re-election funds and not actually address gas prices in any way.
Nick Leibham just outraised Bilbray int he second quarter and is spreading a bit of that cash around as direct relief to drivers in the district. This Wednesday (July 30), Leibham will roll back gas prices at three gas stations in the 50th to $1.27, just like it was before Big Oil laid down the money to push Bilbray into office. This was a HUGE success in 2006 when Larry Kissell did it in North Carolina. More than 500 people showed up for the cheap gas, snarling traffic and bringing in police to wrangle the crowds. It's a great time to be punching holes in Brian Bilbray's absurd claim of being good on environmental and energy issues. Just a quick check of his recent voting record exposes how bad it is. Responsible Federal Oil and Gas Lease Act (Use It or Lose It): No. Drill Responsibly in Leased Lands Act: No. Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act: No. Energy Independence and Security Act: No.
Bad for the environment, bad for safe energy, bad for energy security, bad for creating new jobs in energy. And this guy's supposed to be a friend of the environment and renewable energy? No.
It's really beyond the point of tolerance for Bush Dog Jim Costa, who represents the district with the worst well-being in America for its residents. As Republicans dishonestly try to bully Democrats with their meaningless "Drill Now" chant, despite the fact that offshore drilling wouldn't lower gas prices and would do nothing to secure the energy future of the nation, Costa has joined up with a bipartisan group seeking a "compromise" (read: giving in to Republican fantasies) on energy.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers seeking to craft a compromise on energy legislation includes politically vulnerable members, according to a partial list of members obtained by The Hill.
Reps. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and John Peterson (R-Pa.), who organized the group, have kept the list of participants under wraps since the recent announcement of its formal launch.
Abercrombie and Peterson previously indicated the complete list of members would be released last week but later reconsidered, saying certain members could be face political problems if their names were released.
Reps. John Tanner (D-Tenn.), Gene Green (D-Texas), Nancy Boyda (D-Kan.), Nick Lampson (D-Texas), Jim Costa (D-Calif.), Dan Boren (D-Okla.) and Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) are part of the group, according to the list.
The group met on Wednesday [...]
The bill that is being crafted breaks significantly from Democratic leadership on the topic of offshore drilling.
Boren, Costa, Green, Lampson and Nunes twice voted no on the Democratic leadership's "use it or lose it" energy drilling bill.
It'd be one thing if Costa were actually a "vulnerable member," but his "opponent" this year, Jim Lopez, has no records with the FEC, hasn't updated his campaign website in a month and a half and hasn't had an event in the district since March. Costa is about as vulnerable as Iron Man. So one must conclude that he plans to sell out the Democratic Party on energy as a matter of principle.
It is completely absurd to open up the Outer Continental Shelf to drilling when there are over 60 million acres of leased public land lying fallow. The last people with any interest in lowering gas prices are oil execs; they want offshore leases so they can keep them in reserve and tell their stockholders how much cash they're sitting on. So Costa simply wants to enrich oil company bigwigs at the expense of the middle class, and ignore the serious risk to the planet in stalling on departing from the failed energy policy of the past. This man shouldn't dare even call himself a Democrat after the work he's done in the 110th Congress.
Last week, Vice President Al Gore presented the American people with a challenge: meet 100% of our electricity needs through renewable energy within 10 years. Al would be the first to acknowledge this is not a minor task. And yet it is an urgent one, a challenge that will require a transformation in how we invest our time and money, and how we view ourselves.
I wanted to respond to Al Gore's call by asking two things of each of you:
1. Include your voice with the millions of others expressing support for this mission
2. Be part of collective solutions to make it a reality
(Cross posted from Daily Kos and various other places. This diary talks about issues important to all, including Californians. If you want to protect the coast from off-shore drilling, the change in Teamster policy is a good thing. As the Blue/Green coalition grows, it's good for all of us, no matter where we live. It's the future. I also included the updates from Daily Kos in this diary)
This is big.
Great news for all of us who seek a Blue/Green Alliance! The Teamsters today left the ANWR coalition, a group in favor of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Jim Hoffa has just announced that the Teamsters are pulling out of the coalition supporting drilling in ANWR and are shifting their support to efforts to build coalitions with green groups to create a sustainable energy economy around sources like solar, wind and geothermal.
"We are not going to drill our way out of the energy problems we are facing-not here and not in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," Hoffa told labor and environmental activists at an Oakland, Calif., summit on good jobs and clean air. "We must find a long-term approach that breaks our dependence on foreign oil by investing in the development of alternate energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal power."
As founder of the CALIFORNIA LIST I know all too well the importance of political positioning during an electoral cycle, especially when it comes to issues that matter to voters within your district. And if a particular issue is a hot button to the majority of your voters, your record had better be aligned with that voting bloc if you hope to win. This is what separates the committed legislator from the calculated chameleons. Senate District 19 is community of long-standing environmental activists and GOP candidate Tony Strickland has apparently donned his coat of many colors in his senate bid against Hannah-Beth Jackson.
Lately Strickland has been wearing a green coat of paint listing himself on the ballot as "Alternative Energy Executive," a title he dubiously earned a year ago when he co-founded GreenWave Energy Solutions. That does sound nice! After all, SD19 loves green and GreenWave Energy Solutions certainly conjures thoughts of eco-friendly energy solutions. So what is GreenWave and what has Strickland done in his tenure as co-founder, and more importantly, what has Strickland done for the environment before his eco-heroic rebirth?
