jerry brown bak

1018 capt some new here, legacy assessment

jerry brown kpfa show pretty radical, stepping stone back into politics, --> oakland mayor

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https://www.rawstory.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-2650170676/

qAnon-loving Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2018 posted a bizarre conspiracy theory on her Facebook page involving then-California Gov. Jerry Brown using a giant space laser to deliberately start wildfires.

Media Matters on Thursday revealed that Greene, in a since-deleted Facebook post from November 2018, speculated that Brown started the fires in order to clear out forests in areas where he wanted to build a high-speed rail line up the California coast.

At the center of Greene's theory was a partnership between utility company Pacific Gas and Electricity (PG&E) and renewable energy startup Solaren.

Greene argued that PG&E and Solaren sent solar power generators up into space that were then used to beam the sun's energy back down to Earth to start the California wildfires.

"If they are beaming the suns energy back to Earth, I'm sure they wouldn't ever miss a transmitter receiving station right??!!" she wrote. "What would that look like anyway? A laser beam or light beam coming down to Earth I guess. Could that cause a fire? Hmmm, I don't know. I hope not! That wouldn't look so good for PG&E, Rothschild Inc, Solaren or Jerry Brown who sure does seem fond of PG&E."

See Greene's full post at this link.

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NEW

new book 11/18 Browns of CA (prev chavez cesar) ranch

https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-november-12-2018/

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Resistance Hero or Hypocrite? Jerry Brown’s Mixed Legacy Paints a Complicated Picture for California Progressives AN

https://www.alternet.org/resistance-hero-or-hypocrite-jerry-browns-mixed-legacy-paints-complicated-picture-california

... supporters of this bill believe these “injection centers” will have positive impacts, including the reduction of deaths, disease and infections from drug use. Other authorities — including law enforcement, drug court judges and some who provide rehabilitative treatment — strongly disagree that the “harm reduction” approach envisioned by AB 186 is beneficial.

Brown loves nothing more than framing things this way — fact-free, if need be — so that he can position himself in the Solomon-like center ... and then shift whichever way he likes. Thus positioned, he wrote that "the disadvantages of this bill far outweigh the possible benefits," that he did not believe it would reduce drug addiction, and that a punitive element had to be included in order to be effective: "Both incentives and sanctions are needed. One without the other is futile." He concluded by saying, "I repeat, enabling illegal and destructive drug use will never work. ... AB 186 is all carrot and no stick."

It was classic Jerry Brown: seeking to strike a “balance” between left and right, between compassion and punishment, casting progressives as naïve and simple-minded, and himself as sensible, pragmatic and wise. "There is no silver bullet, quick fix or piecemeal approach that will work. A comprehensive effort at the state and local level is required," he wrote.

But safe injection sites have always been advanced as an important part of more comprehensive efforts, and it’s willful ignorance to claim otherwise misunderstands this. Brown lectured public health experts with years of training and decades of experience as if they were children asking for candy. "California has never had enough drug treatment programs and does not have enough now,” he wrote. Gee, maybe he should complain to the governor about that!

This was further underscored by his uneven approach to bills at odds with federal law or policy. He signed some, even defiantly, while vetoing others, giving the conflict with federal law as part of his reasoning. Sometimes sound reasoning can support such differences (see net neutrality below, for example), but Brown’s signing statements give little, if any, hint of what that might be.If this account makes Brown seem preening, hypocritical and deliberately ill-informed, then it’s done its job. All too often, that’s who Jerry Brown has shown himself to be when the chips are down. He looks great in contrast to conservative bogeymen, dating back to his 1970s refusal to live in the lavish new governor’s mansion that Ronald Reagan built, and living in a rented apartment instead. He’s good at catching the winds of progressive change, as he did with his record of diversity in appointments during his first two-term stint as governor. But when the winds grow turbulent, there’s no telling which way he’ll turn.

With that in mind, we can turn to his final signing record, and see it as symptomatic of how far progressives have moved the ball, where they’ve made it impossible to equivocate, and where there’s more work to be done.

Headline-grabbers

Above I mention four big issues in Brown’s final agenda: net neutrality, placing women on corporate boards, a carbon-free future and ending cash bail. The first three are relatively straightforward progressive wins, though not without complications. The fourth is far more ambiguous, with leading supporters turning against it during the amendment process.

Net neutrality (SB 822) was arguably Brown’s cleanest progressive bill-signing, even if Attorney General Jeff Sessions immediately filed suit to stop it. “Under the constitution, states do not regulate interstate commerce – the federal government does,” Sessions said in a statement. “Once again, the California legislature has enacted an extreme and illegal state law attempting to frustrate federal policy.”

The bill’s co-sponsor, State Sen. Scott Wiener, shot back: “We've been down this road before: when Trump and Sessions sued California and claimed we lacked the power to protect immigrants. California fought Trump and Sessions on their immigration lawsuit — California won — and California will fight this lawsuit as well.” Stanford University cyber-law expert Barbara van Schewick explained the basic legal argument:

An agency that has no power to regulate has no power to preempt the states, according to case law. When the FCC repealed the 2015 Open Internet Order, it said it had no power to regulate broadband internet access providers. That means the FCC cannot prevent the states from adopting net neutrality protections because the FCC’s repeal order removed its authority to adopt such protections.

Things were a little messier with SB 826, requiring publicly-held companies to include women on their boards of directors. It was a striking gender equity gesture on Brown’s part, but he vetoed bills impacting many more non-elite women: one that would have required public university student health centers to provide abortion medication, and make medication abortion services available, and another that would've required employers to provide a private space for employees to express breast milk. Still, it was another first-in-the-nation move, and Brown did advance a rationale for signing a bill that could well be struck down:

There have been numerous objections to this bill and serious legal concerns have been raised. I don't minimize the potential flaws that indeed may prove fatal to its ultimate implementation. Nevertheless, recent events in Washington, D.C. -- and beyond -- make it crystal clear that many are not getting the message.

As far back as 1886, and before women were even allowed to vote, corporations have been considered persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment .... Given all the special privileges that corporations have enjoyed for so long, it's high time corporate boards include the people who constitute more than half the "persons" in America.

That’s Jerry Brown at his best. If only he hadn’t vetoed those other gender-equity bills almost in the same breath — a clear reminder that class and gender can never really be separated for progressives.

On climate change, Brown signed SB 100, committing California to carbon-free energy by 2045, another major trend-setting move. But Brown’s cozy relationship with oil producers (Salon stories hereand here), was not dispelled in his final days, as noted by RL Miller, chair of the California Democratic Party’s Environmental Caucus, and founder of the Climate Hawks Vote super-PAC.

“Brown's legacy on climate change will forever be defined by what he didn't do -- address oil production in California -- as much as what he did,” Miller told Salon. “He'll be remembered for [promising] 100 percent clean electricity by 2045, even though all he did was sign the bill -- it was Kevin de León's baby and Brown never lifted a finger before lifting the signing pen,” she said. (De León, the progressive state senator now running against Sen. Dianne Feinstein, also co-authored SB 822, the net neutrality bill.)

Although Brown will be remembered for enacting a “broad suite of energy efficiency regulations," Miller continued, "he has made it clear that he's happy to work with the oil extraction industry in California even as California produces the dirtiest, most carbon intensive oil on the planet. I'm hoping that the next governor [almost certainly current Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom] can confront the industry rather than cooperate with them.”

If the way forward on climate change is clear the same cannot be said about Brown's fourth headline-grabber, and end to cash bail in California. This was supposed to be a landmark achievement, in activists’ eyes. Other states have reduced cash bail, including New Jersey, New Mexico and Kentucky, but California will be the first state to eliminate it. But the bill that emerged (backed by the state court's Judicial Council) has gone so far off-track — adopting a computer risk-assessment tool that could defeat the whole purpose — that it drew the opposition of major initial supporters.

The new system will release people accused of most misdemeanors, while those accused of more serious crimes can be held until their arraignment or trial, based on the decisions of judges and prosecutors, relying on the mandated use of pretrial risk assessments. But such algorithms can encode hidden bias, just as judges and prosecutors can.

"The ACLU, NAACP and Human Rights Watch all abandoned their support for a move they initially hailed as a breakthrough for justice and fairness," Politico reported. "In these backers-turned-detractors’ eyes, eliminating bail was a means to an end: The real goal was fewer people in jail before trial. They now worry that California will head in the opposite direction."

