On the eve of one of our major events of the year, here’s a quick update on one of our recent events and some well-deserved kudos to our friends in the state legislature.
Each year for the last 13 years, CLCV has organized a Lobby Day in Sacramento, when representatives of California’s environmental community can meet with legislators and staff to talk about our priorities for the year. At this year’s Lobby Day reception in April, we recognized the first-year legislators who scored a perfect 100% in our most recent California Environmental Scorecard. (Read more in the Scorecardpress release.)
Those freshman legislators with 100% scores included, as pictured from left to right: Assemblymember Jared Huffman, Assemblymember Mike Eng, Assemblymember Jim Beall [pronounced like “Bell,” incidentally], Senator Alex Padilla, (CLCV Executive Director Susan Smartt), Assemblymember Mary Hayashi, Assemblymember Mark DeSaulnier, and Assemblymember Curren Price (Assemblymember Sandre Swanson is pictured separately).
Congratulations and thank you to all the legislators who work closely with us, even the ones that didn’t have a perfect score. (There’s always this year.)
By now you are all probably aware that our Vice President is a noted energy expert (see also $4.00/gallon gasoline at your local pump), international diplomat (see 5th anniversary of our victory in Iraq) and noted hunter (see VP shoots friend in the face). You are probably not aware that our renaissance VP is an accomplished oceanologist and cetologist. Thankfully, he has intervened to stop misguided attempts by less expert government “scientists” to severely inhibit international trade by lowering ship speeds in waters where endangered right whales calve. These are the same waters where the pesky whales are prone to ram high speed cargo vessels and sometimes damage the ships’ delicate paint. Based on the Vice President’s superior insights, Cheney’s office repeatedly argued that such rules were not needed. Radical California Congressman Henry Waxman (D-Real World) now crazily demands that the administration stop delaying the “science” based rules to protect the right whale. Waxman seems blissfully unaware that there are 350 of the whales left in the world’s oceans, a veritable infestation!
Assertions that Cheney advocated using polar bears as ship’s bumpers to soften impacts with the whales have not yet been confirmed.
To inform the voters and complete its endorsement process, on April 24th Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters (LALCV) presented a televised debate between the two leading candidates running in the 2nd District seat for Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. With over two million residents, the 2nd Supervisorial District faces daunting environmental challenges in an atmosphere of budget constraints and a sagging economy. Presented to a packed house of 300 people at the Westside Jewish Community Center, the one hour debate was lively, informative and well covered by the electronic and print media, including the Los Angeles Times, LATimes Blog, Los Angeles Dailey News, The Dailey Breeze, KABC TV News, and public radio stationKPCC . KCRW and KPFK also provided debate coverage.
The candidates, Los Angeles City Councilmember Bernard Parks and State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas, presented strongly contrasting styles in their approach government. Parks fretted about the availability of resources and more than once placed action second to educating constituents in correct behavior. Rather than banning plastic shopping bags, Parks advocated for the status quo combined with educating consumers. Senator Ridley-Thomas took a more forceful approach. He pledged to establish an Environmental Affairs Department for Los Angeles County, to do an exhaustive search of all sources of public and private funding to finance new parks for the nations most park poor region and to bring needed transparency to county governance. Indeed, the senator sealed the case for his candidacy when he told the crowd, “It is not acceptable to push problems to other levels of government; leadership steps up”.
After the debate, the LALCV Board met to discuss which candidate was the best environmental choice for Los Angeles County Supervisor 2nd District seat. After an hour reviewing the candidates written responses to the LALCV questionnaire, their debate performance and the candidates past performance in public office, LALCV voted to endorse Senator Mark-Ridley Thomas.
At a time when the climate crisis is the single greatest problem facing society, the Bush administration is still playing games. On Tuesday, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters announced a new Bush administration proposal to increase fuel economy standards for new cars and light trucks. By 2015, passenger cars will need to achieve 35.7 mpg and trucks need to reach 28.6 mpg. Considering the fact that CAFE standards haven’t increased since their introduction three decades ago, this is a very good step forward.
