CaLIF2

new page 8/13 WAS 404

capt 819

all capt 616

see sub-nat'l

see bellweather

bak but not sure how complete

California's top five Republican mega-donors dwarfed by Democrats, still spent $36 million

Charles & Helen Schwab — $12,947,500 Geoffrey Palmer

— $10,460,400 Laura Khouri & Michael Hayde — $5,804,580Barbara Grimm-Marshall & Darcy Marshall — $4,213,497 Saul Fox — $2,570,803 Charles Schwab, the billionaire owner of his self-named financial services company, and his wife, Helen, together are California’s largest source of individual contributions to conservative and Republican causes.

Geoffrey Palmer, a California real estate developer,has given $6million to the America First Action Super PAC that supports President Trump and Trump’s agenda. He also donated to many state Republican parties and candidates. Laura Khouri and her husband Michael Hayde own a large property management company in Orange County and have given millions to get more Republicans elected to Congress.

Barbara Grimm-Marshall, a giant in the baby carrot industry, and her husband, Darcy Marshall, are the third-largest individual contributors to Republicans, giving money to committees that support Trump and Republican parties around the country.Saul Fox, a private equity CEO, has donated more than $2.5 million in this election cycle and has hosted fundraisers for Trump at his Silicon Valley home.......

aha/yikes: the ppl's tools ~ corps hijacked by them

note gun to head soda tax, juul fail on local prop b/c of bad PR at inopportune moment? prop 37 beat by last minute TV ads?

relentless ads on roku "free" tv:

an 1020 also lyft and doordash

Expert: Uber-funded ballot measure in California would create 'permanent underclass of workers'

Nicole Karlis

Those who took high school civics may recall that our democracies lives on fractions. A majority vote — one-half plus one — is what it takes to pass a bill in most legislative bodies.

https://medium.com/s/state-of-the-future/the-great-lesson-of-california-in-americas-new-civil-war-e52e2861f30

no lnx

CALIFORNIA IS THE FUTURE

The Great Lesson of California in America’s New Civil War

Why there’s no bipartisan way forward at this juncture in our history — one side must win

Peter Leyden

Jan 19, 2018

By Peter Leyden and Ruy Teixeira

The next time you call for bipartisan cooperation in America and long for Republicans and Democrats to work side by side, stop it. Remember the great lesson of California, the harbinger of America’s political future, and realize that today such bipartisan cooperation simply can’t get done.

In this current period of American politics, at this juncture in our history, there’s no way that a bipartisan path provides the way forward. The way forward is on the path California blazed about 15 years ago.

In the early 2000s, California faced a similar situation to the one America faces today. Its state politics were severely polarized, and state government was largely paralyzed. The Republican Party was trapped in the brain-dead orthodoxies of an ideology stuck in the past. The party was controlled by zealous activists and corrupt special interests who refused to face up to the reality of the new century. It was a party that refused to work with the Democrats in good faith or compromise in any way.

The solution for the people of California was to reconfigure the political landscape and shift a supermajority of citizens — and by extension their elected officials — under the Democratic Party’s big tent. The natural continuum of more progressive to more moderate solutions then got worked out within the context of the only remaining functioning party. The California Democrats actually cared about average citizens, embraced the inevitable diversity of 21st-century society, weren’t afraid of real innovation, and were ready to start solving the many challenges of our time, including climate change.

California today provides a model for America as a whole. This model of politics and government is by no means perfect, but it is far ahead of the nation in coming to terms with the inexorable digital, global, sustainable transformation of our era. It is a thriving work in progress that gives hope that America can pull out of the political mess we’re in. California today provides a playbook for America’s new way forward. It’s worth contemplating as we enter 2018, which will be a critical election year.

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Understanding the Context of the New American Civil War

This is no ordinary political moment. Trump is not the reason this is no ordinary time — he’s simply the most obvious symptom that reminds us all of this each day.

The best way to understand politics in America today is to reframe it as closer to civil war. Just the phrase “civil war” is harsh, and many people may cringe. It brings up images of guns and death, the bodies of Union and Confederate soldiers.

America today is nowhere near that level of conflict or at risk of such violence. However, America today does exhibit some of the core elements that move a society from what normally is the process of working out political differences toward the slippery slope of civil war. We’ve seen it in many societies in many previous historical eras, including what happened in the United States in 1860.

Two Systems at Odds

America’s original Civil War was not just fought to emancipate slaves for humanitarian reasons. The conflict was really about the clash between two very different economic systems that were fundamentally at odds and ultimately could not coexist. The Confederacy was based on an agrarian economy dependent on slaves. The Union was based on a new kind of capitalist manufacturing economy dependent on free labor. They tried to somehow coexist from the time of the founding era, but by the middle of the 19th century, something had to give. One side or the other had to win.

America today faces a similar juncture around fundamentally incompatible energy systems. The red states held by the Republicans are deeply entrenched in carbon-based energy systems like coal and oil. They consequently deny the science of climate change, are trying to resuscitate the dying coal industry, and recently have begun to open up coastal waters to oil drilling.

The blue states held by the Democrats are increasingly shifting to clean energy like solar and installing policies that wean the energy system off carbon. In the era of climate change, with the mounting pressure of increased natural disasters, something must give. We can’t have one step forward, one step back every time an administration changes. One side or the other has to win.

Two Classes at Odds

Another driver on the road to civil war is when two classes become fundamentally at odds. This usually takes some form of rich versus poor, the wealthy and the people, the 1 percent and the 99 percent. The system gets so skewed toward those at the top that the majority at the bottom rises up and power shifts.

The last time America was in that position was in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. We were on the road of severe class conflict that could have continued toward civil war, but we worked out a power shift that prevented widespread violence. Franklin Roosevelt, the so-called traitor to his class, helped establish a supermajority New Deal coalition of Democrats that rolled all the way through the postwar boom. The conservative Republicans who had championed a politics that advantaged the rich throughout the 1920s and promoted isolationism in the 1930s were sidelined for two generations — close to 50 years.

Today’s conservative Republicans face the same risk. Since 1980, their policies have engorged the rich while flatlining the incomes of the majority of Americans, from the presidency of Ronald Reagan through to last December’s tax overhaul, which ultimately bestows 83 percent of the benefits over time to the top 1 percent. Make no mistake: A reckoning with not just Trump, but conservatism, is coming.

Two Cultures at Odds

The differences between two economic systems or two classes that are fundamentally at odds could conceivably get worked out through a political process that peacefully resolves differences. However, culture frequently gets in the way. That’s especially true when pressures are building for big system overhauls that will create new winners and losers.

Two different political cultures already at odds through different political ideologies, philosophies, and worldviews can get trapped in a polarizing process that increasingly undermines compromise. They see the world through different lenses, consume different media, and literally live in different places. They start to misunderstand the other side, then start to misrepresent them, and eventually make them the enemy. The opportunity for compromise is then lost. This is where America is today.

At some point, one side or the other must win — and win big. The side resisting change, usually the one most rooted in the past systems and incumbent interests, must be thoroughly defeated — not just for a political cycle or two, but for a generation or two. That gives the winning party or movement the time and space needed to really build up the next system without always fighting rear-guard actions and getting drawn backwards. The losing party or movement will need that same time to go through a fundamental rethink, a long-term renewal that eventually will enable them to play a new game.

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Today’s American Civil War

Trump is doing exactly what America needs him to do right now. He’s becoming increasingly conservative and outrageous by the day. Trump could have come into office with a genuinely new agenda that could have helped working people. Instead, he has spent the past year becoming a caricature of all things conservative — and in the meantime has alienated most of America and certainly all the growing political constituencies of the 21st century. He is turning the Republican brand toxic for millennials, women, Latinos, people of color, college-educated people, urban centers, the tech industry, and the economic powerhouses of the coasts, to name a few.

The Republican Party is playing their part perfectly, too. They completely fell for the Trump trap — and that’s exactly what America needed them to do. The Republican Party could have maintained some distance from Trump and kept a healthy check on him through Congress. Instead, they fully embraced him in a group bear hug that culminated in a deeply flawed tax law in the waning days of 2017. This mess of a law, thrown together without traditional vetting, is riddled with outrageous loopholes that benefit the crony donor class and line the pockets of many of the politicians who passed it. The law is hugely unpopular, and everyone who voted for it is marked for the election of 2018.

Perfect.

Now the entire Republican Party, and the entire conservative movement that has controlled it for the past four decades, is fully positioned for the final takedown that will cast them out for a long period of time in the political wilderness. They deserve it.

Let’s just say what needs to be said: The Republican Party over the past 40 years has maneuvered itself into a position where they are the bad guys on the wrong side of history. For a long time, they have been able to hide this fact through a sophisticated series of veils, invoking cultural voodoo that fools a large enough number of Americans to stay in the game. However, Donald Trump has laid waste to that sophistication and has given America and the world the raw version of what current conservative politics is all about.

The Republican Party is all about rule by and for billionaires at the expense of working people. Trump is literally the incarnation of what the party stands for: shaping laws for the good of billionaires and the 1 percent. His cabinet is stuffed with them.

The Republican Party is the party of climate change denial. Trump is the denier-in-chief, but there are 180 climate science deniers in the current Congress (142 in the House and 38 in the Senate), and none of them are Democrats. More than 59 percent of Republicans in the House and 73 percent of Republicans in the Senate deny the scientific consensus that climate change is happening, that human activity is the main cause, and that it is a serious threat. Another way to say it is that the Republican Party is in the pocket of the oil and carbon energy industry. Trump just cut through the crap and named Exxon’s CEO as our secretary of state to unravel the United Nations climate accords. No beating around that bush for the sake of appearances — Trump burned the bush down.

The Republican Party for the past 40 years has mastered using dog whistles to gin up racial divides to get their white voters to the polls. Trump just disposes of niceties and flatly encourages white nationalists, bans Muslims, walls off Mexicans, and calls out “shithole” countries.

Trump is just making clear to all what was boiling under the surface for decades, and that’s exactly what we need him to do. Why? Because America finally needs to take the Republican Party down for a generation or two. Not just the presidency. Not just clear out the U.S. House. Not just tip back the Senate. But fundamentally beat the Republicans on all levels at once, including clearing out governorships and statehouses across the land.

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The Dramatic Collapse of Republicans in California

Could such as collapse of the Republican Party really happen? Won’t it take decades of trench warfare to put the GOP on the run? Not at all. A political collapse could happen very fast, as it did in California.

California was a model of governmental dysfunction in the 1990–2005 period, with Democrats and Republicans at each other’s throats and little being accomplished. The political atmosphere became so toxic that Democratic governor Gray Davis was recalled in 2003 and replaced with populist Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, who then proceeded to up the ante on polarization by pushing a series of conservative ballot initiatives in a special election in 2005. They were all handily defeated by the voters, marking the zenith of conservative Republican attempts to control California.