.@JerryBrownGov #BailReform is needed, but NOT #SB10which replaces the predatory for-profit bail system with a system that threatens to expand unfair incarceration of communities of color. https://t.co/zQ7MZyU15o

— John Legend (@johnlegend) August 23, 2018

“We are concerned that the system that’s being put into place by this bill is too heavily weighted toward detention and does not have sufficient safeguards to ensure that racial justice is provided in the new system,” the ACLU’s Natasha Minsker told NPR.

"I was disappointed and I felt betrayed," San Francisco public defender Chesa Boudin told NPR, in another program. "The new SB 10 doesn't actually change the racist system of mass incarceration. It just expands it."

But some advocates still supported it, such as Joshua Norkin, who coordinates the New York Legal Aid Society’s decarceration project. “These types of reforms are generational,” Norkin told Politico, “and if you give up an opportunity for a substantial reduction in the jail population by passing a watered-down reform, then you may give up an opportunity to revisit that issue for another 20 years.”

This underscores is a persistent difficulty: organizing against an existing evil entails one logic, creating a positive good entails another. The two sometimes overlap, but often pull apart at crucial junctures. That’s what’s happened now with the signing of SB 10. It means that bail abolitionists will have to intensify their work on developing and articulating a much clearer, compelling and practical vision of what they are advocating for — work that Black Lives Matter activists in particular have advanced dramatically in recent years.

In that same spirit, several other criminal justice-related bills are worth noting, most notably, two significant police accountability bills Brown signed: AB 748, requiring the release of body camera footage within 45 days of a police shooting or any use of force that causes death or great bodily harm, and SB 1421, allowing public access to police records in use-of-force cases, as well as sustained investigations into on-the-job dishonesty or sexual assault. The later reverses a law signed by Brown during his first two-term stint as governor.

Brown also signed two significant juvenile justice bills: SB 1391, which prohibits 14- and 15-year-old criminal defendants from being tried as adults, and SB 439, which ends the prosecution of children under age 12, except for murder and forcible sexual assault. In a similar spirit, Brown signed SB 1437, providing that an accomplice to murder will no longer necessarily be subject to the same sentence as the actual killer.

A mixed bag: #GunSense, #MeToo and immigration

Two other areas saw a lot a progress, marred by some striking vetoes. Gun safety was strengthened by a number straightforward measures: Raising the minimum age to purchase any firearm to 21; imposing lifetime gun ownership bans on "dangerous gun owners" and those convicted of domestic violence; requiring applicants for concealed-carry weapons permits to undergo training and testing; a ban on "bump stocks"; and making clear that ammunition can be confiscated as part of a gun-violence restraining order.

But Brown also made several frustrating vetoes, on bills allowing co-workers, employers or teachers to request gun violence restraining orders; banning gun shows in San Francisco; and limiting purchases of rifles and shotguns to one per month.

Brown also signed two significant bills aligned with the #MeToo movement, while vetoing two others. He signed SB 820, banning nondisclosure agreements in sexual harassment, assault and discrimination cases, and SB 1300, prohibiting employers from forcing new employees or those seeking raises to sign non-disparagement agreements or waive their right to file legal claims.

And then there were his two vetoes: AB 1870, which would have extended the deadline to file a harassment or discrimination complaint from one year to three, and AB 3080, which would have banned employers requiring private arbitration rather than going to court. In his veto message, Brown wrote that the bill “plainly violates federal law,” which did not stop him on other bills he signed, as noted above

That bill was the only measure that reached the Brown's desk this year to be labeled a “job killer” by the California Chamber of Commerce. That label is a device used to push the notion that the real purpose of business is to “give” people jobs — the private jets and mansions accumulated by CEOs are just a minor side effect. But for all its absurdity, the Chamber remains a powerful adversary for progressives in the state.

Altogether, the Chamber has identified 218 "job-killer" bills during Brown's current two-term stint. Only 12 percent have reached his desk, with 15 being signed and 11 vetoed. That's an even better record, from the Chamber's point of view, than under previous governors: About 27 percent of them reached Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk (and he vetoed nearly all of those), while almost 36 percent reached Democratic Gov. Gray Davis' desk, and he signed most that did. By its own rough accounting, the business lobby has grown significantly more successful over time, even as GOP power in the state has shrunk.

Finally, Brown quietly vetoed two bills aligned with California’s “Sanctuary State” stance in opposition to the Trump administration: SB 349, which would have prohibited immigration authorities from making arrests inside courthouses and SB 174, which would have allowed non-citizens, legal residents or otherwise, to serve on state and local boards and commissions that now require citizenship. (In the 19th century, European-born non-citizens were encouraged to similar civic participation. But that was a different time, and they were "white.")

Off the radar screen

Nowhere on the national radar screen is one very important California bill dealing with wage theft. Wage theft is a massive criminal problem concentrated on lower-income workers. A 2017 report from the Economic Policy Institute estimated annual losses of $15 billion, slightly more than the $14.3 billion in property theft losses estimated by the FBI in 2015. In California, port truckers are especially hard hit, due to their misclassification as “independent owner operators” and getting saddled with the multi-billion dollar costs of new, cleaner-burning trucks since 2008.

A 2014 report from the National Employment Law Project, "The Big Rig Overhaul" estimated wage and hour law violations in the range of $787 million to $998 million each year. Stepped-up state labor law enforcement has since resulted in more than $45 million in judgments due to 400 drivers, but with inadequate enforcement, largely due to Trump-style shell company shenanigans, the practice has continued unabated.

SB 1402, which Brown signed on Sept. 22, could change that dramatically by making retailers jointly liable for wage theft by the transportation companies they employ. “Retailers using their power to end exploitation and restore good jobs for workers at our ports will mean port truckers are left behind no more,” said the bill’s author, state Sen. Ricardo Lara. It could make an enormous difference for the 16,000 misclassified port drivers in California, and similar laws could benefit almost 50,000 port truckers nationwide, if other states follow suit. But the joint liability model could help combat wage theft more broadly, perhaps helping millions. It’s an innovative new approach whose significance has yet to be realized, but it’s come about only after more than a decade of trucker organizing, with 16 strikes in the last five years.

What’s missing?

What’s not included in Jerry Brown's legacy are three big things: missing from all of the above are three things: Reducing income inequality (California’s poverty rate still leads the nation), strengthening democracy and advancing progressive causes more generally. All three are broadly interconnected, since California’s electorate — like America’s as a whole — is considerably less progressive and less concerned about income inequality than the general population as a whole, a fact that I’ve written about before.

Any measures that would substantially increase voting and political participation would, almost by default, greatly increase support for progressive policies, and make it easier to turn them into reality.

The 1999 book, “Reading Mixed Signals” by Albert H. Cantril and Susan David Cantril found that the pool of likely voters was almost evenly divided between supporters and critics of government, while those unlikely to vote were far more supportive of government programs, 55 percent to 32 percent. This divide is even sharper looking only at steady supporters and critics—those whose ideological views align most consistently with support or opposition to specific spending programs. Steady critics are 24 percent of likely voters, but only 12 percent of unlikely and non-voters, while steady supporters increase from 36 percent of likely voters to 42 percent of unlikely and non-voters. In short, those who don't like government are far more likely to vote than those who do.

As I noted here in July 2017, the same general findings apply to California specifically:

In 2006, the Public Policy Institute of California produced a report, “California's Exclusive Electorate,” which I wrote about at the time. It found that “the difference between voters and nonvoters is especially stark in attitudes toward government’s role; elected officials; and many social issues, policies, and programs.” Nonvoters, for instance, were found to prefer higher taxes and more services to lower taxes and fewer services by an enormous margin, 66 to 26 percent. Among actual voters, the split was nearly even: 49 to 44 percent.

I went on to note that a more recent PPIC update report had similar findings. While California is currently awash in activism focused on midterm turnout in key House districts, what’s missing is a coherent long-term plan to increase the participation of currently disengaged voters. There’s nothing in the legislative process to address this, so no bills showed up for Brown to sign or veto. But it’s the single most important thing for progressives in California to addreww if they really want the state to live up to its reputation as a harbinger of change.