But like all environmental issues the administration has involved itself with, this deal has a catch. Attached to what would at first seem like a fantastic and progressive first step in meeting the challenges of both climate change and the energy crisis is a provision to prevent California and other states to have stronger restrictions:
Buried inside the 417-page proposal is a section that would prevent states, such as California, from regulating tailpipe fuel economy standards.
California Attorney General Jerry Brown said the provisions were a “covert assault” on his state’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He vowed to “fight it every step of the way and we will sue them if necessary.”
Brown said the “pre-emption” language in the plan ignored rulings by the Supreme Court and two federal district courts that said the federal gas mileage standards were separate from state greenhouse gas regulations.
Good ol’ fine print. Now things are starting to make sense. Late in December last year, Head of the EPA Stephen Johnson denied California the necessary waiver as required by the Clean Air Act to restrict tailpipe emissions beyond federal levels. Johnson was heavily criticized because he gave no serious justification for why he was doing so, especially because it defied the precedent of the EPA. Fran Pavley’s AB 1493 was put on hold with California and the 14 other states following California’s lead left waiting for a new and more open-minded administration or a court ruling that would force Johnson to provide the waiver. Continue reading "A Problem with New CAFE Standard Plan"
CLCV has long been fighting to get Senator Alan Lowenthal’s SB 974 passed and signed into law. His bill would place a fee on shipping containers inter the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to ease the ports’ health impacts and the dire impacts of goods movement on the transportation infrastructure throughout the region.
Now, under the leadership of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the Port of Los Angeles has taken an important step forward in protecting public health by reducing the pollution generated by thousands of diesel trucks hauling freight to and from the port.
This is not only a big victory for everyone and everything that breathes in the port’s airshed, but a major step forward in improving the lives of the truckers who haul the freight.
The filing deadline to run for president in the Democratic primary passed, and the media turned away from former Vice President Al Gore. He was not going to run. In an instant, all of the stories about Gore being a prospective candidate or how he compared to the other candidates in the polls disappeared and his name stopped appearing in headlines.
But now they’re back.
Last week, Gore announced that his organization the Alliance for Climate Protection is launching a $300 million bipartisan campaign to not only raise public awareness of the climate crisis as an issue, but to make it a priority issue in the public’s mind. And what better way to start off the campaign than by launching a new slide show -an update to An Inconvenient Truth.
In the new presentation, Gore notes that the climate crisis is complex because it’s both the problem of the crisis itself and a problem of getting people to take action to stop it. Quoting the work of LCV and CLCV’s Heat Is On campaign, he stressed how little attention has been given to the issue in the media during this presidential cycle (with over three thousand questions asked during the presidential debates, no more than two questions on the climate crisis were ever asked by a single network).
More importantly, he called for people to act -not just by being more conscious about the environmental impacts of what we do as individuals but to act towards improving things on a broader scope. As Gore stated,
As important as it is to change the light bulbs, it’s more important to change the laws. In order to be optimistic about [the climate crisis] we have to become incredibly active as citizens in our democracy. In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis.
The New York Times published an editorial worth reading today noting California’s stand-out progress in reducing energy consumption over the last twenty years. Don’t be put off by the tongue in cheek title, “California Feuding.” The editorial notes that California was the first to regulate air pollution, was an early innovator in nurturing solar energy, and has led the nation in setting greenhouse gas emission controls. Given California’s enormous economic growth since 1980, these are not trivial accomplishments.
Facing the world-changing stakes of dealing with global warming, it is good to remember that thoughtful and committed activists can achieve progress, can change the future. Let’s all take a deep breath, get ourselves centered, and savor our victories. It will strengthen us for the hard tasks ahead.
By now you are all probably aware that our Vice President is a noted 
To inform the voters and complete its endorsement process, on April 24th 
The filing deadline to run for president in the Democratic primary passed, and the media turned away from former Vice President Al Gore. He was not going to run. In an instant, all of the stories about Gore being a prospective candidate or how he compared to the other candidates in the polls disappeared and his name stopped appearing in headlines.