After that point, it was all downhill for the conservative GOP agenda in California. Schwarzenegger understood the sea change early and dumped right-wing populism and became far more moderate, going along with many progressive priorities. He soon started working with Democrats in the legislature on infrastructure, culminating in the passage of Proposition 1B in 2006 ($20 billion for roads and public transportation). Also in 2006, he and the legislature allocated an additional $150 million to stem cell research, supported a successful move to raise the minimum wage, and passed the Global Warming Solutions Act, which targeted a reduction of 25 percent in greenhouse gas emissions in the next 20 years. And in 2008, voters passed Prop 1A, authorizing $10 billion for high-speed rail.

Meanwhile, even though Schwarzenegger remained governor, the Democrats steadily expanded their majority in the state assembly. Then, in 2010, Democrat Jerry Brown was elected governor, and with the 2012 election, Democrats finally attained a supermajority in both houses of the state legislature. This was critical for overriding constant Republican filibusters and passing tax revenue laws (which still required a supermajority by Prop 13 dictates). The supermajority attained in 2012 was the first California legislative supermajority since 1933 and the first one for the Democrats since 1883. This is remarkable considering that in the dysfunctional 1990s, the state assembly and senate were closely divided between Republicans and Democrats, seemingly light-years away from the supermajority Democrats really needed to get things done.

Alongside these developments, Democratic domination of California representation in the U.S. House of Representatives steadily increased. Back in the 1990s, under Republican governor Pete Wilson, there was essentially parity between Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Today, there is almost a 3:1 split (39–14) in favor of the Democrats. Plus, they control both U.S. Senate seats and every single statewide elected office. There are no longer any Republicans able to mount a credible statewide election.

So, going from the zenith of right-wing populism to progressive domination in California did not take very long. That could easily happen in the country as a whole. The national GOP, after the 2016 election, controlled the presidency, the House, the Senate, and a strong majority of governorships and state legislatures. Since then, President Trump has become historically unpopular among American voters and the GOP Congress and its actions have become widely detested. Very quickly, their 2016 triumphs have morphed into a poisonous electoral environment where the GOP in 2018 is probably going to lose control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate, lose governorships and many hundreds of state legislative seats. And while the 2020 election is still a couple years away, an early forecast from political scientist Eric R.A.N. Smith has Trump (assuming his unpopularity continues) netting only 41 percent of electoral votes in that election.

In short, political change is slow until it’s very fast. The fall of the GOP is likely to be no different.

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Life on the Other Side of Democratic One-Party Rule

There is life on the other side of that Republican political collapse. There is a clear way forward in the land of Democratic, progressive supermajorities. California is thriving right now, the economy is booming, state government budgets are setting aside surpluses, and the public is happy with its political leaders (as we have laid out in other articles in this series). California is leading the world in technological innovation and creative policies to counter climate change.

What about the need for checks and balances? Many Americans might be wary of trusting a political environment where one party has complete control of political power. How does society process the range of differences in political opinions in elections and in forming policies?

Californians faced those same questions and dealt with that new reality. In 2008, voters passed Proposition 11, which created a Citizens Redistricting Commission to redraw state legislative districts that over time had been heavily gerrymandered to protect incumbents of both political parties. That commission was insulated from politics and changed districts along more rational lines that took into consideration natural geography and longstanding contiguous communities. Then, in 2010, the voters passed Proposition 20, which applied a similar logic to congressional redistricting.

Alongside that effort, voters in 2010 also passed Proposition 14, a state constitutional amendment that established a top-two primary system in which all candidates, regardless of party, are placed on the same primary ballot, and the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, head into the general election. The immediate result was to bolster competition within almost all districts. In a district populated by Democrats, the voters still got a choice between, say, a more progressive candidate and a moderate candidate.

Politics in California today still has a range of political differences that get worked out within political bodies. The city council of San Francisco is made up of all Democrats but is often trapped in fierce policy battles between supervisors who are more left of center than their colleagues who are more moderate and supportive of the tech industry. However, everyone on that city council is a Democrat and would be considered a progressive Democrat in the national context. They all embrace creating a diverse society, fighting climate change, etc. The California Legislature holds a similar range of political opinions, from very left to pro-business Democrat, but they almost all operate within a worldview that shares much common ground — a worldview that is not shared by the few remaining Republicans still in the chambers.

In short, California has a supermajority of 60 percent of the population, and thus a supermajority of elected officials, who share a common vision of a general way forward. Their differences are worked out within the confines of that general vision. California Republicans, like their conservative national colleagues, don’t share that general vision, and so they have been pushed out of serious political discourse. They were beaten, and beaten badly. And they almost certainly won’t be part of that discourse until they go through a lengthy process of reform over many years.

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The Final Battle Begins in 2018

America is desperate for a functioning political supermajority that can break out of our political stasis and boldly move ahead and take on our many 21st-century challenges. The nation can’t take much more of our one step forward, one step back politics that gets little done despite the need for massive changes.

America today has many parallels to America in the 1850s or America in the 1930s. Both of those decades ended with one side definitively winning, forming a political supermajority that restructured systems going forward to solve our problems once and for all. In the 1850s, we fought the Civil War, and the Republican Party won and then dominated American politics for 50 years. In the 1930s, the Democratic Party won and dominated American politics for roughly the same amount of time.

America today is in a similar position. Our technologies, our economy, our geopolitics are going through fundamental changes. We are facing new challenges, like climate change and massive economic inequality, that must be addressed with fundamental reforms.

America can’t afford more political paralysis. One side or the other must win. This is a civil war that can be won without firing a shot. But it is a fundamental conflict between two worldviews that must be resolved in short order.

California, as usual, resolved it early. The Democrats won; the Republicans lost. The conservative way forward lost; the progressive way forward began. As we’ve laid out in this series, California is the future, always about 15 years ahead of the rest of the country. That means that America, starting in 2018, is going to resolve it, too.

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This argument has been built on previous articles and will continue through more stories to come. If you want more, follow us through this series.

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Peter Leyden

WRITTEN BY

Peter Leyden

Founder of Reinvent, a future-focused Media Co; Tech & Future Trends Speaker; Author 2 Books; former Wired ME, & journalist. See Reinvent.net & PeterLeyden.com

California Is The Future

ABOUT THIS COLLECTION

California Is The Future

The 21st-century hit California first, and the innovative state adapted early and has pioneered a promising new way forward. The same forces in demographics, in technology adoption, in the impact of globalization and climate change, are now hitting the rest of America in a time delay. What happened politically in California about 15 years ago is hitting America now, and what’s happening politically now in California will hit the rest of America over the next 15 years. A data-driven exploration. Produced in partnership with shift.newco.co.

Apple Fire Forces 7,800 to Seek Shelter in Coronavirus-Ravaged California

WILDFIRES

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02082020/california-big-oil-environmental-health

aug 2020

ARVIN, California—In September 2018, Estela Escoto sat down with a team of lawyers and community organizers and weighed her options.

Escoto's town—Arvin, California—had just granted an oil drilling and well-servicing company, Petro-Lud, a permit to drill four new wells near a neighborhood densely packed with young families and a park where children played soccer.

Escoto, president of an environmental justice group called the Committee for a Better Arvin, was frustrated, but not surprised. For years, she and the committee had been struggling to keep oil and gas development out of their neighborhoods....

reminder:

CA CARB) passed the zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate in 1990 which required the seven major automobile suppliers in the United States to offer electric vehicles in order to continue sales of their gasoline powered vehicles in California. Nearly 5000 electric cars were designed and manufactured by Chrysler, the Ford Motor Company, General Motors (GM), Honda, Nissan, and Toyota; and then later destroyed or donated to museums and educational institutions...The film details the California Air Resources Board's reversal of the mandate after relentless pressure and suits from automobile manufacturers, continual pressure from the oil industry, orchestrated hype over a future hydrogen car, and finally the George W. Bush administration.

A portion of the film details GM's efforts to demonstrate to California that there was no consumer demand for their product, and then to take back every EV1 and destroy them...

hope: if states hold to targets (ca upped ours), and if others join, hit 1.5? see sub-nat'l 1219

https://www.mediamatters.org/congress/following-media-matters-reporting-cagop-removes-endorsement-qanon-candidate-who-used-n

The California Republican Party has dropped its endorsement of congressional candidate and writer Mike Cargile. Media Matters had recently reported that Cargile is a QAnon supporter who wrote an anti-Black rant on Facebook in which he used the n-word. He has also repeatedly shared bigoted memes on the platform.

Cargile is running for Congress in California’s 35th Congressional District against incumbent Democratic Rep. Norma Torres. The California Republican Party had backed his congressional campaign and stated on Facebook in January that it is “proud to endorse” him.

Media Matters previously documented that Cargile is a supporter of QAnon, a violence-linked conspiracy theory that is based on cryptic posts to online message boards from an anonymous user known as “Q" that have spread rampantly on social media and among fringe right-wing media. QAnon conspiracy theorists essentially believe that President Donald Trump is secretly working to take down the purported “deep state,” a supposed cabal of high-ranking officials who they claim are operating pedophile rings.

Cargile has also claimed that the coronavirus is a “scamdemic” and “NOTHING compared to the diseases and plagues headed this way via the rats and the homeless”; and has praised the lie-filled Plandemic video as “EXACTLY why I'm in this race!” ...

===

https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/29/megadrought-us-south-west-fires-water-research

US south-west in grip of historic 'megadrought', research finds

Intensified by climate change, the current 20-year arid period is one of the worst on record, with wide-ranging effects

Samuel Gilbert

@samuelgilbert1

Fri 29 May 2020 05.30 EDTLast modified on Fri 29 May 2020 08.31 EDT

The Enterprise Bridge passes over a section of Lake Oroville that is nearly dry on 19 August 2014 in Oroville, California. The region is in the grip of a 20-year megadrought, research suggests.

When Ken Pimlott began fighting US wildfires at the age of 17, they seemed to him to be a brutal but manageable natural phenomenon.

Dust bowl conditions of 1930s US now more than twice as likely to reoccur

Read more

“We had periodic [fire] sieges in the 80s, but there were breaks in between,” said Pimlott, the former head of the California department of forestry and fire protection. But no longer. “That doesn’t really happen any more. Now you can’t even blink” between fires, he said. “We’re seeing the kinds of fires we have never seen before.”

A recent study published in the journal Science helps explains why, revealing that the south-western US is in the grip of a 20-year megadrought – a period of severe aridity that is stoking fires, depleting reservoirs and putting a strain on water supplies to the states of the region.