Four things could be done that I’ve written about here before:

• Adopt proportional representation, which gives coherent minority views a voice in legislative deliberations.
• Adopt ranked-choice voting, which lets people vote for candidate in the order they prefer, without fear that they’re helping a candidate they detest. This ensures that whoever wins is actually supported by a majority of those who vote andencourages more collegial and informative campaigning.
• Adopt multi-member districts, which lets a combination of the first two reforms deliver better representation of voters' views without sacrificing geographically grounded concerns.
• Reform the initiative process, so it’s reserved for major constitutional matters, and so that initiatives can withdrawn by voters, after legislatures respond.

These suggestions aren’t meant to be comprehensive, just a reminder that there are many constructive alternatives that progressive activists have invented, developed and refined over the years. Jerry Brown will be remembered for advancing progressive reforms in some areas while blocking or constraining others. If he's not the Resistance hero depicted by the national media, he's also not the main character in California's story. Those who bring different perspectives together, reject the logic of limited options and push for change from the bottom up are building the future.

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jerrybrown1018

10/18 capt bak

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upped $ for AG ~ djt

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Resistance Hero or Hypocrite? Jerry Brown’s Mixed Legacy Paints a Complicated Picture for California Progressives AN

https://www.alternet.org/resistance-hero-or-hypocrite-jerry-browns-mixed-legacy-paints-complicated-picture-california

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yay signer weiner net neutral but last second [to avoid being sued?]

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https://www.alternet.org/environment/why-gov-jerry-brown-stands-way-climate-justice

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Jerry Brown and Justin Trudeau: Climate Advocates, or Hypocrites?

By Andy Rowell

Two leading political figures from the U.S. and Canada, who have boasted about the need to fight climate change, are now under fire for being climate change hypocrites: saying they care about the climate, but allowing drilling and fossil fuel infrastructure to be built anyway.

On Wednesday, more than 750 public interest groups from California and around the world, including Oil Change International, started a campaign urging the governor of California, Jerry Brown, to stop building fossil fuel infrastructure, including no new exploration permits offshore.

...

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2017 top 14

At almost every turn for the past 365 days, California Governor Jerry Brown has undermined President Trump. In June, almost immediately after Trump's withdrawal from the Paris agreement, Brown partnered with Chinese President Xi Jinping to continue expanding green technology and trade. In July, Brown extended California's climate legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. And as wildfires have raged through the state and region, Brown said he was "linking with other similar-minded people all over the world" and "pushing forward even as Trump blusters."

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eh but sez djt no buy china hoax

https://www.ecowatch.com/california-brown-trump-climate-2500805926.html

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E&E

Meet Jerry Brown, from 'Gov. Moonbeam' to climate beacon

Debra Kahn, E&E News reporter Published: Monday, June 26, 2017

California Gov. Jerry Brown's (D) views on climate change are inspired by religion. Bob Tilden/Flickr

CHENGDU, China — Jerry Brown was taking in the rare sight of pandas gamboling on wooden platforms and munching bamboo when the impatience inside him spilled out.

"They look a little lazy," he said after observing politely. "They do a lot of sitting around, don't they?"

Brown doesn't have time to waste. Even here, at the Chengdu Panda Base, home to 176 of the 471 pandas held in captivity worldwide, he's eager to intensify his pace.

On his trip to China earlier this month, the California Democratic governor sat through a series of interminable ceremonies with Chinese officials perched in wide, brocaded armchairs, teacups by their sides. He sought to pierce the formalities and instill a sense of urgency.

"I've been governor a long time," he told Wang Dongming, the party secretary of Sichuan province. "I'm getting very impatient. I want to see things accomplished."

The leader of the world's sixth-largest economy and the longest-serving governor in state history is making climate change a signature focus of his final term. And he has made it his mission to jolt the world into action with a combination of tough talk and distinctly religious fervor.

"We have to wake ourselves up, and we have to wake up our neighbors and our fellow countrymen; in fact, the whole world," Brown said in Beijing. "Time's not on our side, and we have a lot of inertia. Everywhere I look, I see inertia."

Fortified by a rebounding economy and his reputation as a fiscal conservative, Brown has been able to hold California up as an example of a booming economy that's taking major steps to address its carbon dioxide emissions. While the state represents just 1 percent of global greenhouse gases, its ability under Brown to project soft power in the name of climate action far outstrips its own material role in reducing emissions.

A lifetime in California politics, coupled with a strong theological bent, has given Brown a Zen-like detachment from the political fray. But it's the opposite for climate change. He seems to feel the weight of its consequences.

"Most things in politics are extremely relative and ephemeral," he said in an interview in Beijing. "Climate approaches the absolute in that as the climate is disrupted over time, it's not going to be reversed in the lifetime of civilization. It partakes of the fundamental character of the theological principle. That's why it interested me more than the other topics that we deal with in politics."

Brown's approval rating hovers around 61 percent, the highest since he took office in 2011, and the mirror opposite of President Trump's in California. His climate evangelist pulpit is elevated, rather than diminished, by Trump's repudiation of the Paris Agreement last month.

"Whatever the negative influence of America, the energy let loose by Trump's attempt to withdraw is so great in terms of the enthusiasm, the activism, the mobilization, Trump is a net positive for greenhouse gas reduction," he said at a meeting of climate officials in Beijing.

"If you don't understand that, you can just think about it a little longer," he added. "I might say that's kind of Zen reasoning. A Zen master says, 'If you would move in the East, make a sound in the West.' Well, Trump is making a sound in the West, and we're all moving in the East."

'A Catholic boy'

Brown, 79, has been sounding the climate alarm since taking office in 2011. In 2015, he started an "Under2 Coalition" with the goal of raising the profile of subnational governments at the Paris talks. His coalition, which requires members to aim for a 80-95 percent reduction in greenhouse gases or a target of 2 tons per capita by 2050, now includes 175 jurisdictions with 1.2 billion people. Last week, Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama named him "special envoy for states and regions" to the upcoming talks in Bonn, Germany.

"If he was 10 years younger, he'd be the leading Democratic nominee for president," said V. John White, executive director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, a California think tank. "What he presents is a couple of combinations that you don't always see: He's fiscally moderate, he's practical."

Brown's trip to China provided a foil to the Trump administration's approach to climate change. Brown met with President Xi Jinping and gave a dozen speeches in his weeklong trip. He also held a press conference with the German environment minister the day after returning to California to discuss the post-Paris landscape.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who was in Beijing to attend the same Clean Energy Ministerial conference as Brown, met with Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli, several levels below Xi, and focused on clean energy, rather than climate change. He had two public appearances in Beijing. At an event on carbon capture and sequestration, he avoided the term "climate." He instead used "carbon-restrained."

Brown seems to relish his grueling schedule. He also thrives while sparring with the press.

"Are you tired?" he asked a reporter during an 8 a.m. ride to the first of three events, including a meeting with the mayor of Beijing and a discussion with a group of academics at Tsinghua University. He also had a flight back to California that afternoon. "I feel as good as I've ever felt."

Brown, who once trained at a Jesuit seminary and studied Zen Buddhism, doesn't divulge details of his daily spiritual practice, but he does visit monasteries. They include the Zen Buddhist monastery of Tassajara, in Big Sur, and a Trappist monastery in Vina, Calif., about 80 minutes from his family ranch near the town of Williams, in Colusa County, which he visited over Easter.

Observers say his religious inclinations inform his environmental leanings.

"He's a Catholic boy who appreciates God's Earth," said Orville Schell, a longtime chronicler of Brown and director of the Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. "This is nothing new for him to worry about environmental issues. There's no one like him in America. He has his vices and his virtues, but he's very open. He can't help thinking globally, and he's now pushing California to act globally."

Philosophers, sages and priests

Brown in Paris for the culmination of the climate agreement in 2015. Benjamin Géminem/Conference of the Parties/Flickr

Brown has been a fixture of California politics since the 1970s. In addition to his 15 years as California governor — his first two terms predated the state's term limits — Brown has served as mayor of Oakland, the state's attorney general and secretary of state.

He also ran for president three times — in 1976, 1980 and 1992 — and for the Senate in 1982. In those campaigns, he warned of the dawning of an "era of limits" and championed E.F. Schumacher's 1973 book on human-scale and sustainable economic theories, "Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered."

He also advocated for space exploration and state-sponsored satellites, earning him the sobriquet "Gov. Moonbeam" from Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko (who later came around to support him, in 1980).

