Early voting is already underway (I just got mine in the mail yesterday) so I thought I'd toss this out there in case anyone's interested. Every election we have to sort through a ton of these initiatives. I encourage everyone to read through the fine print yourself, and to turn off the teevee entirely, given the utter dreck that passes for ads and debate out there. For what it's worth, this is how I see 'em.
Every ballot has a collection of themes, this ballot comes down to four: Pot Legalization, Redistricting, Taxes and Budget, and Global Warming:
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."
As we're all painfully aware, during the '00s the US media have become ardent defenders of the status quo, generally unwilling to discuss harsh realities that might threaten that status quo unless absolutely forced to do so - Hurricane Katrina, for example, or the reaction to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Perhaps the most significant issue not being discussed in the media is peak oil - which, in its simplistic form, explains why the high fuel prices we are seeing today are going to be a permanent feature of life.
Gas prices are NEVER coming back down - rising demand is meeting a shrinking supply and the result is the end of the cheap oil that modern America was built upon.
As gas prices remain high more media outlets are discussing energy policy but only lately are they beginning to acknowledge that the era of cheap oil is over. Today's Los Angeles Times starts examining the topic with a front-page feature, Envisioning a world of $200-a-barrel oil. It focuses on how consumers, transportation, and global trade will be affected, and even tries to examine the "upside" to this, particularly the eventual localization of American life, perhaps the closest a major American media outlet has come to embracing the ideas of Jim Kunstler.
The article is a good beginning, but it avoids the key question of how we ought to respond. Videoconferencing and staycations are not substitutes for statewide initiatives to deal with the crisis. The article discusses the airline crisis but doesn't discuss ways to provide alternative forms of transportation such as high speed rail. Nor does it discuss ways to encourage more renewable energy sources, or local food production, or urban density.
Still, just as it took Al Gore's movie to convince Californians to take even the small step of climate change action embodied in AB 32, so too will it take the media's willingness to tell Californians that cheap oil is over to produce action on shifting our state away from an oil-based economy.
Cheap oil was responsible for much of the prosperity of the postwar era, especially in California. It enabled people to find an affordable home to purchase, even if it was distant from their workplace. It enabled them to buy inexpensive food without needing to grow their own. It enabled the development of global trade networks that provided markets for Californian products and services.
The end of cheap oil is welcome from an ecological perspective but it will finish off working Californians if we don't proactively work to build a post-oil infrastructure to provide for prosperity, just as we spent the 1950s and 1960s building an infrastructure around oil to provide for prosperity.
Newspapers like the LA Times could help show Californians the need for and value of such projects. It will require them to break with the status quo - but Californians are already doing so in practice, riding mass transit and even their bikes in much higher numbers than ever before. In the absence of media coverage of our changing state, we in the blogs will do what we can to keep up.
Back in November I wrote about Santa Cruz County's "wrong way" proposal to pass a tax measure to spend $600 million on widening the Highway 1 freeway but would have delivered virtually nothing for local passenger rail, despite the fact that the infrastructure to provide rail already exists.
Happily, wiser heads appear to have prevailed. The county's Regional Transportation Commission voted to kill the plan yesterday, meaning it won't go to the ballot in November as originally intended. Erosion of public support was cited as the reason for the decision. The county's Business Council withdrew its support and, more importantly, its promise to fund the plan's campaign; bicycle and transit supporters objected to the inadequate rail funding; the Sierra Club criticized the road's effect on climate change; and local Republicans demanded that the freeway widening alone be funded.
I predicted that the plan would have failed at the ballot box, and I'm not surprised that it didn't even make it that far. The tide is beginning to turn against using freeways to solve our transportation problems. Last November Seattle voters rejected a plan that would have added 160 miles of new freeway lanes, even though they have some of the nation's worst traffic (outside of California, of course). And this week the Coastal Commission rejected a toll road through San Onofre State Beach, rightly choosing to protect the environment over continuing our outdated reliance on highway transportation.
By refusing to waste precious tax dollars on freeway lanes, Santa Cruz County has taken the first step toward solving its transportation issues in a sustainable and responsible way. This gives county leaders and activists time to educate the public about the need for passenger rail, and come back to voters in a few years with a plan that will actually provide for the county's needs, instead of foolishly trying to pretend that the methods of the 20th century can continue.
Hopefully we in Monterey County will follow Santa Cruz' lead - transportation officials here are proposing a similar roads-focused tax plan, having stripped $90 million to bring Caltrain to Salinas. Public hearings are going on next week, so if you're in Monterey County, speak out in favor of sustainable transportation, and against sticking our heads in the sand on climate change and peak oil!
A Caltrain rail extension is no longer on a list of projects that Monterey County transportation officials hope a sales tax will help fund over the next quarter century.
On Wednesday, the Transportation Agency for Monterey County board approved a 25-year improvement package wish-list that boasts more than 20 road and transit projects at a cost of $1.8 billion.
TAMC is working to place a half-cent sales tax on the November 2008 ballot that would generate an estimated $980 million. The county would seek matching state and federal funding to pay for the rest of the work.