“You see impacts everywhere, in snowpacks, reservoir levels, agriculture, groundwater and tree mortality,” said co-author Benjamin Cook, of Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. “Droughts are these amazingly disruptive events. Water sits at the foundation of everything.”

Researchers compared soil moisture records from 2000-2019 to other drought events from the past 1,200 years. They found that the current period is worse than all but one of five megadroughts identified in the record.

Unlike past megadroughts – brought on by natural fluctuations in the Earth’s climate – this current drought has been heavily influenced by human-induced climate change, “pushing what would have been a moderate drought in south-western North America into megadrought territory”, according to the study.

“Global warming has made the drought much worse than it otherwise would have been,” said Cook. “We estimate 30-50% is attributed to climate change.”

According to Nasa, 19 of the 20 warmest years on record have occurred since 2001. Climate change, if unchecked, will hit the American south-west particularly hard.

A major concern is the megadrought’s impact on water supplies in the region. It has experienced explosive growth – half of the nation’s fastest-growing states are in the south-west – made possible by elaborate river diversion projects and massive reservoirs.

Over the past two decades, drought-depleted rivers, and population growth has led to steep declines in two of the nation’s largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, on which which tens of millions of people depend.

Water deliveries from the Colorado River are also being rationed this year, for the first time.

For Pimlott, this drought has manifested itself in 21st-century fires unlike any he had previously witnessed. In 2018, a fire tornado destroyed part of one northern California town, and almost the entire community of Paradise, California, was wiped out by a blaze that claimed 85 victims.

“Were seeing more intense fires, with longer durations,” he said.

===

an 520

california strips incarcerated people of complaints rights during the pandemic

Rory Flemin

gov gavin N did wel covid, regional partners, used our gnp got big ppe buy (china?)

420

https://www.ecowatch.com/southwest-drought-climate-crisis-2645742986.html

A severe drought that has engulfed the American Southwest since the year 2000 is likely to soon be the most severe drought since the 800s, according to a new study published in Science.

"This appears to be just the beginning of a more extreme trend toward megadrought as global warming continues," the authors wrote in the study.

A team of researchers from Columbia University conducted the study. They described the ongoing dry spell, which has helped intensify wildfire seasons and threatened water supplies for people and agriculture, as an "emerging megadrought," according to The New York Times.

Of course, nothing is guaranteed. By comparison to the previous 19 years, 2019 was actually a fairly wet year. Unpredictable climate variability may also bring enough rain to the region to end the drought, but global warming boosts the chances that the drought will endure.

"We know that this drought has been encouraged by the global warming process," said lead author A. Park Williams, a bioclimatologist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, as The New York Times reported. "As we go forward in time it's going to take more and more good luck to pull us out of this."

Scientists have suspected for a while that that the dryness is evolving into a megadrought. The new research not only confirms their suspicion, but also concludes this megadrought may be as bad or worse than anything known before.

"We now have enough observations of current drought and tree-ring records of past drought to say that we're on the same trajectory as the worst prehistoric droughts," said Williams, in a statement, as USA Today reported. This is "a drought bigger than what modern society has seen."

The researchers say that man-made global warming caused about half of this drought. Changes in the climate have contributed to dwindling reservoirs and harsher wildfire seasons.

It all could get much worse.

"Anthropogenic global warming and its drying influence in (southwestern North America) are likely still in their infancy," the study warns, as CNN reported. "Themagnitude of future droughts in North America and elsewhere will depend greatly on future rates of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions globally."

Without a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, these droughts are just the beginning.

"The effects of future droughts on humans will be further dependent on sustainable resource use because buffering mechanisms such as ground water and reservoir storage are at risk of being depleted during dry times," the study continues, according to CNN....

https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/the-high-cost-of-being-donald-trumps-enemy

an 320

Trump makes his disdain for California clear, lashing outat the Golden State as a “filthy dirty” and “horrible” outpost cursed by homelessness and wildfires. California, in turn, has challenged the Trump administration dozens of times on issues such as auto emissions, immigration and union dues.But it’s not cheap being one of Trump’s favorite enemies. And nowhere is that more apparent than in health care.State Attorney General Xavier Becerra has spent millions of dollars challenging the Trump administration more than a dozen timeson health care issues. For instance...

makes his disdain for California clear, lashing out at the Golden State as a “filthy dirty” and “horrible” outpost cursed by homelessness and wildfires. California, in turn, has challenged the Trump administration dozens of times on issues such as auto emissions, immigration and union dues.

But it’s not cheap being one of Trump’s favorite enemies. And nowhere is that more apparent than in health care.

State Attorney General Xavier Becerra has spent millions of dollars challenging the Trump administration more than a dozen times on health care issues. For instance, he has taken the lead in legally defending the federal Affordable Care Act, and in fighting the administration’s “public charge” rule, which makes it harder for immigrants to obtain permanent residency status if they use certain public benefits, such as Medicaid.

And state lawmakers are adopting legislation to counteract federal health care actions, racking up the costs of passing and implementing new rules, such as banning the sale of short-term health plansand preventing the state from imposing work requirementson its Medicaid recipients.

The state’s total tab for its feud with the Oval Office is at least in the hundreds of millions, with billions more at stake. Here are three major ways California is losing health care money:

Title X Funding

In February 2019, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services changed the rules for Title X, a program that funds family planning services. Under the previous rules, federal funds couldn’t pay for abortions. Now, these funds cannot even go to providers that refer patients elsewhere for abortions.

Clinics like Planned Parenthood affiliates, which refuse to abide by the new regulations, have surrendered their Title X money.

In California, that means the funding has been cut by millions of dollars.Essential Access Health, which runs the Title X program in California, said it couldn’t put a dollar figure on exactly how much funding has been lost. But according to the group, more than 366 health centers in 38 California counties received Title X funds in 2018. Today, that’s down to 251 centers in 19 counties.

While disputes over contraception coverage can be ideological, they also boil down to dollars and cents, according to Priscilla Smith, a reproductive law expert at Yale Law School.

“For California, that means more and more people who don’t have access to the coverage of their contraception will be using state resources both for contraceptive coverage and for health issues that result from their lack of access,” Smith said.

Essential Access Health, along with the state of California, Planned Parenthood and other plaintiffs, took the Trump administration to court over the regulations. A federal appeals judge sided with the administration in late February.

Medicaid Tax

Another big loss for the state could come from wonky tax policy.

The managed care organization (MCO) tax is a surcharge on the managed-care plans that provide coverage to about 10 million enrolleeson Medi-Cal, California’s public health insurance program for low-income people.

The tax has been around for several years but expired in July. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration asked for federal approval to extend it for three years — a request that seemed like such a sure thing.

“Based on the recent federal approval of a similar tax in Michigan, federal approval of a reauthorized California MCO tax package appears likely,” according to a February 2019 reportby the state Legislative Analyst’s Office.

No such luck. In February, federal officials rejected California’s request. Though it doesn’t affect the state this year, it will cost Medi-Cal up to $2 billionin lost revenue in the 2021-22 fiscal year.

“Michigan got something very similar — how come we didn’t?” asked Edwin Park, a research professor with Georgetown University who is based in California.

California would have to wipe out its reserves in the next two fiscal years to keep the Medi-Cal program whole, said Scott Graves, director of research at the California Budget & Policy Center.

“It creates a big hole down the road in the forecast,” he said.

The state plans to resubmit its request later this year, but the federal government isn’t racing to do California any favors.

“Because California is California, the concern is the Trump administration won’t approve,” Park said.

Boosting The Affordable Care Act

One of the Trump administration’s pet projects has been to repeal, replace or otherwise dismantle the Affordable Care Act.

Take the simple issue of advertising for Obamacare health insurance plans. In 2017, the Trump administration announcedit would slash the federal budget for advertising during open enrollment season by 90%.

California responded by increasing its advertising budget. For the 2020 open-enrollment season, the state budgeted $121 millionin marketing and outreach. The federal government budgeted $10 million.

And when the Trump administration eliminated the Affordable Care Act tax penalty for not having health insurance, California created one — and offered state-funded subsidies to help some people pay for insurance. This year, the state is spending about $430 millionto subsidize the premium costs for about 625,000 people.

“Obviously it would be great if the administration was doing its fair share, as they did in the old administration,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a consumer advocacy group.

California can absorb the costs of bolstering the Affordable Care Act, Wright said. What it can’t do, he said, is make up the difference if the Trump administration adopts other items on its health care wish list, such as making big cuts to the Medicaid program.

In his preliminary 2020-21 federal budget, Trump proposed cutting $920 billion from the program over the next decade — although that’s unlikely to fly in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.

“The things that keep me up at night are the broad Medicaid changes that are in the billions of dollars,” Wright said. “That is stuff that’s on a whole other level.”

California Lagged in Capping Century-old Oil Wells Leaking Under Homes of LA Residents Plagued by Illness and Odors

transparency

koch v ca

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2020/01/10/koch-funds-groups-supporting-lawsuit-against-donor-transparency/

https://insideclimatenews.org/campaign-archive/clean-economy-weekly/1827249

120 icn

in California, Solar on (Almost) Every New House

In California, rooftop solar is now a standard feature for new houses. The state’s new building code, which took effect Jan. 1, requires solar on new construction, with few exceptions.

This is a big step for the country’s largest market for rooftop solar. But for the builders who must follow the rules, the shift is more routine. They are used to the building code being updated every three years, and have had plenty of time to prepare, said Brandon De Young, executive vice president of De Young Properties in Fresno.

His company, which builds about 100 houses per year, specializes in energy efficient construction and already had solar as a standard feature. Even though the code may take away some of the distinctiveness of what he offers, he has been a strong supporter of the policy.

“In our view, it’s a no-brainer: this is the right way to go,” he told me. “We believe this as citizens and as a company.

The rules affect the roughly 80,000 new houses built in California each year.

The new systems will add up to a projected 1 gigawatt of new rooftop solar on homes between now and 2024, according to Wood Mackenzie Power and Renewables.

That’s a lot, and it will come on top of the 26.2 gigawatts of solar already installed in the state, the most in the country by a large margin. Of that total, 6.4 gigawatts are on houses....

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/census-after-2020-californias-congressional-delegation-could-shrink-for-the-first-time-in-160-years/

census: After 2020, California’s Congressional delegation could shrink for the first time in 160 years

no lnx

Census: After 2020, California’s Congressional delegation could shrink for the first time in 160 years

Written by Stephen Wolf / DailyKos January 2, 2020

On Dec. 30, the Census Bureau released its newest population estimates for every state, detailing how many residents each state has gained or lost since the last census, in 2010. We’ve used these figures, along with estimates from previous years, to project how many seats in Congress each state is likely to gain or lose after next year’s census, when the Constitution mandates that all 435 House seats be reallocated according to each state’s share of the total U.S. population.