Nearing 80, Brown has not mellowed in the slightest. His predilection for quoting philosophers, sages and priests (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is a favorite) offsets his bluntness. He said in December that California would "launch its own damn satellite" as a response to scientists' concerns about federal climate research funding under Trump.

His combination of off-the-cuff erudition and irascibility has charmed the international climate community. In Beijing, he announced five new signatories to his Under2 agreement, as well as the appointment of former U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres as the group's "global ambassador."

"He is so passionate, and it is fantastic to see a politician that's of his standing, and I think also his vintage," said Karen Shippey, director of environmental sustainability in the South African state of Western Cape, one of the new members. "Sometimes our older politicians are quite set in their ways, and it's difficult for them to really get to grips with what climate change means. For me, it's been an absolute inspiration listening to him talk."

Within the state, Brown's role is viewed with more nuance and context. He follows Republican governors who enacted big environmental laws: Gov. Ronald Reagan created the Air Resources Board in 1967, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the state's first binding greenhouse gas limits in 2006.

Brown's role has been to uphold and expand existing laws and serve as an example of economic and environmental progress coexisting.

"Under Reagan, the Air Resources Board [ARB] was created and formed the beginning of the vehicle standards, but it was pretty sleepy at the time," White said.

Brown's appointment of his campaign manager, Tom Quinn, and later Mary Nichols, as ARB chair was instrumental in regulating car companies and getting them to develop "three-way" catalytic converters that controlled all of the emissions that lead to smog formation, he said.

In his third and fourth terms, Brown signed laws to expand the state's renewable generation requirement to 33 percent by 2020 and again to 50 percent by 2030, as well as a law to extend the state's greenhouse gas targets to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. He is currently trying to get reauthorization for the state's cap-and-trade system, seen as the cornerstone of its climate program.

"He certainly should be credited with kicking the state down into this sort of gear," Schell said. "It's really been Jerry Brown who's had the big vision."

In his first two terms, Brown was very hands-on, conducting interviews of potential state hires from his house in Los Angeles.

"I had to call my next-door neighbor to take care of the baby so I could go over to Jerry's house, which was the next canyon over from where we were living," recalled Nichols. "The interview lasted about three hours."

Now, he delegates the details to a cadre of trusted advisers, whom he deploys to various agencies in need of a heavier hand, like the California Public Utilities Commission, where he has installed longtime aides in three of the five board slots.

Some environmentalists wish that he would immerse himself in the details more, as in the case of a proposed gas-fired power plant in Southern California that they argue isn't needed.

"As time has gone on, his focus has narrowed in ways that means he's delegating a lot to other people," White said. "One of the things we're hoping for is there'd be a little more continuity between his speeches and the actions of his administration."

He's not a radical

Brown also gets criticized from the far left for not doing more to rein in the state's oil and gas industry. He has refused to consider environmentalists' pleas for a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, and, in 2011, he fired two state oil regulators who had warned that oil companies were being permitted to inject wastewater into federally protected aquifers. In 2015, the state acknowledged that thousands of injection wells were near drinkable groundwater, violating the Safe Drinking Water Act.

"California still remains the third- or fourth-top oil-producing state in the nation, and he's never shown any real inclination to move the state off oil faster than what the market is doing," said R.L. Miller, the chair of the state Democratic Party's environmental caucus. "Anything you want to say about Brown's climate legacy needs to be tempered by the fact that he never came to terms with our oil production."

Brown generally employs a demand-side argument in defending the state's fossil fuel extraction. "I didn't get here on a solar plane, I didn't get here in a solar car," he said. "I got here in an oil plane and an oil car, and that's what it is. We are deeply embedded and addicted to carbon and all its various forms. To change that is nothing less than profoundly radical."

And he isn't one — a radical.

"This is where his pragmatic streak comes in; we use a billion gallons a month of gasoline, and we can't import it all," White said. "The pragmatic view is we need better regulation of the existing practices. I'm less concerned with the fracking stuff rather than the fact we're just not regulating the oil and gas sector nearly as well as we should."

Brown is allergic to being asked about his legacy, which he calls a "nebulous and problematic concept."

"I don't have a legacy. I don't know what a legacy is," he said after returning from China. "That is a media construct. It seems to be in the minds of certain media types as the central organizing principle of government activity, but it is not my central organizing principle. I do what I'm doing because this is what I think is important work to do."

He is already part of a substantial legacy, though. His father, Pat Brown, was governor from 1959 to '67 and was known for building the State Water Project, a set of 21 dams and hundreds of miles of canals and tunnels that serve drinking water to 25 million Californians. Jerry Brown has two signature infrastructure projects — a set of tunnels to revamp the state's main water-delivery apparatus in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and a high-speed rail line. But it is unclear how either will fare under the next governor.

"I don't buy that he doesn't think about legacy," Miller said. "I think he sees climate as his big legacy, and I think he wants to see his name on a project — something physical. Whether that's the tunnels or high-speed rail. Pat Brown gave us the University of California system, the big water projects, so much more. Jerry Brown wants to see his name attached to equally big projects."

Family is not far from Brown's mind. His fraternal grandmother, who is buried in Williams, "has on her tombstone, 'Mother of Edmund G. Brown, 32nd governor of California, and grandmother of Edmund G. Brown Jr., 34th governor,'" he said.

"She's buried with her seven other brothers and her mother and father. They're all in the cemetery, and I was there on Memorial Day," Brown added.

Those seeking to pin Brown down will have to wait a while longer — requiring the kind of patience eschewed by the governor.

"I'm not ready for a legacy yet," he said. "Legacy will be on my tombstone, if there, and I don't know if it will be."

==

2014

The California State Senate confirmed four nominees for the University of California’s Board of Regents Friday, despite student and faculty concerns about the appointment process and the nominees’ qualifications.

With a 29–3 vote, the senate confirmed existing regents Richard Blum and Norman Pattiz to another 12-year term on the board. Richard Sherman, who joined the board in March, was also confirmed with the same vote. Regent Monica Lozano, who completed a 12-year term in 2013, was confirmed in a separate 31–0 vote.

The confirmed board members all have a background in business. Blum is the chairman of his own business firm named Blum Capital Partners and Sherman is a chief executive at the David Geffen Company, an investment management firm.

Lozano is chair of U.S. Hispanic Media, Inc., which includes numerous Hispanic media companies, and Pattiz is a founder of radio network Westwood One and CEO of Courtside Entertainment Group, a sports and entertainment marketing business.

The confirmation came after a tense hearing by the Senate Rules Committee on Wednesday, in which students and faculty voiced their opposition to nominees because of concerns about the appointment process.

Before appointing an individual to the UC Board of Regents, the California constitution requires the governor to consult a 12-member advisory committee composed of leaders from the state legislature and four members of the UC, including one student and one faculty member. After the governor chooses appointments for the regents board, the state senate must confirm them. Despite the rule, there is no mechanism to ensure that a governor consults the advisory group, Senate Rules Committee members said in emails sent after the hearing.

Evan Westrup, spokesman for Gov. Jerry Brown, said in an email that Brown consulted the advisory committee more than six months before the confirmation hearing. Brown announced his appointments in mid-January, about seven months before the confirmation.

But in a letter sent to senators prior to the hearing on Wednesday, the Council of University of California Faculty Associations said it does not think Brown adequately consulted with the committee before the appointments.

Joe Kiskis, vice president for external relations for the council and a physics professor at UC Davis, said he thinks the confirmation shows that legislators pay little attention to the voices of students and faculty.

“(Politicians) are expecting that if (the) regents are confirmed again, they will act differently,” Kiskis said.

At the hearing, students, faculty and some legislators were unhappy that all the nominees had backgrounds in business, saying they are not representative of California’s population.

“We need business leaders in the board, but not exclusively,” California Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said at the hearing.

More than 85 percent of currently appointed regents are former or current business executives.

Kevin Sabo, chair of the UC Student Association Board of Directors and a UC Berkeley student, said the nominees are of the “business elite,” with many who have contributed to Brown’s campaign for governor. Sabo said he thinks regents should come from more diverse backgrounds.

According to an L.A. Times article published in January, Sherman has donated $7,500 to Brown since 2009, while Blum donated $51,800 and Pattiz donated $15,000 to Brown in the same time period.