Over the summer, officials from the Monterey County Hospitality Association and the Monterey County Farm Bureau withheld their support from an earlier draft sales tax proposal, arguing there wasn't enough focus on highway and roads projects that would benefit their industries. They also complained about proposed spending on a Caltrain rail project included in the earlier draft.
But after TAMC officials eliminated the rail spending, both groups sent a letter last month indicating they would back the sales tax effort.
This is madness. The TAMC proposal is reckless planning and poor public policy - locking Monterey County into a roads-only future for the next 25 years puts our economy at risk and will cause us to miss out on leveraged funding opportunities. We can become nationwide leaders in sustainable tourism and sustainable agriculture, but not if we believe against all available evidence that the 20th century dependence on roads can be continued for much longer.
As anyone who's had the misfortune to be stuck in a traffic jam on Highway 1 in Santa Cruz County knows, there's a major traffic problem on the northern end of Monterey Bay. High housing costs in Santa Cruz have spurred growth over in Watsonville, where homes are (relatively) more affordable. When combined with the job engine of Silicon Valley just over the hill, this means there's a LOT of traffic on Highway 1.
So what should be done? Widen the freeway? Take advantage of the rail line that connects Watsonville to Santa Cruz to provide commuter rail and take the pressure off of Highway 1?
Highway 1 widening has been very contentious - a 2004 plan to widen the freeway was shot down by voters - and so it is somewhat surprising to see that a Santa Cruz County transportation tax force has suggested trying again in November 2008, with another 1/2 cent sales tax that would largely go toward an additional freeway lane and only a pittance for rail.
Environmentalists and transit advocates, led by Friends of the Rail Trail and former Santa Cruz mayor and Democratic candidate for AD-27 (should Prop 93 fail) Emily Reilly, have denounced the proposal and vowed to fight for transportation alternatives.
What I want to do here is explain why they are right, why Santa Cruz needs to seize this opportunity to lead the state into a more sustainable and effective transportation future. Instead of trying in vain to keep the 20th century alive, we need to realize our limits and embrace a more sensible vision for the 21st century.
(This seems like a no-brainer. - promoted by blogswarm)
Once upon a time, a network of streetcars and commuter trains knit the small cities of the Sacramento area together with the urban core. And then, for a variety of reasons - the popularization of automobiles, corporate buyouts, shifts in zoning laws and the rise of low-density suburban developments - the infrastructure that supported a walkable urban center withered away for a half century or so.
And yet recently, the cities of West Sacramento and Sacramento have been exploring the possibility of running a streetcar line across the Tower Bridge over to the Capital Mall, linking it up with Sacramento's existing light rail system. This makes sense as part of a larger recent development trend towards reurbanization, reflected in the Railyards project in Sacramento and the flurry of condos being thrown up in West Sacramento. Were the population density to get high enough, and the streetcar priced reasonably enough to actually make the use of it a real alternative to driving across the Tower Bridge into Sac (or, in the other direction, from Sac to the Rivercats stadium), establishing a streetcar could help build the kind of walkable, urbane neighborhoods that this country used to have before the car changed everything, and which cities like Sacramento are going to need in the future when post-peak gas prices render low density development unfeasible.
Join us and our panel as we look at the status of energy today and the policy and scientific solutions. Are you worried about peak oil? Feel a squeeze from high gas prices? Come to the Science Cafe Energy Forum and participate in a panel discussion on energy and the issues we face today.
Panel:
- U.S. Rep. John Campbell (R-Newport Beach)
- Dr. Mark Musculus, Sandia National Laboratories California
- Mr. Jim Maclay, Doctoral Candidate (LEED Certified), UC Irvine National Fuel Cell Research Center
Moderator:
Mr. Pat Brennan, Environment Editor, The Orange County Register
Follow me after the flip for all the details about today's event...
(Today's the day... But there's still time if you'd like to reserve a spot at Surf City's awesome library to join us tonight (ON MY BIRTHDAY!!) to discuss "Our Energy Future"! : ) - promoted by atdleft)
OK, I know that this is on the event calendar...
However, I wanted to make sure tonight that all of you know about what's happening this Saturday (BESIDES MY BIRTHDAY!!!!) in OC. And for all of you in Southern California, the best birthday present that you could possibly give me would be joining me in Surf City this Saturday to learn more about peak oil, and what we can do about it.
Please Join Democracy for America-Orange County
For an Evening with
Debbie Cook
Huntington Beach Mayor Pro Tem
And a Presentation on
Our Energy Future
Global oil production increased eight fold from 1950 to 2005. It has transformed the planet and the way we live. As the largest consumers of fossil fuels in the world, Americans need to educate themselves about this incredible resource and the geologic, political and economic constraints that will impact its quantity, quality and availability in the future.
Debbie Cook, a nationally recognized expert on this critical issue, will help us understand Our Energy Future.
For location, time, and RSVP info, please follow me after the flip...
As anyone who's had the misfortune to be stuck in a traffic jam on Highway 1 in Santa Cruz County knows, there's a major traffic problem on the northern end of Monterey Bay. High housing costs in Santa Cruz have spurred growth over in Watsonville, where homes are (relatively) more affordable. When combined with the job engine of Silicon Valley just over the hill, this means there's a LOT of traffic on Highway 1.