As shown in the map above (see here for a larger version), 17 states could see their number of districts change after the 2020 census, based on both the long-term 2010-2019 trend and the short-term 2018-2019 trend.

These projections also represent a shift, in some cases, from those that the firm Election Data Services issued a year ago, when the Census Bureau last updated its population estimates. These three changes are summarized below:

If California does indeed lose a seat, it would be the first time in 160 years that the Golden State’s representation in the House shrank.

The 2020 census and subsequent reapportionment will thus set the stage for congressional redistricting. However, it’s difficult to predict with much accuracy what the partisan impact of these changes will be because we don’t yet know which party (if any) will control the redistricting process in many states. If redistricting had taken place after the 2019 elections, Republicans would have been able draw two to three times more congressional districts than Democrats. However, elections next year for governors, state legislatures, and redistricting reform measures will be crucial for setting the partisan landscape.

One thing we do know, however, is that much of the population growth in Sun Belt states such as Texas comes from black, Latino, and Asian-American residents, which could benefit Democrats in those states. However, many GOP-controlled states such as Texas have refused to allocate any supplemental funding to prevent undercounts of these populations.

Reapportionment will also determine how many Electoral College votes each state receives, since each state gets electoral votes equivalent to its number of House seats plus two for its Senate delegation. Adjusting the 2016 Electoral College outcome based on the above projections, Donald Trump would have gained three electoral votes, while Hillary Clinton would have lost three—not nearly enough to alter Trump’s 304-227 win.

Interestingly, the largely Midwestern and Northeastern states that are projected to lose seats almost all trended Republican in 2016, while the states forecast to gain seats—largely in the Sun Belt— almost all trended Democratic. These trends could benefit Democrats in the long term if they can start winning regularly in places such as Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas, even if Republicans shift toward a greater reliance on carrying the Rust Belt.

Ruling allows California to start enforcing efficiency standards ...

https://www.sfchronicle.com › news › article › Ruling-allows-California-to...

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:{20 hours ago - A federal judge has allowed :{California:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: to start enforcing new :{efficiency:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: standards for light :{bulbs:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: on Wednesday while fighting the Trump ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

California defies Trump Administration on lightbulb efficiency ...

https://www.utilitydive.com › news › california-defies-trump-administratio...

:{:(style="border-color:#006621;;border-style:solid;border-width:5px 4px 0px;width:0px;height:0px;margin-left:3px;top:7.5px;margin-top:-4px;position:absolute;left:0px"):}:

:{Nov 15, 2019 - Utility industry :{news:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: and analysis for energy professionals. ... more :{efficient:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: than incandescent :{bulbs:(style="font-weight:bold"):}:, about a week after :{California:(style="font-weight:bold"):}: and other ...:(style="overflow-wrap:break-word"):}:

icn 1219

...**It played out in real time on TV and in newspaper headlines about droughts, floods, heat extremes and wildfires—an "unprecedented hemisphere-wide pattern,"** Mann said. "It played a key role in the large-scale jet pattern we saw in late July, associated with deep stagnant high pressure centers over California and Europe."

:{That brought blazing temperatures and wildfire conditions to California, flooding over the Eastern U.S. and unprecedented heat to the Scandinavian Arctic region, as well as a six-month heat wave and drought across parts of Central Europe, all events showing a clear :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:global warming fingerprint, according to scientists.

The new study focuses on summer extremes, while other research has looked at how global warming affects the jet stream in winter.

What Happens in the Arctic Doesn't Stay There

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research who was not involved with the new research, said the study has some "compelling new evidence on the link between amplified Arctic warming and extreme mid-latitude weather during the summer months."

What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay there. Increased melting of reflective sea ice in summer exposes more dark-colored ocean to absorb heat, and that heats the surrounding land. As Arctic warming races ahead of the rest of the global average, the temperature contrasts that drive the jet stream are reduced, and the river of wind more frequently twists into sharp and slow-moving or stationary waves.

"When the jet stream enters this wavy state, extreme weather tends to occur on either side of the amplified ridges and troughs as the storm track becomes locked in place," Swain said. Then, specific regions experience long periods of cool and stormy or, contrarily, hot and dry weather, he added.

PUBLISHED UNDER:

EXTREME WEATHER

CLIMATE SCIENCE

CLIMATE CHANGE

California's housing bubble is spilling over into poor and exurban neighborhoods, creating waves of crises

California has such a huge undersupply of housing -- and oversupply of housing speculators -- that affluent homebuyers have effectively rendered the state's major cities unaffordable for all but the very wealthy, even pushing into neighborhoods that were historically undesirable due to poverty, poor housing stock and crime. Read the rest

BUILD HOUSING / CALEXIT / CALIFORNIA / HOMELESSNESS / RENT CONTROL / THE RENT'S TOO DAMNED HIGH / WEAPONIZED SHELTER

https://theintercept.com/2019/11/07/california-wildfires-green-new-deal/

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...Like its national inspiration, the Chico Green New Deal framework marries rapid decarbonization targets with calls for more affordable housing; a safe and sustainable food system; investments in “clean, 21st century” public transit; green jobs creation, including projects earmarked for the poorest residents; and much more.

Chico shows that there is no way to cope with climate breakdown without a simultaneous shift to a very different kind of economy.

“Your city council has heard the call of its community that has resounded locally and across the nation,” said Chico Vice Mayor Alex Brown when the plan was announced. “We are choosing to walk the walk of this movement and to take the leadership being demanded of us.” In an interview, Brown told me that the Camp Fire’s impact on both Paradise and Chico was a glimpse of the future unless action is taken to both radically lower emissions and build “communities that are more resilient to these shifts.” Brown is well aware that a small city like hers isn’t going to make much of a dent in global emissions. But, she said, “We can demonstrate what a Green New Deal looks like at the local level.”

The Chico plan is one of many similar local initiatives that have sprung up in the year since the Sunrise Movement occupied the office of then-prospective House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with young demonstrators demanding that the Democratic Party embrace a sweeping Green New Deal to meet the twin crises of climate disruption and deepening inequality. Since then, as the Green New Deal proposal has picked up momentum in the Democratic primaries, several states and big cities have unveiled their own frameworks, including Maine and Seattle, where city council recently passed a resolution that included the city’s most ambitious climate justice targets to date. It also pledged to create an oversight board to hold the city to its commitments, a body that will be made up of representatives from communities directly impacted by racial, economic, and environmental injustice, as well as climate experts and representatives from trade unions and green groups.

And yet the contribution now coming from humble Chico — a scrappy northern California college town with a population of approximately 100,000 — may be the most politically significant. Because the Chico Green New Deal is based directly on this region’s hard-won experience of living through the 2018 inferno; it was forged, quite literally, in fire....

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13112019/biogas-climate-change-renewable-gas-marketing-socalgas-reject-electrification-california

In the small town of Duarte, California, early this year, the state's largest natural gas utility made what has become its standard pitch to city councils: If you care about climate change, stick with gas—because it, too, can be a renewable source of power.

Robert Cruz of the Southern California Gas Company urged the City Council to pass a resolution opposing any state regulation mandating "electrification" in buildings.

No such state rule has been proposed, but several cities have passed partial bansongas-burning appliances in buildings, the company's core market. And state legislators have introduced zero-emission building policies that SoCalGas is worried might lead to this same prohibition all over California as the state works toward its zero-emissions goal.

Fearing an existential threat may be on the horizon as California races toward a future without fossil fuels, SoCalGas has been exerting its financial and political muscle on multiple fronts, including in atleast 40 local governments and inside one of the nation's leading universities, to promote biogas—which the industry markets as "renewable gas"—as a better solution than renewable electricity.

"Natural gas doesn't have to come from the ground," Cruz told Duarte's city's leaders when he addressed them in February. "Just like electricity, it can be generated from renewable sources."

biogas is methane that can be captured from landfills, wastewater treatment plants, wasted food and cow manure and then transported and used as fuel, just like conventional natural gas.

It is theoretically "zero emissions"—better for the climate than regular fossil fuel gas—because it prevents methane from going into the atmosphere, offsetting the carbon dioxide it emits when burned. But it is expensive, the gas pipelines that transport it are prone to leaking methane, and even the most optimistic projections say its potential availability is limited.

According to SoCalGas, if the company were to mix a small amount of biogas into the company's vast network of natural gas pipelines, it could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from buildings at a lot less cost and inconvenience than switching to electric heaters, hot water heaters, clothes dryers and ovens. It is a claim that has been disputed by environmental scientists.

"I think we have to be honest about what we are really talking about when we are talking about biomethane," James O'Dea, an analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said. "It means a little bit of biomethane but a lot of natural gas."

[Biogas captured from cow manure and other sources can be transported and used as fuel, just like conventional natural gas. On this farm near Merced, water washes waste down a concrete alley. The farm uses a biogas digester system to capture methane gas for electricity. Credit: Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images]

California has an executive order to get to net-zero emissions across its economy by 2045. To help reach that target, it passed legislation requiring the California Energy Commission to find ways to cut building emissions over the next decade.

"There is a growing consensus that building electrification is the most viable and predictable path to zero-emission buildings," the energy commission concluded in a report in February.

Berkeley's City Council outright banned natural gas in new low-rise buildings in July, and since then other cities including San Jose, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Morgan Hill and Windsor have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, similar measures.

If appliances in more of California's buildings were to go all-electric, by government mandate or market forces, such a move would cut deep into the company's bottom line. Gas deliveries to houses, apartments and smaller businesses are the heart of SoCalGas's business—the vast majority of its revenue is tied to building and maintaining the expansive network of small distribution pipelines that feeds these customers.

Electrification would mean that the nation's largest gas utility could face billions of dollars in annual revenue shortfalls, while being saddled with stranded assets of more than 100,000 miles of underutilized pipes, according to a draft report released in October by the energy commission.

"We are not in opposition to electrification," Cruz of SoCalGas told the Duarte City Council. "What we are saying is we need the balance of all our energy choices in front of us, and natural gas is an important part of that prospect."

Over the past year, Cruz and his SoCalGas colleagues have circulated a model resolution to city officials across southern California about the benefits of biogas. More than 100 towns and counties, including Duarte, have passed non-binding resolutions opposing any future state rule that might require electrification. The resolutions wouldn't block state legislation, but they send a signal to legislators.

California Sides with Electrification

While biogas currently makes up less than 1 percent of all the natural gas it ships, SoCalGas sees it as key to its future.