“We need more people who reflect the population of California, not just the 1 percent of the state,” Sabo said.

Lozano said while she would like to see a more diverse regents board, the board already brings diverse perspectives by having a sitting student regent as well as having student advocates and Academic Senate members speak at the board’s bimonthly meetings.

Students said they think that the three of four regent nominees who already served a term have not led the University effectively.

“They had 12 years to discuss diversity and outreach … but there has been no action,” said Jefferson Kuoch-Seng, UCSA president and an external vice president of the Associated Students of UC Merced. “In 12 years, nothing has changed.”

On Wednesday, nominees also addressed questions from legislators related to the UC’s ad

==

http://grist.org/article/want-to-toss-out-pollution-fighting-rules-youll-have-to-face-california-first/

...

quick history lesson: When legislators wrote the 1963 Clean Air Act, they acknowledged that California already had pollution-fighting rules, and that its environmental situation was especially dire. So they gave the state the right to write its own, stricter standards.

“It’s hard to overstate how important the ability for California to set its standards has been to public health and clean air over the past 40 years,” says Don Anair, deputy director for the clean vehicles program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Time and again, California’s been willing and able to move forward.”

From unleaded gasoline to catalytic converters to counting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions in vehicle standards, the Golden State has played a key role. That’s because, as Therese Langer, transportation program director at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, puts it, “California doesn’t just mean California.” Even though California is the only state that can write its own rules, under Section 177 of the Clean Air Act, any state looking for more than the federal package of regulations can opt to follow California’s auto standards.

Today, 13 (mostly northeastern) states and Washington, D.C., have adopted California’s extra-stringent emissions standards. Nine states also follow Cali’s mandate that automakers sell zero-emission vehicles. Together, they account for nearly 30 percent of new car sales in the country — and no carmaker wants to build “California cars” and “rest of the world cars.” Result: “All cars meet the California standard,” says Rebecca Lindland, an analyst at Kelley Blue Book.

But if American carmakers are good at anything, it’s complaining about regulations that demand it produce cleaner, more efficient cars. The anti-regulation, climate change–doubting Trump administration seems to sympathize. But California’s waiver makes it hard for the feds to weaken anything. Trump’s team could have the EPA review the standards that govern cars through 2025, standards the agency finalized just a week before Obama left office. It would take years, likely face a legal challenge, and would require the EPA prove all the scientific data supporting its original decision is no longer valid.

And even if the EPA won, the California exemption would still hold, and carmakers would still have to make cars that met it. So you can see why the Golden State is a key target. The New York Times reports: “Automakers are also hopeful that the new EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, will begin legal action to revoke California’s ability to enforce its tailpipe standards.” Asked in his Senate confirmation hearing if he would leave the waiver process alone, Pruitt said, “I don’t know without going through the process to determine that. One would not want to presume the outcome.”

Good news for environmental cheerleaders: Stripping California of its special status would require a change to the Clean Air Act — the kind of legislating a Democratic filibuster could derail.

But, you say, the EPA doesn’t have to kill the waiver process if it just refuses to issue any new ones. It might even have the legal right to rescind already granted waivers. But California can fight back — and it’s got a stocked arsenal.

“The statute is very clear. It says EPA shall grant the waiver,” says Cara Horowitz, co-executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law. The EPA can only hit the reject button if it can prove a requested rule is weaker than the federal standards, isn’t consistent with the Clean Air Act, or “does not need such standards to meet compelling and extraordinary conditions.” Through the 1990s, Los Angeles smog conditions were severe enough to cancel after-school sports and flood emergency rooms — compelling and extraordinary. Today, the motivating threat is climate change.

All that matters, because if Scott Pruitt’s EPA starts rejecting new waivers or revoking old ones, California can mount a legal challenge. “I have no doubt that California would litigate, would sue EPA,” says Horowitz. Indeed, Gov. Jerry Brown pledged his state would defend its environmental and social programs. “California is not turning back,” he said in a January speech. “Not now, not ever.”

What if Trump does start rolling back standards? “We’ll see them in court,” says Roland Hwang, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s energy and transportation program.

California has on its side decades of legal precedent built from technical analysis. The EPA has outright rejected just one waiver out of nearly 100. That was in 2007, when the state wanted to restrict greenhouse gas emissions from passenger vehicles. The EPA said nope, the auto industry celebrated, and California prepared a lawsuit, but the Obama Administration swept in before the case played out. In May 2009, President Obama announced a settlement of sorts: the EPA — not just California — would include GHGs in new standards, and the (recently bailed out) auto industry would deliver cleaner cars.

With a new face in the White House, the auto industry seems willing to renege on that peace treaty. And California seems ready to go to war.

==

http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-updates-gov-jerry-brown-says-californians-1478821311-htmlstory.html

Gov. Jerry Brown warns Trump that California won't back down on climate change.

According to the analysis from Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2) analysis, CA AB 32 and related climate policies have pumped some $48 billion into the state economy over the past decade while helping create about 500,000 jobs.Assembly Bill 32, also known as AB 32 or the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, requires California to reduce climate-cooking greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 — which meant cutting emissions about 25 percent from where they were at in 2006, when AB 32 was passed by the California State Legislature and signed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. see CA.

==

jerry was AG after gov?

rivkin fedsoc 2008

...

https://www.fed-soc.org/publications/detail/state-ags-on-global-warming-litigation

In the short term, however, there seems little doubt that California's Attorney General, former Governor and Democrat presidential hopeful Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown, Jr., will be leading the global warming charge. With its Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32), the California legislature has commanded that the State's greenhouse gas emissions be reduced to 1990 levels by the year 2020. The law requires California's Air Resources Board to establish a statewide GHG emissions cap by January 1, 2008, and to promulgate implementing regulations by January 1, 2011. In advance of these measures, Attorney General Brown has initiated his own campaign to force immediate GHG emissions reductions. In particular, he has embarked upon a statewide effort, pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), to force California's counties to adopt global climate change plans.

Most recently, Brown announced the settlement of a suit he brought against San Bernardino County challenging its general CEQA plan. The county agreed to undertake a 30-month "Greenhouse Gas Reduction Plan," including inventories of GHG emission sources and targets for reductions in emissions attributable to the county's land use decisions and other governmental operations. Brown, who has filed CEQA comments on the plans of at least eleven other California counties, has indicated that the San Bernardino plan is a "model that I encourage other cities and counties to adopt." See Brown Announces Landmark Global Warming Settlement Press Release (Aug. 21, 2007).

Similarly, Brown appealed a decision by Contra Costa County (in the San Francisco Bay Area) to permit the expansion of an existing ConocoPhillips refinery and thereby obtained an agreement from the company to adopt a GHG reduction plan. This plan includes a multi-million dollar "offset" program in the Bay Area and elsewhere in California. On the federal level, Attorney General Brown has petitioned EPA to establish carbon dioxide limitations for all ocean going vessels entering American ports and threatens to sue the Agency if it fails to approve California's pending request for a section 209(b) Clean Air Act waiver. This provision permits California - once a waiver is granted - to impose new motor vehicle and engine emissions standards that may be more stringent than comparable federal regulations. In this instance, it would permit California to regulate GHG emissions from new motor vehicles and motor vehicle engines sold in the State, and grant of the waiver would also permit other States to adopt the California standards; fourteen have indicated a desire to do so.

There is every reason to believe that Attorney General Brown, along with many other state Attorneys General, will continue to be active in this area.

==

http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/11/california-gov-brown-doesnt-want-you-to-know/

We are irrigating our crops with benzene and arsenic laden wastewater left over from oil extraction. Wait what!? Yep, you heard me. California feeds the nation and right now we are feeding them poison. Here are some articles on it: NY Times, CCTV. Spoiler alert: those easy-to-peel mandarins you love to eat? Many aren’t grown using freshwater, but rather wastewater from the industry. And they’re not the only foods getting the oil wastewater treatment … read more here.

...kern frack schools

wo Words: Porter Ranch

Two words our governor couldn’t bring himself to say in his State of the State address this year. The leak at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility in Porter Ranch is the worst gas leak in history. Many have said that the Porter Ranch disaster is worse than the BP oil spill. Yet our governor took months to declare a state of emergency and didn’t say a peep about it during his biggest speech of the year. The “accident” at Porter Ranch is another example of poor regulation and lack of enforcement of current regulations. It’s also, yet again, another reminder that fossil fuels are dangerous, dirty and cause climate change. Porter Ranch won’t just impact the communities who live in the gated communities closest to the leak. The reality is that the impacts will be felt by everyone near the leaking gas site and eventually, everyone is California and possibly even the world.