Our governor was on This Week this morning and as Arnold has a largely undeserved reputation for being an environmentalist George Stephanopoulos decided to ask him some questions on that topic. The answers were quite revealing, and should give Obama a major opening to attack McCain should he be interested in doing so.
ABC doesn't yet have a transcript up, so I'm borrowing from John Campanelli's transcription. First up, he destroys McCain on oil drilling:
Arnold: I have no interest in off-shore drilling off California. People can do it wherever they want...[McCain] can give us the rights to drill offshore but we will say "No thanks, we will not drill because we want to protect our coasts.
Stephanopoulos: That's more important than bringing down the price of gas, bringing down the price of oil?
Arnold: First of all, let me tell you, anyone who tells you drilling, nuclear power, alternative fuel, fuel cells will bring down the price right now is pulling wool over your eyes because we know that will all take at least 10 years.
Which is of course the point I made when this drilling nonsense first emerged. Offshore drilling will line oil company pockets and contribute absolutely nothing to the easing of gas prices. The "wool over your eyes" comment is priceless - let's hope the Obama campaign replays that quote often in the days and weeks to come.
Arnold took the opportunity to go further in explaining the need for a sustainable energy policy, praising Jimmy Carter's approach:
Arnold: But it doesn't mean we shouldn't do those things. The problem in America is not that we don't have ideas. It's that we aren't consistent. Jimmy Carter in the late '70s came in with a great energy policy. He talked about (couldn't make this out), tax credits for people investing in windmills, and all those things. And then President Reagan came in and scrapped the whole thing because oil prices came down and said it didn't make sense financially. Well, many countries all over the world stayed with the program even though oil prices came down. In Germany, with solar, they've been working on it for 30 years and they are number one in solar. I think that is what we need to do. We need to stay the course. We got to go and stay, "Here's the plan: here's how we get energy independent. We need renewables, we need nuclear power, we need alternative fuels. All of those kind of things. Let's do research. Let's never go off course, no matter who the administration is or no matter what the oil prices. Let's stay on course. That's the big problem in America.
It's a great set of points he makes - Carter's energy policy was smart, but Reagan came to power and promised America a painless return to the cheap oil days of the 1950s and led a conservative attack on sustainable energy and transportation alternatives. America certainly would have been better off had we continued with the late 1970s energy policy instead of abandoning it for cheap political gain.
Stephanopoulos went on to ask Arnold if he'd serve in an Obama cabinet, Arnold said he won't rule it out. That may be the main media takeaway from the interview, but the more important statements were those quoted above. Arnold does recognize the need for a more sensible energy policy and also admits that McCain isn't on board with it - instead McCain prefers to continue the failed policies of Reagan and Bush, policies that have caused gas prices to soar and thrown our economy into recession.
Of course we need to not go too far here. Arnold's own record on energy and the environment is not good. His water bond proposal would ruin the Delta and spend $9 billion on wasteful and damaging dams. He greenwashed himself with AB 32, but continues to target public transportation for crippling cuts. He has endorsed Proposition 1 on high speed rail but hasn't taken a leading role in campaigning for it. He could help implement a wind and solar strategy in California, along the lines of what Proposition 7 proposes, but prefers to remain silent on the matter.
So ultimately his appearance on This Week is more of the usual environmental grandstanding we've come to know and love from our governor. But this time it has political value for Democrats and Obama in particular, who would be smart to exploit these comments for all they're worth. It would be a good way for Obama in particular to start flipping the script and generating his own news for a change.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said today he opposes lifting a ban on new oil drilling in coastal waters, breaking with President Bush and Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
He called California's coastline "an international treasure" that must be protected by a federal oil-drilling moratorium that has been in place for 27 years.
"We're serious about that, and we're not going to change that," he told reporters and business executives at BIO International, an annual biotechnology industry conference in San Diego.
Schwarzenegger, who has endorsed McCain's presidential bid, said the federal offshore drilling ban was not to blame for soaring gas prices. In a statement issued earlier in the day, the governor said technological innovations and expanded fuel choices for consumers ultimately will lead the way to reduced fuel costs.
"We are in this situation because of our dependence on traditional petroleum-based oil," Schwarzenegger said in the statement, which referred only to Bush's call for lifting the ban and did not mention McCain.
He missed mass transit and smarter, more dense development, but in the main Arnold is right. Sen. Feinstein and Speaker Bass are quoted in the article as well dismissing the notion of offshore development as a stunt. GOP wingnut-in-charge Dave Cogdill, on the other hand, has a catch phrase:
"Personally, yes, I believe we need to be drilling in our own reserves," Sen. Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, said today during a news conference related to the state budget. "We need to use the resources available to us in this country."
He said it would reduce the country's dependence on foreign oil and would help drive down the cost of gasoline.
"So I am a very strong supporter, as I think most of my caucus is, in the catch phase 'Drill here, drill now, pay less,'" Cogdill said. "It's certainly a better energy policy relating to the needs of the citizens of the United States."
Except there's little to drill, the oil companies don't want to do any drilling but want the reserves to line their pockets, and the structural problem with a carbon-based economy lingers.
So the real slogan is, "Drill here. Drill now. Run out sooner. Get no benefits for 10 years."