In March, the company announced plans to replace one-fifthof its natural gas with biogas by 2030, in part through avoluntary tariff program for its customers that would allow them to pay a premium to get biogas instead of conventional gas. (It was already required to invest in biogas infrastructure under a settlement with the state over one of the largest natural gas leaks in U.S. history, at its Aliso Canyon storage facility in 2015.)

"If you want to address climate change, you need to make gas more renewable, you need to replace fossil gas with renewable sources of gas," George Minter, a SoCalGas executive, told InsideClimate News.

The climate benefit of capturing methane is well established. A recent report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that global warming cannot be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7°F) without substantially reducing emissions of this potent short-lived greenhouse gas.

California officials support the use of biogas, but say the fuel would be better used in hard-to-electrify sectors of the economy—like aviation, heavy industry and long-haul trucking. Electrification is preferred for buildings, the energy commission concluded in its Februaryreport, because the grid is increasingly supplied by wind and solar electricity, and because super-efficient electric appliances are now readily available.

[chart]

Biogas "is likely to be constrained by limitations" on its "availability, cost and ongoing methane leakage concerns," the commission wrote.

Once the lowest-cost sources of biogas are tapped—from landfills, wastewater treatment facilities, food waste digesters and dairies close to natural gas infrastructure—the cost of additional biogas increases exponentially.

Gaslighting on Biogas?

At the heart of SoCalGas's argument for promoting gas over electrification is its claim that mixing even a small amount of biogas with conventional fossil gas would significantly reduce gas's overall emissions.

In hispresentation to the Duarte City Council, Cruz stated that just 16 percent biogas in the company's mix would "achieve the same GHG [greenhouse gas] reductions as overhauling 100 percent of California's buildings to all electricity."

The 16 percent figure is one of several that comes from a 2018 Navigant Consulting report commissioned by SoCalGas, and is the one the company has highlighted in press releasesand op-eds.

According to critics, the figure was derived by making assumptions and simplifications that overstate the climate benefit of biogas. One way it did that, they say, is by comparing the emissions gains of switching to biogas economy-wide to the benefit of electrification in buildings only. When it compared buildings to buildings, a much higher percentage of biogas—46 to 63 percent—was required to match the benefits of electrification, the Navigant report found.

"That is not the same thing as what they are claiming, that 16 percent is equivalent to electrifying everything," Pierre Delforge, a building decarbonization senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said. "It's a much more nuanced comparison that is being simplified in the way it's reported."

...

new 1119

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04112019/trump-war-california-auto-standards-environment-violations-justice-department-wildfires

As fierce Santa Ana winds whipped the wildfires outside of Los Angeles, stirring exactly the kind of infernos that scientists expect in a hotter, drier California, President Donald Trump was gloating over the new allies he has won in his epic battle to block that state's efforts to fight climate change.

California has been a world innovator in crafting environmental policy, and its pioneering approach to the difficult issue of carbon emissions from cars helped put the United States on course to cleaner, more efficient vehicles. But a multi-pronged assault by the Trump administration now seeks both to hobble California's climate efforts and to shred the state's reputation as an environmental leader.

In its latest move, the Trump administration doubled down on its fight to eliminate the state's carbon emissions rules for vehicles. It had already revoked California's authority to set higher standards. Now it was pressuring carmakers to take its side in California's lawsuit over the move. When GM, Fiat Chrysler and Toyota made the surprise decision to comply last week,Trump tweeted: "California has treated the Auto Industry very poorly for many years, harming Workers and Consumers. We are fixing this problem!"

The attack isn't just on auto standards. On Sunday, Trump tweeteda threat to cut U.S. aid for fighting California wildfires, reiterating his previous falseclaim that they are due to the state (which owns of just 2 percent of the forest land within its borders) failing to "clean" its forest floor. Trump's Justice Department sued the state a week earlier, arguing that California exceeded its authority when it launched a cap-and-trade agreement with Quebec to lower fossil fuel emissions.

At the same time, Trump's Environmental Protection Agency has threatened to use its authority under the Clean Air Act to withdraw federal highway funds from the state over air pollution, and to initiate enforcement action for water pollution violations. In a flourish, the EPA blamed the latter on human waste and needles from homeless people in San Francisco.

Those warnings, issued directly from the desk of EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, were at odds with the agency's hands-off approach under Trump. At a time when EPA is weakening environmental standards on both air and water pollution and enforcement activity is at its lowest level in a decade, the agency was invoking one of the most severe penalties available, for a state that has invested billions in improved air quality and has among the best compliance records in the nation on water pollution.

California's governor has called the moves "pure retaliation," while former federal officials say that the unusual nature of the enforcement actions, and the management of the cases by top Trump appointees in Washington, reeks of political score-settling.

Together, the Trump administration's actions try to deliver the message that California is a laggard in addressing visible air pollution and sewage, and that the state's aggressive focus on global warming is a misguided distraction at best.

But the Trump administration's California narrative falls apart with a cursory review of the science and the state's record as a national leader in environmental protection. And it remains to be seen whether it has the legal arguments to persuade the courts, which will have the final say.

How Did We Get Here?

This is not the first time that politicians have sought to caricature California as a victim of its own progressive policies.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney famously usedCalifornia's electricity crisis of 2001 as a pretext for expanded U.S. oil and natural gas production. Only later did it become clear that California's power shortages were created, not by conservation-oriented policies, but by profit-hungry energy traders like Enron who took advantage of the state's experiment with deregulation.

The same administration also sought to block California's effort to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from passenger vehicles, but the auto industry's collapse in 2008 forced it into the arms of the federal government for help. President Barack Obama's administration brokered an historic $80.7 billion bailout of the carmakers, which included an agreement to put California's standards into effect nationwide. It forced a gradual fleet-wide improvement in fuel economy that by 2025 would have cut 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide, the biggest step any nation has taken to reduce greenhouse gases.

Soon after Trump was elected, the carmakers sought to partially undo that deal—they still wanted a nationwide standard, but more flexibility. The Trump administration, however, sought a head-on battle with California that the automakers had long said they hoped to avoid.

Launching such a war runs counter to the Trump administration's stated goal of giving more environmental authority to the states. Just last month, for example, the Trump EPA delegated increased authority to North Dakota for oversight of oil and gas sites, and waste facilities, and power plants.

But EPA Administrator Wheeler has portrayed California as a different case—a rogue state that needed to be reined in.

[long] see bak 2

Turning to the Courts

It will likely be the courts that decide the outcome of the Trump administration's battles with California. And on the state's greenhouse gas emissions standards for autos, the legal hurdle that the Trump administration faces is high.

When Congress originally passed the Clean Air Act in the 1970s, lawmakers gave California authority to set its own standards, seeking not to disrupt the steps the state already had taken to address pollution under then-Gov. Ronald Reagan. All the state needs to do to obtain its "waiver" to act is show a compelling need, and that its action is not arbitrary or capricious and is at least as protective as the federal standard. Until Trump, no administration had ever revoked a California waiver that already has been granted.

"To revoke a waiver that is already issued is a huge leap legally, and is sort of ironic in the light of other instances where the administration is taking the position of deferring to the states, and giving them more responsibility and autonomy," said McCabe.

The Trump administration plans to make the legal argument that the greenhouse gas emissions standards are, in effect, fuel economy standards—and that Congress prohibited states from setting their own fuel economy standards when it established a national auto efficiency program in 1975.

Two federal courts—in Vermont and in California—rejected that legal reasoning during the George W. Bush administration.

Trump's rollback of greenhouse gas standards could work to the automakers' short-term benefit, since their less fuel-efficient SUVs and pickup trucks are their most profitable vehicles.

In the long-run, though, automakers risk getting left behind in the competition to meet growing global demand for electric vehicles, which explains why Ford, Honda, BMW and Volkswagen struck a deal with California in July to voluntarily implement annual fuel economy improvements across their fleets even if the Trump administration weakened standards. The deal reportedly enraged Trump, and his administration has threatened them with antitrust action over the agreement.

When asked how it answers the charges that it is engaging in a political vendetta against California, the Trump EPA returned to its message on the environmental shortcomings of the state that is fighting the administration to keep environmental protections in place.

"Highlighting that California has very serious environmental failures both with air and water quality is not a political issue, and unlike previous Administrations, under this Administration the EPA is acting to protect public health and the environment for all Americans," said Corry Schiermeyer, EPA's associate administrator for public affairs in an email.

From a purely political standpoint, Trump has little to lose in warring with California. It resonates with the president's base, if the response from his Twitter followers is any indication. "California is such a mess @potus!," tweeted @carrieksada. "Fires everywhere. And they're worried about exhaust fumes."

Trump lost the state in 2016 by 30 percentage points, but he won the election without the nation's largest pot of electoral votes.

Of course, the state was not always so politically lopsided. California was the home of two Republican presidents elected in the past 50 years. But as Reagan's daughterPatti Davis wrote of her state last week: with wildfires advancing on her father's presidential library in Simi Valley, that California is gone.

see icn 1019 shareholder defraud mass healey etc

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04042018/climate-change-fossil-fuel-company-lawsuits-timeline-exxon-children-california-cities-attorney-general

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/can-uber-and-lyft-survive-if-californias-worker-protections-go-nationwide/

https://www.ecowatch.com/southern-california-coast-sea-level-rise-2640731572.html

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Jacob Margolis

The stretch of coast from Santa Monica to Malibu is iconic and quintessentially Californian. It's also ridiculously beautiful — and it's clear, based on the latest science, it could be unrecognizable by the end of the century.

As the planet warms, sea levels will continue to rise, threatening some of our most beloved stretches of coastline.

I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time on those beaches. Raised in the San Fernando Valley, I used to head over the hill in my friend's baby blue VW bus, or my mom's minivan, to surf Topanga or Malibu on my 9'8 Kennedy longboard. It was and still is an amazing escape from the traffic, heat and urban sprawl of the Valley.

I wanted to know exactly what climate change could mean for our beach-going experience through the end of the century, so I reached out to scientists and stakeholders to find out what they know.

Here are the challenges — and some solutions.

Seas Will Rise

First, some context.

A few feet of sea level rise might not sound very alarming, but every vertical foot could mean roughly 20 feet farther that the ocean encroaches inland (depending on a lot of factors, like the slope of the coastline), according to Patrick Barnard, a research scientist at the US Geological Survey.

The state's 2018 sea level rise guidance laid out different scenarios based on how much we curb our greenhouse gas emissions.

Low emissions: 66% chance of between 0.9 and 2.3 feet of rise in Santa Monica by 2100, and similar rise in other parts of Southern California.

High emissions: 66% chance of between 1.5 and 3.3 feet of rise, with a .5% probability we'll see 6.8 feet.