4. Poor Regulation

Texas has stricter regulations on fracking than California. I know I know, you heard Gov. Brown talk about how strong our regulations are, well, he’s not telling the truth. Here is a photo of those regulations in action. That’s an elementary school and that is a fracking well. Children are getting sick and dying, yet the leadership of California believe this is a necessary sacrifice for having more cars on the road than most countries. The majority of states around the country require setback distances for unconventional oil and gas extraction. Not California.

5. We Have No Water

We are in the worst drought in recorded history. Yes, I wish I had an umbrella last week. I know, it’s been raining, but that rainfall pales in comparison to the water we need in the state. Don’t believe me? Watch the film above. Why do you think agriculture companies are using fracking wastewater on crops? Counties in California are out of water. They rely on bottled water because their wells have run dry. We are running out of options and we need strong leadership. Fracking threatens to contaminate the little freshwater we have left.

6. Big Oil is Polluting Politics

Yes, we’re taking some strong actions on climate change. Did you see SB 350? That was awesome! We got two important measures passed in that package (50 percent increase in energy efficiency in buildings and 50 percent of state utilities’ power coming from renewable energy, all by 2030). Yes, but we lost another important piece of that bill, which would have decreased our use of petroleum in cars and trucks by half. Why did this portion get cut out? Big Oil flexed its muscles and lobbied our state senators to remove this portion of the bill. Even Gov. Brown was frustrated that the bill was gutted, but not angry enough to take action by executive order. The reality is that most people don’t know the impacts of oil extraction making it easy for Big Oil to buy politicians and weaken any efforts to reign in their practices.

7. Oil Production is Increasing

Since Gov. Brown took office, the amount of oil extracted in California has increased. Beginning in the 1980’s, oil extraction was in steady decline. When did it start going back up? 2011—the same year Gov. Brown was reelected. Why is this important? In my book and many others, you cannot claim to be a leader on climate change while allowing more drilling and fracking for the very thing that causes climate change.

8. Environmental Racism

Let’s be honest here. Who is being most impacted by California’s fracking agenda? Kern County is home to 99 percent of fracking and extreme well stimulation. Who lives there? What neighborhoods experience urban drilling in LA? What counties have the worst air quality in the country? Even the state government has researched this—and the answer is low-income communities of color. Students attending school within 1 mile of oil and gas wells are predominantly non-white (79.6 percent) and 60.3 percent are Hispanic. The top 11 school districts with the highest well counts are located in the San Joaquin Valley with 10 districts in Kern County. (Source: FracTracker). While disasters like Porter Ranch make headlines, spills, leaks and poisonous flares happen daily in communities unseen by the national media.

Sheesh! We’ve got our work cut out for us, but here’s the good news. We have a movement. We are huge, we are powerful and we do beautiful things. Communities are rising up, pushing back and creating their own solutions. But we need to keep flexing that muscle. We need to yell from the rooftops that we don’t want grapes covered in arsenic and we want all children in California to have the same access to clean water, clean air and safe schools.

So here’s my solution: Fight. Here is an opportunity to flex that muscle: Break Free.

Across the world, communities will be rising up against fossil fuel extraction. Like us, they’ll be calling out the hypocrisy of “climate champions” who still extract and elected officials who promise to protect us while poisoning our communities. Join us this Spring. For more information about the actions—sign up on the Break Free website to stay in the loop.

four California Coastal Commission members appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown have been maneuvering to oust its outspoken executive director Dr. Charles Lester. This campaign to unseat Dr. Lester is an unsheathed assault on the coastal commission’s integrity and a dire threat to the California coast. It is also an audacious display of industry power, which will come to a head Wednesday at the commission’s quarterly meeting in Morro Bayon.

The 12-member coastal commission has regulatory authority over all permits, licenses and funding approvals for projects impacting coastal resources, including offshore oil and gas development. For more than 40 years the coastal commission has brought balance to the struggle between advocates of clean water, healthy wetlands, unspoiled vistas, unpaved agricultural farms and broad public access against the real estate and energy tycoons who now seek Dr. Lester’s ouster. Dr. Lester has been the commission’s most vocal champion for safeguarding California’s public trust assets and preserving the coast from unwise and shortsighted development.

Industry launched its campaign to topple Dr. Lester shortly after he expressed skepticism over the proposed Banning Ranch development, which would place nearly 1,400 homes with resort and retail space on environmentally sensitive coastal habitat and wetlands. Aera Energy, a jointly owned affiliate of Royal Dutch Shell PLC and ExxonMobil Corp, is a leading project promoter.

Californians are increasingly aware of the anti-democratic clout wielded by energy barons and developers.

The ongoing Porter Ranch gas leak offers striking parallels and strong cautions about Sacramento’s merger with corporate power. The Porter Ranch disaster is the offspring of a greedy company and its delinquent regulator who ignored a missing safety valve on a 62-year-old well for 31 years. When the inevitable blow out happened, it took Gov. Brown 40 days to declare a state of emergency to address the largest gas leak in history—one which has displaced 4,400 families, sickened hundreds of adults and children and drawn compelling comparisons to the BP oil spill.

Residents wonder if Gov. Brown’s cozy ties to petroleum and real estate interests inspired his lethargy. Brown has taken $1.1 million from real estate developers since 2011 and $2,014,570 from oil and gas barons since 2006. His sister, Kathleen Brown, sits on the board of Sempra Energy, whose affiliate, SoCal Gas, is the culprit in the Porter Ranch well collapse. Sempra paid her $188,380 in 2014 and $267,865 in 2013. Kathleen Brown also owns rights to Sempra stock worth $409,945. She is a partner at a law firm that represents the California Independent Petroleum Association (CIPA) and a defendant in a RICO—Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization—lawsuit against Gov. Brown and the oil industry. CIPA and its members donated lavishly to Gov. Brown’s legacy ballot measure—Prop 30.

Beginning in 2011, CIPA joined with Occidental Petroleum to persuade Brown to approve a host of illegal injection wells of the kind that failed at Porter Ranch. In response to a direct request from Occidental’s attorney Gray Davis, Brown fired two diligent public servants—State Oil & Gas supervisor Elena Miller and her boss Derek Chernow, the acting director of the state Department of Conservation—when they refused to issue illegal well permits.

Two months later, on Jan. 9, 2012, Brown’s new State Oil & Gas supervisor, Tim Kustic, issued Occidental an illegal permit to drill a frack well in a Kern County almond orchard without the required environmental review designed to protect vital aquifers. Four days later, Occidental gave its first of two $250,000 contributions to the governor’s proposition to increase taxes. In a striking expression of fealty to the carbon czars, Brown pledged on the same day as the Occidental contribution that neither human health injuries nor the law would deter him from continuing to serve their interests. “There will be indictments and there will be deaths. But we’re going to keep going,” he said.

In total, grateful oil and gas tycoons contributed more than $1.2 million to Brown’s proposition to increase income taxes. Brown later boasted that firing Miller and Chernow facilitated oil development in Kern County. It also meant that millions of gallons of contaminated waste would be injected each month into the aquifers in the California San Joaquin Valley.

In her shocking new book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Jane Mayer reveals how a small cadre of oil titans have used their astonishing riches to game America’s political system, capture our regulatory agencies, corrupt our politicians in order to subvert democracy, defy our environmental laws and push American democracy toward a new Gilded Age for corporate kleptocracy.

California and a handful of other states have largely escaped this kind of hostile takeover of state government by corporate power. But California’s democratic values cannot flourish long with Sacramento politicians suckling at pipelines of oily cash. The move to oust the coastal commission director is a signal that public servants with courage and integrity that stand up to well-connected robber barons will be crushed and silenced by government officials on industry payroll.

As the coastal commission convenes tomorrow, the rest of the world will be watching California, not just for how she protects her coastlines, but how she safeguards her democracy

rfk2

==

==

http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-pc-gov-brown-blasts-climate-change-critics-during-vatican-conference-20150721-story.html

v. Jerry Brown, speaking at a conference hosted by Pope Francis, on Tuesday denounced climate change skeptics as well-financed “troglodytes” determined to “bamboozle” local leaders.