As a precaution, the report recommends that state officials anticipate 10 feet of rise when building crucial infrastructure along the coast.

Keep in mind some researchers think we've been underestimating just how bad things could get.

Beaches Will Disappear

According to a paper co-authored by Barnard, SoCal could lose between 31% - 67% of its beaches by 2100.

And areas like Malibu could be threatened in the coming decades.

"I mean these are very, very narrow beaches. They're already having lots of issues, and just a bit of sea level rise and they're going to be completely gone," said Barnard, adding that Malibu could see a major loss of its beaches in the coming decades.

...

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/exclusive-california-finally-has-a-progressive-government-and-its-a-changing-the-game/

...

[rent control]

Atkins agrees. “Gavin Newsom is willing to sign some bills that Jerry Brown wouldn’t.”

Last year, Brown vetoed legislation requiring university health clinics to offer abortion pills to students, saying that the same service was available off campus. The Assembly passed the same bill again at the end of the session this month; Newsom has vowed to sign it. Brown also vetoed legislation to require that anyone running for president supply five years’ worth of income tax returns, a bill aimed directly at Donald Trump. Newsom signed the same legislation after the Assembly passed it again this summer. (A federal judge has since put the measure on hold pending litigation by the Trump campaign.)

To be sure, Newsom remains independent of the legislature. He went against the Democratic majority when he vetoed SB 1, a measure to protect California’s water supplies from regulatory changes made by the Trump administration, in July, drawing rebuke from his closest ally in the Assembly. Nevertheless, having a more progressive governor clearly widens the realm of possibility for legislators.

It is also worth noting how the situation in California contrasts with places where Republicans have a lock on legislative and executive power. Take Alabama, where Democrats lack enough votes in either the house or the senate to block anything and the compliant nonentities who have inhabited the governor’s mansion since 2011 rubber-stamp whatever legislation Republicans pass. What has the GOP done with all of this power? Aside from a few bills pushing hot-button topics such as abortion, they have accomplished very little. Alabama remains at the bottom of every ranking of states according to economic and social wellbeing, with feeble economic growth compounded by endless budget woes. While California races ahead, Alabama sits still or slides backwards....

an 919

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NYT’s Paul Krugman explains exactly why Trump is targeting California

Written by Raw Story September 20, 2019

According to economist and New York Times opinion columnist Paul Krugman, there are two Californias: “the real state on America’s left coast, and the fantasy state of the right’s imagination.” In a piece published this Friday, Krugman says that President Trump is using the latter to take away the state’s ability to set its own regulations on vehicle emissions standards and to label its homeless crisis as an “environmental threat.”

Krugman says that it’s important to remember that California does indeed have real problems, like its “sky-high housing costs,” which are likely contributing to its homeless problem, but it does well in almost every other aspect.

It has a booming economy, which has been creating jobs at a much faster pace than the nation as a whole.

It has the nation’s second-highest life expectancy, comparable to that in European nations with much higher life expectancy than America as a whole. This is, by the way, a relatively new development: Back in 1990, life expectancy in California was only average.

At the same time, California, having enthusiastically implemented Obamacare and tried to make it work, has seen a sharp drop in the number of residents without health insurance. And crime, although it has ticked up slightly in the past few years, remains near a historic low.

Krugman writes that despite these attributes, conservatives are resentful that the once conservative state has gone overwhelmingly liberal, partly due to its rising Hispanic and Asian populations. As liberals enacted their agenda in the state, the results went against conservative predictions of its eventual “economic suicide.”

What is happening instead, of course, is that the usual suspects are trying to portray California as a terrible place — beset by violent crime and rampant disease — in sheer denial of reality. And they have seized on the issue of homelessness, which is, to be fair, a genuine problem. Furthermore, it’s a problem brought on by bad policy — not high taxes or excessively generous social programs, but the runaway NIMBYism that has prevented California from building remotely enough new housing to accommodate its rising population.

Despite Trump’s past rhetoric promoting state’s rights, he wants to strip away California’s power in what Krugman calls “an attempt both to punish an anti-Trump state and to blacken its reputation.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/lyft-uber-to-spend-60-million-on-propaganda-to-keep-workers-maximally-exploited/

no lnx

Lyft, Uber to spend $60 million on propaganda to keep workers maximally exploited

Written by Nicole Karlis / Salon September 1, 2019

On Friday, California state senators on the appropriations committee voted for Assembly Bill 5 — a bill designed to improve the livelihood of gig economy workers at companies like Uber and Lyft, whose business models depend on independent contractors who often suffer inconsistent wages and little or no benefits.

The vote brings the bill one step closer to becoming a law, one which has the potential to completely remake California’s gig economy to make it more equitable for workers. Lawmakers voted 5-2 to send the bill to the Senate floor, which will be the final vote.

Yet Uber and Lyft seem frightened at the prospect of treating their workers better, and have been amping up their efforts to protect their companies in case the bill passes. Both rideshare companies’ business models rely on having low-paid independent contractors that are exempt from full-time employee benefits — and even that seems not to be enough to break even. Uber lost $5 billion in the past 3 months, the same time period in which it went public. Lyft’s quarterly loss was $644 million.

Assembly Bill 5, if passed, would force all companies to make their drivers W-2 employees — a move that would require paying a standard slate of benefits, as well as guarantee that employees made at least minimum wage. Notably, many Lyft and Uber drivers have reported making less than minimum wage, a situation only possible because of the contractual nature of their labor.

But Uber and Lyft are not going to treat their workers any better without a fight. As The New York Times reports, both companies are taking extreme measures to keep their workers independent contractors, spending millions on propaganda to sway public opinion.

The two rideshare companies are spending $30 million each — $60 million total — toward a fund to put an initiative on the California 2020 ballot to exempt them from AB5, assuming it passes. DoorDash, whose business model also depends on independent contractors, said it would contribute $30 million, too.

In a statement to TechCrunch, a Lyft spokesperson said: “We are working on a solution that provides drivers with strong protections that include an earnings guarantee, a system of worker-directed portable benefits, and first-of-its kind industry-wide sectoral bargaining, without jeopardizing the flexibility drivers tell us they value so much.”

Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer, said in an interview with The New York Times the fund is a “Plan B.”

“As a Plan B, we are reluctantly funding this initiative,” West said. “This is not our first-choice option. We would much rather have a historic deal that is good for drivers, good for innovation, good for labor.”

The news quickly followed requests made by both companies to their customers to contact their legislators to oppose AB 5 and support their proposed revision. In an email to California riders, Uber advocated for a policy that would offer drivers a minimum of $21 per hour while on a trip, in addition to paid time off, sick leave and compensation if they are injured while working — all rights that drivers don’t have as independent contractors.

In a separate email from Lyft sent to its customers, the company said that AB5, as it is written, could mean that customers pay more, wait longer, and “risk losing reliable access to rideshare altogether.” They, too, promised a new proposal “with additional workplace protections for drivers and a minimum earnings floor.

AB 5 expands on and codifies the 2018 California Supreme Court decision made in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, and will make it harder for companies to claim that workers are independent contractors. The determination, according to the bill, would be an “ABC” test would ascertain whether a worker is an employee rather than a contractor. Under the test, as it stands, it is likely that gig economy workers — who are currently classified as independent contractors — would be considered employees.

While the bill only pertains to the state of California, some experts believe its repercussions will extend across the country — perhaps unsurprising given that California is both the largest state by population, and has the largest economy of any state.

“What happens in California will be closely watched around the country,” Ken Jacobs, the chair UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, told Salon in July. “As we have seen with paid sick leave, $15 minimum wages, and fair scheduling, policies that start in one state or locality often spread elsewhere.”

Jacobs told Salon such a law can have a nationwide impact not only because it will set a precedent, but because a majority of gig economy companies are in California — like Uber, Lyft and Postmates.

“California makes up a significant part of the market for many of the gig economy companies,” Jacobs said. “It will have a large effect on their overall business model … in the context [of] New York City, and other important markets, that have put higher labor standards in place.”

The corporations’ massive propaganda efforts to exempt Uber and Lyft exempt from the bill come as an insult to Uber and Lyft drivers who support AB5.

“It’s insulting,” Uber driver Rebecca Stack-Martinez, an organizer for Gig Workers Rising, told Salon in an interview. “Here is a company claiming drivers are the heart of their business, and that they would do right by them.

“If that was true they would let AB 5 pass,” she added.

Stack-Martinez said she felt “nauseous” when she heard that the companies had created a $60 million fund for the 2020 ballot measure.

“Why don’t they take that money and give it to their drivers who are sleeping in their cars and who can’t afford to put food on the tables for family?” she said.

Tech giants argue that their workers “prefer” freedom and flexibility in their workday. Jacobs, of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, told Salon that argument lacks steam.

“Their model is based on offloading as much risk to the drivers as possible while paying at the lowest possible rate,” Jacobs told Salon in July. “There is no reason there cannot be flexibility in an employee model …. this is a choice the company makes, and ultimately the best place to make the decision on trade-offs between security and flexibility is through a union — and workers need both higher labor standards and a union to have a voice in how policies are implemented.”

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/parts-of-california-are-too-wildfire-prone-to-insure

no lnx

Parts of California are too wildfire-prone to insure

Written by Nathanael Johnson / Grist.Org August 24, 2019

California is facing yet another real estate-related crisis, but we’re not talking about its sky-high home prices. According to newly released data, it’s simply become too risky to insure houses in big swaths of the wildfire-prone state.

This post originally appeared on Grist.

Last winter when we wrote about home insurance rates possibly going up in the wake of California’s massive, deadly fires, the insurance industry representatives we interviewed were skeptical. They noted that the stories circulating in the media about people in forested areas losing their homeowners’ insurance was based on anecdotes, not data. But now, the data is in and it’s really happening: Insurance companies aren’t renewing policies areas climate scientists say are likely to burn in giant wildfires in coming years.

Insurance companies dropped more than 340,000 homeowners from wildfire areas in just four years. Between 2015 and 2018, the 10 California counties with the most homes in flammable forests saw a 177 percent increase in homeowners turning to an expensive state-backed insurance program because they could not find private insurance.

In some ways, this news is not surprising. According to a recent survey of insurance actuaries (the people who calculate insurance risks and premiums based on available data), the industry ranked climate change as the top risk for 2019, beating out concerns over cyber damages, financial instability, and terrorism. While having insurance companies on board with climate science is a good thing for, say, requiring cities to invest in more sustainable infrastructure, it’s bad news for homeowners who can’t simply pick up their lodgings and move elsewhere.

“We are seeing an increasing trend across California where people at risk of wildfires are being non-renewed by their insurer,” said California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara in a statement. “This data should be a wake-up call for state and local policymakers that without action to reduce the risk from extreme wildfires and preserve the insurance market we could see communities unraveling.”

A similar dynamic is likely unfolding across many other Western states, according to reporting from the New York Times.

To understand the data coming out of California we can use my own family as an example: A few months after Grist published a story about how my parent’s neighborhood is trying to fortify itself against future forest fires, my mom’s insurer informed her and my stepfather that they’d need to get home insurance elsewhere. For two months they called one insurer after another, but no company would take their premiums. So they turned to the state program as the insurer of last resort — which costs about three times more than they’d been spending under their previous, private insurer.

My folks have spent a lot of money clearing trees and brush from around their house. They’ve covered the walls in hard-to-burn cement panels, and the roof with metal. But insurance risk maps don’t adjust for these improvements. Instead, insurance companies seem to have made the call that the changing climate, along with years of fire suppression, have made houses in the midst of California’s dry forests a bad bet, and therefore uninsurable.

“For us, because we’ve done good financial planning and our house is paid off, it’s just an extra expense,” said my mom, Gail Johnson Vaughan. “But we have friends who have no choice but to leave.”

allies

https://thinkprogress.org/california-trump-states-adopting-vehicle-standards-6212b2031ce6/

garden grove OC?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/video-surfaces-showing-california-high-school-students-singing-nazi-song-and-giving-hitler-salute/

Proposed California Law Would Punish Companies for Failing to Limit Harm to the Planet’s Forests

The legislation could affect everything from what paper gets used in state offices to what gets served in California cafeterias.

by Abrahm Lustgarten

View Story

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/california-water-politics-takes-a-weird-turn-fbi-raids-los-angeles-department-of-water-and-power-and-la-city-attorneys-office/

...Wearing suits and navy blue FBI jackets, investigators searched the DWP headquarters on Hope Street and the offices of City Atty. Mike Feuer a few blocks away at City Hall. Search warrants were also served in two other locations — one in Beverly Hills, the other in an office tower that houses multiple city agencies,” the Times said.

“An FBI representative would not describe the nature of the investigation. However, Rob Wilcox, Feuer’s spokesman, said the warrants served at the city attorney’s office were connected to the city’s settlement of a class- action lawsuit filed over the inaccurate DWP bills that resulted from the launch of the new billing system in 2013,” according to the Times.

Wilcox also told the LA Times that the warrants “were related to a separate lawsuit filed by the DWP and city against PricewaterhouseCoopers, the global consulting firm that oversaw the launch of the new billing software.” For more information, go here: www.latimes.com/…

...

frac permits 2x

jason marshall interim head

https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-july-15-2019/

8 am 2nd 1/2 doggr head fire newsom (no FF$ vs jerry)

coi stocks chev, exx and shell 100k$

inglewood field biggest near culver city rep daniel lee

dggr under lands commission run by newsome at lt gov?

https://consumerwatchdog.org/energy/gov-newsom-fires-top-oil-regulator-institutes-sweeping-ethics-review-agency-response

Consumer Watchdog today thanked Governor Gavin Newsom for firing the state’s top oil and gas supervisor and instituting an ethics review of the state’s oil well approval and inspection process in response to its recent report of conflicts at the agency and request.

Consumer Watchdog called for action from the Governor Wednesday in this letter.

Read the full story in USA Today/Dessert Sun here.

“Governor Newsom’s decisive action to get new leadership over oil wells and fracking in California shows he is serious about putting the public’s health and safety over the interests of the oil industry that has dominated the oil well approval process for decades,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog. “The Governor must demand that the entire leadership of the Department of Conservation and DOGGR be accountable for the conflict ridden agency and dismiss other Governor Brown appointees that allowed the corrupted oil well approval machine to go on for so long.”

In its letter, Consumer Watchdog and FracTracker called on the Governor to freeze all new oil and gas well permits until a top-to-bottom ethics review is completed, all conflicted managers in the agency are removed, and the Administration can guarantee regulatory decisions are based on public safety, not pecuniary gain.

“For too long the health of our community has suffered from dirty oil wells at the Inglewood oil field,” said Deborah Weinrauch, a resident of Culver City. “We cannot afford to keep having more drilling and fracking. In order to protect our health we need Governor Newsom to stop issuing new permits.”

A review of state conflict of interest formsshowed that eight regulators managing the state’s oil and gas well approval and inspection process have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in the oil companies they regulate. One of the regulators is among the top three in command at the State’s Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR).

Consumer Watchdog and the FracTracker Alliance released data showing a major increase in permits for new oil and gas wells this year under Governor Newsom. From January 1 to June 3, DOGGR approved 2,365 new oil and gas well permits and 191 fracking permits. The data shows that this year regulators have considerably increased the number of permits granted for drilling new wells (by 35.3%), well reworks (by 28.3%), and hydraulic fracturing (by 103.2%) as compared to the permitting rate during the final year of the Brown administration in 2018.

Of the 2,365 well permits issued, 1064 or 45% of them benefitted oil companies invested in by DOGGR officials.

Governor Newsom’s Chief of Staff Ann O’Leary directed the head of the Natural Resources agency Wade Crowfoot to take the following actions late Thursday:

Dismiss the current State Oil and Gas Supervisor who heads the Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR) and designate an acting Supervisor;
Ensure that all employees and contractors of DOGGR who own any oil or gas stocks recuse themselves from all permitting decisions or oversight functions until each impacted employee goes through a conflict review based on the new conflict of interest rules that DOC is formulating;
Continue at full pace the investigation you have already started related to the allegations that employees at DOGGR have holdings in energy companies, which could constitute actual or apparent conflicts of interest, and take the maximum disciplinary action appropriate under law.

“The Governor is taking these actions today because he has learned that since January 2019 well stimulation (fracking) permits have increased without his knowledge. The Governor has long held concerns about fracking and its impacts on Californians and our environment, and knows that ultimately California and our global partners will need to transition away from oil and gas extraction. In the weeks ahead, our office will work with you to find new leadership of DOGGR that share this point of view and can run the division accordingly.”

no lnx

see prop node

HEAT DEATH

150 million trees died in California’s drought, and worse is to come

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/upshot/california-banning-soda-taxes-a-new-industry-strategy-is-stunning-some-lawmakers.html

June 27, 2018

For years, the soda industry had an ironclad strategy when a city wanted to enact a soda tax:

Spend a lot of money, rally local businesses, and shoot it down.

That strategy worked again and again, until it didn’t. In 2014, Berkeley, Calif., passed the nation’s first tax on sugary drinks, which have been linked to heart disease, obesity and tooth decay. Since then, eight communities, including three more cities in California, enacted similar bills.

Now the beverage industry has a new approach. Instead of fighting the ordinances city by city, it is turning to states, trying to pass laws preventing any local governments from taxing their products.

In California, the legislature passed a bill Thursday that will pre-empt any new local beverage or food taxes for 12 years. Arizona and Michigan have passed similar laws. In Oregon, the state’s grocers have collected enough signatures to bring a ballot initiative barring any taxes on grocery items. And legislators are considering pre-emption bills in other states, including Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Washington.

“It’s a little bit like, instead of playing a game of whack-a-mole, you could just put a sheet of plywood over all the holes,” said Franco Ripple, a spokesman for the Campaign to Defend Local Solutions, a group that was founded last year to oppose state laws that limit local autonomy.

The beverage industry says the statewide measures are an appropriate way to protect local businesses and consumers from higher taxes. “People across the country are taxed enough, and they can’t afford new taxes on what they eat and drink,” said William Dermody, the vice president for media and public affairs at the American Beverage Association, an industry trade group.

In California, the arrival of the bill to pre-empt soda taxes, which was championed by the soda industry and introduced over the weekend, came as a shock to public health advocates and many state lawmakers. The state has passed more soda taxes than any other, shepherded by progressive lawmakers who see them as a source of revenue for schools and public services and a tool to fight obesity and diabetes. Scott Wiener, a state senator who represents San Francisco and parts of San Mateo County, said the beverage industry had successfully held California “hostage.”

Bill Monning, the Senate majority leader, was one of a handful of Democrats who voted against the bill. He called its passage “unprecedented” and said it would stop cities and counties “from being able to take steps to protect the health of their residents.” But he also said that state lawmakers would redouble their efforts to curb consumption of sugary drinks. He pointed out that the Senate health committee had just voted in favor of a bill that would require warning labels on sugary drinks indicating that they contribute to various health problems.

“It’s a sad day for democracy in California,” he said. “But ever the optimist I think that the outrage of Big Soda blackmailing the state legislature and the people of California is going to boomerang.”

Beverage companies spent at least $7 million to get an initiative on the ballot this November that would have prevented local communities from raising taxes without approval from two-thirds of voters or an elected body, rather than a simple majority. Such a change would have made it much more difficult for localities to pay for police, fire, transit and other public services.

According to several state senators, the industry then went to lawmakers in Sacramento with a proposal: Pass a bill banning soda and food taxes, and the industry would drop its November ballot initiative.

“They sent us a ransom note that they will drop this horrible ballot measure if we put a 12-year moratorium on local soda taxes,” said Mr. Wiener, who has long supported soda taxes and voted against the bill that now bars them. “It’s a classic case of picking your poison. The soda industry has gone completely rogue.”

Several top lawmakers said they opposed the measure banning soft drink taxes, known as Senate Bill 872, but many felt obliged to support it because they were so worried about the effects of the broader ballot initiative.

Nancy Skinner, a state senator who represents Richmond, Calif., as well as three cities that passed soda taxes in 2016, voted against the measure but said she recognized that her colleagues who supported it were in a bind. The law will not overturn soda taxes enacted before 2018, but it will prevent any new ones, including a soda tax on the ballot later this year in Richmond. “It is totally wrong to deny the residents of Richmond a vote,” she said.

Gov. Jerry Brown avoided taking a position on the bill until Thursday but has now signed it into law. Critics of the bill pointed to a photo that shows him posing with executives from Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and the American Beverage Association at a recent private dinner at the governor’s mansion. The governor’s spokesman said the meeting was unrelated to the soda tax measure.

The push for the pre-emption law began to materialize this year when an industry-financed group, the California Business Roundtable, started collecting signatures for the ballot initiative making local tax increases harder. The American Beverage Association California PAC contributed heavily to the effort, raising $6 million from Coke and Pepsi, $1 million from Dr Pepper Snapple and $100,000 from Red Bull.

The deal, reported by The Sacramento Bee on Sunday, which called it “a shakedown,” provoked a fierce outcry across the state and the country. The American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, the American Cancer Society and more than 20 other groups issued a joint statement on Tuesday calling on Mr. Brown to oppose it and chiding the soda industry for “resorting to backroom deals and underhanded efforts to preserve its profits.”