Brown said he has no faith in Congress to act on global warming, and urged the 60 mayors from around the world attending the event to take action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

“It’s up to you guys,’’ Brown said.

Brown threw his weight behind Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si, issued in May, in which the pope linked poverty to creeping climate change and urged action to alleviate both. Human trafficking also will be discussed at the two-day conference.

Speaking at the conference, Pope Francis urged the United Nations to step up its campaign against climate change.

Passage of California climate change bill could set global example

“I have great hopes for the Paris summit in December and hope a fundamental agreement is reached,” Francis said, referring to a key meeting at which a new United Nations climate deal should be signed.

“The U.N. needs to take a strong position on this,” he added.

For their part, Brown and the other local leaders signed a declaration stating that ”human-induced climate change is a scientific reality, and its effective control is a moral imperative for humanity."

Speakers at the event highlighted the role mayors can play fighting climate change, given that half the world’s population now lives in cities, which are in turn responsible for nearly three quarters of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions.

ith mayors from San Francisco, San Jose and eight other U.S. cities in the audience, Brown gave a glowing review of his own achievements in cutting emissions in California, offering it as a template for mayors around the world to follow.

California is now deriving 25% of its energy from renewable sources and has the “most efficient” buildings in the U.S., as well as 40% of the country’s electric cars, he said.

“But we are not stopping there,” he said, adding he wanted renewable energy to reach 50% and gasoline use in cars and trucks to drop by 50% in 15 years.

For Brown, a former Jesuit seminary student with a political career now in its fifth decade, has repeatedly said that California cannot fight global warming alone but that the state can set an example for the nation and the world.

Backing up his call to action, Brown quoted Saint Paul on man reaping what he sows, but sounded a positive note by citing Italian communist leader Antonio Gramsci, who described the “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”

Pope Francis and Brown part ways on cap and trade

He called for a campaign against the “fierce opposition and blind inertia” of “well-financed” climate change skeptics.

With national leaders proving unwilling to act, the governor called on mayors “to light a fire, if I may use that metaphor – in terms of climate change, it’s probably the wrong one.”

“We have very powerful opposition that, in at least my country, spends billions on trying to keep from office people such as yourselves and elect troglodytes and other deniers of the obvious science,” Brown said at the conference.

ew York Mayor Bill De Blasio, speaking after Brown, thanked the California governor for being “the leading voice in the nation” on climate change, and announced his intention to cut greenhouse gas emissions in New York by 40% by 2030, following California’s example.

After flying to Rome at the weekend, ahead of the conference, Brown stayed at the Rome residence of the U.S. ambassador to Italy and met with Father Adolfo Nicolás, superior general of the Jesuits.

In an interview on Monday, Brown said he backed Pope Francis’ treatment of nature as part of God’s creation, to be safeguarded as carefully as humanity itself.

“He talks about the ‘web of life’ and sums up the encyclical as stating everything in nature is an expression of the divine and therefore we have to take it seriously,” Brown said.

“The pope is dealing with the biggest threat of our time. If you discount nuclear annihilation, this is the next one. If we don’t annihilate ourselves with nuclear bombs then it's climate change. It’s a big deal and he’s on it.”

n the encyclical, the pope criticized the concept of buying the right to emit greenhouse gases, so-called cap-and-trade policy, which is a major component of Brown’s green policy for California.

“The strategy of buying and selling “carbon credits” can lead to a new form of speculation, which would not help reduce the emission of polluting gases worldwide,” the pope wrote.

Brown said he felt the criticism did not apply to California.

“California has a uniquely constructed cap and trade. It is very tightly regulated and it is not the only thing. I get the impression that [Pope Francis] thinks a market solution is not enough. We have a renewable energy standard, building standards, we have research and development, subsidized electric cars,” he said.

Cap and trade is designed to cut greenhouse emissions, but also to minimize any disturbances to our way of living, said Ann Carlson, a professor of environmental law at UCLA and co-director of its Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

But in the encyclical, the pope is asking a “fundamental question about whether people – specifically in the West, who on a per capita basis omit many more greenhouse emissions than those in developing countries – ought to be consuming as many resources as they do,” Carlson said.

Times Staff Writer Kurt Chirbas contributed to this report.

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5/15

Don't let the Governor get his way. Help oppose Trailer Bill 831, which creates a broad CEQA exemption for whatever the Governor wants. Urge Senate and Assembly budget leadership to prevent this language from getting into the budget.

==

3/15 cruz declares 2016, jerry b rips

also

California Gov. Jerry Brown said Sunday that it is a "disgrace" that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is trying to thwart the Obama administration's plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, urged all 50 state governors in a letter Thursdayto reject the Environmental Protection Agency's plan to reduce emissions from existing power plants by 30 percent by 2030.

The EPA’s plan, according to McConnell, would heavily penalize the coal industry. Its economic impact in his home state would be “devastating,” he said, and thousands of jobs could be on the line.

“To have the leader of the Senate ... putting at risk the health and well-being of America is a disgrace,” Brown, a Democrat, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

California is in the midst of a historic drought. Brown said greenhouse gas emissions will cause future droughts and “much, much worse.”

To fight efforts to curb emissions, Brown said, “borders on the immoral.”

==

Governor Jerry Brown. He hasn’t always been a friend to the environment and aligned with the Sierra Club. But this year, on the first day the legislature convened, Governor Brown used the opportunity of his inaugural address to inspire new action to address climate change. He laid out three specific goals to achieve by 2030 as a way of declaring and illustrating that California can and must do more to cut climate disrupting pollution. There’s more to come from the administration and the legislature in the next few weeks about meeting—and exceeding—those goals.  That work, though, was given a huge boost from a few important paragraphs in the governor’s speech.

==

Gov Jerry Brown inaugurated for an unprecedented 4th term, pledges major efforts to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels (while on the same day, the new GOP majority Congress doubles down on the XL Keystone pipeline which US #1 climate expert James Hanson says spells "Game Over" for the planet, with no reset button, despite the metaphor). Brown broke ground on CA bullet train. Brown was first governor in mid-70's, which is why CA uses half the electricity per person despite having a strong economy. His dad was also governor, and built our water canal system, probably also our roads, and oh yeah, the UC system. 1/15.

raw political power in a deceitful way kqed forum 1/15 patterson jim fresnotulare cty

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flame retard

http://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2014/09/california-makes-it-law-label-toxic-flame-retardants-furniture

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We did it!  On Wednesday, Governor Brown signed SB 27, the bill to force Dark Money non-profits to reveal their secret funders in California elections.

Here's what I said about it in the Sacramento Bee:

“Governor Brown’s signature of SB 27 marks a turning point in the fight to reveal secret funders of political campaigns. It starts to shed light on dark money in California and serves as an example for the entire nation."

Here's the full story in the Sacramento Bee:

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/05/14/6406111/gov-brown-signs-law-requiring.html

http://grist.org/news/key-enviro-law-suspended-in-california-under-drought-emergency/

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kpfa 8 a? water, walker CA atlas; westlands and Kern(almost feudal structure) Resnick  big agribiz users (agribiz declining?) only 1% of water fr almonds

==

When California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) declared a drought emergency last week, his administration slipped a bit of legalese into the declaration that has some environmentalists worried.

It states that the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) will not apply to efforts by state agencies to “make water immediately available.”

CEQA, a landmark 1970s environmental statute, requires environmental analyses for major projects, which leads to delays as the studies are conducted and fought over, and as proposals for reducing environmental harm are debated. Brown, who hates the law, once remarked, “I‘ve never seen a CEQA exemption that I don’t like.”

The drought declaration says the limited suspension of CEQA will help “streamline water transfers and exchanges between water users” and help the state change limits on how much water can be diverted from reservoirs and from the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta.

That’s important because the Delta, a stressed waterway and estuary that flows from melting snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains to San Francisco Bay and into the Pacific Ocean, is at the center of a decades-old fight between farmers on one side and fishermen and environmentalists on the other. Farming corporations that own desert-like land in California’s Central Valley fight tooth-and-nail to be allowed to draw more water from the Delta, which would boost their nut, fruit, and vegetable harvests. Fishermen, who rely on the ecosystem for salmon, and environmentalists fight tooth-and-nail to prevent that from happening.

The drought is ravaging California just as Brown is preparing to ask voters to approve a multi-billion-dollar overhaul of the state’s water system. His plan would, among other things, dig a controversial water tunnel that could be used to boost the amount of water that’s diverted from the Delta for use on Central Valley farms.

So environmentalists are understandably suspicious about Brown’s move to suspend CEQA for water projects during the drought.

“This is, of course, a back-door attempt to sneak through the change of place approval needed to build the peripheral tunnel project, which will divert more water from the Delta,” Jeff Miller of the Center for Biological Diversity told Grist. “If the governor was serious about addressing the drought, he would turn off the taps that water lawns in the desert and irrigate luxury crops on selenium-tainted lands in the San Joaquin Valley before killing salmon and smelt.”

Here’s the language from the drought declaration that has some environmentalists worried:

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT: …

5. The Water Board will immediately consider petitions requesting consolidation of the places of use of the State Water Project and Federal Central Valley Project [in the Delta], which would streamline water transfers and exchanges between water users within the areas of these two major water projects.

6. The Department of Water Resources and the Water Board will accelerate funding for water supply enhancement projects that can break ground this year and will explore if any existing unspent funds can be repurposed to enable near-term water conservation projects. …

9. The Department of Water Resources and the Water Board will take actions necessary to make water immediately available, and, for purposes of carrying out directives 5 and 8, Water Code section 13247 and Division 13 (commencing with section 21000) of the Public Resources Code [CEQA] and regulations adopted pursuant to that Division are suspended on the basis that strict compliance with them will prevent, hinder, or delay the mitigation of the effects of the emergency. Department of Water Resources and the Water Board shall maintain on their websites a list of the activities or approvals for which these provisions are suspended.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who twee

US CoC spent big to beat prop 30, lied about park $

AlterNet [1] / By Dan Bacher [2]

Governor Jerry Brown’s 10 Worst Environmental Policies

October 27, 2013  |

On October 17, Governor Brown failed to show up to receive a “Right Stuff” environmental award from the BlueGreen Alliance at a gala dinner at Le Parc Hotel in San Francisco as over 60 people protested outside.

Every year, the Apollo Alliance Project of the BlueGreen Alliance Foundation recognizes [3] business, community, environmental and labor leaders for their “outstanding work in advocating for family-sustaining jobs, clean energy, stronger infrastructure, and a better future for all of us.” This year, they selected Governor Jerry Brown as a winner in the government category.

Outraged [4] over the selection of Brown for the award after he has advanced so many bad environmental policies such as promoting fracking, a coalition of environmentalists, indigenous leaders and labor activists organized the protest to expose the real, abysmal environmental record of Governor Brown.

At the protest, Michael Preston from the Winnemem Wintu Tribe, blasted Jerry Brown's Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) to build the peripheral tunnels and the federal Shasta Dam raise plan that will cause massive fish extinction and destroy the Delta.

“I am here as a Winnemem Wintu Tribe warrior to speak for the salmon and for our cultural beliefs and sacred sites,” said Preston. "We have to speak out against the peripheral tunnels and Shasta dam raises because they could make the fish extinct and destroy the whole Bay Delta Estuary. These plans will affect all of life more than we know.”

Brown's ten worst environmental policies were outlined in an alternative program that protesters handed out to attendees of the dinner. These policies include the following:

1. Twin Tunnel Plan: Brown is fast-tracking the $54.1 billion Bay Delta Conservation Plan (BDCP) that would divert massive quantities of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to corporate agribusiness, developers and oil companies. The construction of the peripheral tunnels will hasten the extinction of Sacramento River Chinook salmon, Central Valley steelhead, Delta and longfin smelt and green sturgeon, as well as imperil salmon and steelhead populations on the Trinity and Klamath rivers.

2. Senate Bill 4: Not only did Brown sign SB4— Senator Fran Pavley’s “greenlight to fracking” bill—he gutted it at the 11th hour, adding poison pill amendments, which make CEQA review of fracking permits optional, and prevent imposing a moratorium on fracking for 15 months. He signed the bill after receiving at least $2.49 million over several years from oil and natural gas interests. Mark Nechodom, head of the state Conservation Department, recently said definitively, “Gov. Brown supports hydraulic fracturing.”

3. REDD: The REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation+) allows Northern Hemisphere polluters to buy forest carbon offset credits from the global South. Brown is trying to link an agreement among Chiapas, Mexico; Acre, Brazil; and California, to AB32 (which commits to a 25% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions for 2020, and an 80% reduction for 2050).

4. Record Water Exports: The Brown administration authorized the export of record water amounts of water from the Delta in 2011 – 6,520,000 acre-feet, 217,000 acre feet more than the previous record of 6,303,000 acre feet set in 2005 under Schwarzenegger. Most of this went to corporate agribusiness, including mega-growers irrigating unsustainable, selenium-laced land on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.

5. Record Delta Fish Kills:The Brown administration “salvaged” a record 9 million Sacramento splittail and 2 million salmon, steelhead, striped bass, largemouth bass, threadfin shad, white catfish and sturgeon in the Delta export pumping facilities in 2011. Since the actual number of fish killed in the pumps is at least 5 to 10 times those reported, the actual number of fish killed is probably 55 million to 110 million.

6. Central Valley Project Improvement Act: The act mandated the doubling of Central Valley anadromous fish populations, including Chinook salmon, steelhead, green sturgeon, white sturgeon, striped bass, and American shad, by 2002. Under Brown in recent years, rather than doubling, these fish populations have continued to decline. The Chinook salmon runs on the Sacramento River last year were only 20% of the level mandated by federal law and the endangered Sacramento River winter run Chinook population is threatened with extinction, due to massive water exports out of the Delta.

7. California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA):Brown is trying to weaken or even eliminate CEQA, one of California's greatest environmental laws, to fast-track big developments for giant corporations like Walmart, Berkshire Hathaway, General Electric, Valero and Chevron.

8. Department of Conservation Appointments: After Brown fired Acting Director Chernow and Oil and Gas Supervisor Miller and appointed oil industry-friendly Mark Nechodom, risky injection oil drilling permits increased by 18 percent.

9. Clear cutting in the Sierra Nevada: Brown is doing nothing to stop Sierra Pacific Industries from clear cutting forests, destroying wildlife habitat, and contributing to climate change.

10. “Theme Park” Wetlands:The Department of Fish and Wildlife under the Jerry Brown administration is letting the Annenberg Foundation bulldoze a section of the Ballona Wetlands to build an interpretive center and help with the “restoration” of the land around the center.

For more information about Brown’s abysmal environmental policies, go here [5].

Of course, any discussion of Brown's worst environmental policies must include his implementation of the privately-funded Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative started by Governor Schwarzenegger in 2004.

The conflicts of interest, failure to comprehensively protect the ocean, shadowy private funding, incomplete and terminally flawed science and violation of the Yurok Tribe’s traditional harvesting rights have made the MLPA Initiative to create so-called “marine protected areas into one of the worst examples of corporate greenwashing in California history. These so-called “Yosemites of the Sea” fail to protect the ocean from oil spills and drilling, fracking, pollution, wind and wave energy projects, military testing and all human impacts on the ocean other than fishing and gathering.

In an egregious environmental conflict of interest, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President of the Western States Petroleum Association, chaired the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force to create “marine protected areas” in Southern California. Reheis-Boyd, who lobbies relentlessly to expand fracking, build the Keystone Pipeline and eviscerate environmental laws, also served on the task forces for the Central, North Central and North Coast.

For more information about the MLPA Initiative, go here [6].

See more stories tagged with:

jerry brown [7]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/environment/governor-jerry-browns-10-worst-environmental-policies

Links:

[1] http://alternet.org

[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/dan-bacher

[3] http://www.bluegreenalliance.org/news/latest/the-right-stuff-awards-honor-governor-brown-and-labor-environmental-and-industry-leaders-for-accelerating-clean-energy-growth-creating-family-sustaining-jobs

[4] http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2013/10/21/brown-takes-heat-fracking

[5] http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/06/12/jerry-brown-worse-than-schwarzenegger-on-environment/

[6] http://intercontinentalcry.org/the-five-inconvenient-truths-about-the-mlpa-initiative/

[7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/jerry-brown-0

[8] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B