The beverage association, which supported the California legislation, said its turn to pre-emption simply reflected its view that taxes on drinks represented an unfair burden — not just on them, but on retailers, bottlers, shipping companies and consumers.

Mr. Dermody noted that, in several states, the pre-emption bills are backed by a coalition of business interests, including grocery stores, and, in some cases, labor unions.

The California measure is part of a broader national strategy by the beverage industry to head off local soda taxes, which have passed in eight communities. Berkeley’s passage of a major soda tax paved the way for other cities to act. Philadelphia, San Francisco, Oakland, Calif., and the county that includes Chicago imposed their own such measures in 2016, followed by Seattle in 2017. The soda industry spent at least $38 million fighting the taxesin 2016, which were backed by public health advocates and the billionaires Laura and John Arnold and Michael R. Bloomberg, former mayor of New York, who contributed $20 million to the Bay Area soda tax campaign.

The experience of the places that adopted soda taxes has been mixed. Research in Berkeley, Philadelphia and Mexico, which has a similar tax, shows that the measures appear to increase beverage prices and reduce sugary drink sales.

But there has been backlash. Cook County in Illinois repealed its tax in the face of voter complaints and industry pressure. And Mayor Jim Kenney of Philadelphia has had to back away from his initial claims that beverage tax revenue would provide enough money to pay for a universal prekindergarten program for the city, as revenue has come in below projections. Definitive evidence about public health effects of the bills is still a long way off.

The beverage companies have borrowed a tactic from the tobacco industry, which used state pre-emption laws in the 1980s to ban cigarette taxes and other municipal antismoking ordinances. Republican-controlled state legislatures have also increasingly used state pre-emption laws to prevent cities and towns from adopting a wide range of local measures, including anti-discrimination laws, bans on natural gas fracking, higher minimum wages, and restrictions on the use of plastic bags.

“The irony is that the soda companies screamed very loudly about government overreach when soda taxes began to get passed,” said Kelly Brownell, the dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. “But now they are looking for the ultimate government overreach when it works in their favor.”

Anahad O’Connor is a staff reporter covering health, science, nutrition and other topics. He is also a bestselling author of consumer health books such as “Never Shower in a Thunderstorm” and “The 10 Things You Need to Eat.”

Margot Sanger-Katz is a domestic correspondent and writes about health care for The Upshot. She was previously a reporter at National Journal and...

ew 619

For Chinook salmon, the urge to return home and spawn isn't just strong — it's imperative. And for the first time in more than 65 years, at least 23 fish that migrated as juveniles from California's San Joaquin River and into the Pacific Ocean have heeded that call and returned as adults during the annual spring run.

===
linda handed out pom joice at hollywood events, crossed our mason dixon line (rever0 bridge cultures of central valley; franklin mint shit merch; biz burglar alarm; cutie name vs _ charter school, salmon not tortilla, tutors for college schol kids, san joachin vlly, pistachio in drought
[https://www.amazon.com/Dreamt-Land-Chasing-Across-California/dp/1101875208 The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California by Mark Arax], [https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-june-18-2019/ audio interview] 6/19 see also [http://rachelcarson-wiki.lt.ucsc.edu/wiki/California#Water.2FOcean CA Water history].

Arax is from a family of Central Valley farmers, a writer with deep ties to the land who has watched the battles over water intensify even as California lurches from drought to flood and back again. In The Dreamt Land,he travels the state to explore the one-of-a-kind distribution system, built in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, that is straining to keep up with California's relentless growth.

This is a heartfelt, beautifully written book about the land and the people who have worked it--from gold miners to wheat ranchers to small fruit farmers and today's Big Ag. Since the beginning, Californians have redirected rivers, drilled ever-deeper wells and built higher dams, pushing the water supply past its limit.

The Dreamt Landweaves reportage, history and memoir to confront the "Golden State" myth in riveting fashion. No other chronicler of the West has so deeply delved into the empires of agriculture that drink so much of the water. The nation's biggest farmers--the nut king, grape king and citrus queen--tell their story here for the first time.

This is a tale of politics and hubris in the arid West, of imported workers left behind in the sun and the fatigued earth that is made to give more even while it keeps sinking. But when drought turns to flood once again, all is forgotten as the farmers plant more nuts and the developers build more houses.

Arax, the native son, is persistent and tough as he treks from desert to delta, mountain to valley. What he finds is hard earned, awe-inspiring, tragic and revelatory. In the end, his compassion for the land becomes an elegy to the dream that created California and now threatens to undo it.

OMG

Three times more money was spent in California's State Superintendent's race than in the race for Governor.EdSource reports that as of November 3rd well over **$26 million**was spent by outside groups.

We wrote in a previous post that the reason for the overwhelming outpouring of BIG money in the race was this year's Vergara decision, which declared teacher tenure in the state of California unconstitutional. The California Teachers Association has a very helpful guide to common myths about due process rights in California, including the myth that "tenure is a job for life."

519

yay

California, Nation’s Top User of Chlorpyrifos, Announces Ban on Brain-Damaging Pesticide

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/heres-how-charter-schools-are-scamming-the-us-government/

A new report issued by the Network for Public Education provides a detailed accounting of how charter schools have scammed the U.S. Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program (CSP) for up to $1 billion in wasted grant money that went to charters that never opened or opened for only brief periods of time before being shut down for mismanagement, poor performance, lack of enrollment, or fraud.The report also found many of the charters receiving grant awards that managed to stay open fall far short of the grant program’s avowed mission to create “high-quality” schools for disadvantaged students.

President Trump’s 2020 budget blueprint proposes increasing funding for the charter grant program by 13.6 percent, from $440 to $500 million, and education secretary Betsy DeVos praised this increase as a step forward for “education freedom.” But the report finds that increasing federal funds for this program would mostly continue to perpetuate academic fraud.

Of the schools awarded grants directly from the department between 2009 and 2016, nearly one in four either never opened or shut their doors. The federal program’s own analysis from 2006 to 2014 of its direct and state pass-through funded programs found that nearly one out of three awardees were not currently in operation by the end of 2015.

Since then, the federal program has continued to award charters with grant money, increasing the total amount awarded to over $4 billion. Should the department’s own 2015 study finding hold, that one in three of the schools awarded grants had closed, never opened, or were not yet opened, the likely amount of money scammed by bogus charter operators tops $1 billion. In California alone, the state with the most charter schools, the failure rate for federal grant-awarded charters was 39 percent.Of the 306 schools that received CSP money but are not open, 75 are “ghost” schools—that is, they received money but never began....

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/we-need-to-stop-the-criminalization-of-poverty/

...

RR: In addition to being a massive drain on the economy, these fees don’t even help cash-strapped cities. Uncollected court debt for traffic and criminal offenses totaled $12.3 billion in 2016 in California alone. A lotof the fee revenue that does come in goes to collection services, that are private and for profit. Which means very little of the money that is collected winds up going to roads, bridges, schools, and other good things we all need.

WKB: That’s why we need to stop the criminalization of poverty. Have you heard of win-win? Well, this is lose-lose, non-win. It sucks. It’s bad for EVERYBODY.

RR: Bad for poor people, bad for the social fabric, and doesn’t even help the bottom line for government.

WKB: Our home state of California is helping to lead the charge to stop the criminalization of poverty. Go to CAdebtjustice.orgfor more information. Go. Don’t just watch the video. Go.

bernhardt?

US Sues California, Says Water Policy Violates State Law - The New ...

https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/03/28/us/ap-us-california-water-wars.html

16 hours ago - The federal government has sued California over water policies it says violate ... The lawsuit filed Thursday in Sacramento federal court seeks to block a plan ... salmon by increasing water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. ... The U.S. Department of Justice said the plan was arbitrary and failed to ...

US Sues California, Says Water Policy Violates State Law

By The Associated Press

March 28, 2019

LOS ANGELES — The federal government sued California on Thursday over a water policy it said violates the state's environmental protection law.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit in Sacramento federal court to block a contentious plan approved in December to increase river flows in the San Joaquin River and three tributaries to help revive dwindling salmon populations.

It was part of a larger effort to protect the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which state officials called an "ecosystem in crisis." The delta supplies water for the majority of California's people and farms.

Once-thriving fish in the delta, which flows out to San Francisco Bay, have plunged from some 70,000 adult Chinook salmon returning to the San Joaquin basin in the fall of 1984 to just 10,000 in 2017.

Some environmental groups supported the plan, while other conservation groups and fishing groups said it fell short in providing enough water for habitat.

Farmers opposed to the plan because it would divert less water for irrigation protested last summer outside the state Capitol.

The U.S. lawsuit said the plan was arbitrary and the state failed to analyze impacts on the environment and would reduce water coming out of the New Melones reservoir for farms, businesses and hydroelectric operations.

The environmental analysis "hid the true impacts of their plan and could put substantial operational constraints on the Department of the Interior's ability to effectively operate the New Melones Dam, which plays a critical role in flood control, irrigation, and power generation in the Sacramento region," said Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark said in a statement.

The federal government's lawsuit follows a suit filed last month in state court by the California Farm Bureau Federation to block the plan.

George Kostyrko, a spokesman for the water board, said the agency looks forward to defending the plan that involved years of analysis and public input.

The lawsuit was an unusual turn of events with the state of California as a defendant in a lawsuit with the federal government. The state's attorney general has sued the Trump administration more 47 times.

Attorney Doug Obegi of the Natural Resources Defense Council said it was ironic that the U.S. government was citing state law to sue California in federal court.

"The Trump administration has shown its flagrant disregard for state laws for some time, so it's not surprising in that regard," Obegi said. "I can't for the life of me see how a federal court lawsuit against a state agency for a claimed violation of state law doesn't get tossed out immediately for violating the U.S. Constitution."

The NRDC said the December decision was a step forward, but it wouldn't do enough to reach the goal to double the salmon population.

John McManus, president of the Golden Gate Salmon Association, said the plan approved in December had "re-balanced a badly out of balance water diversion scheme" and the suit was a "frivolous attempt to see more water diverted and more salmon industry jobs and families destroyed."

fight wheeler epa on cafe 2/19

history

https://kpfa.org/episode/against-the-grain-march-19-2019/

Ca farm, steinbeck (cotton strike dubous battle woman and ppl of color but --> wht men)

What are the origins of modern conservatism? The failed Goldwater campaign? Or the Cold War era discontent of midwestern small capitalists? Historian Kathryn Olmstead argues that it should be located even earlier, in the intense and massive labor unrest that took place in the fields of California in the 1930s. The response by growers and other elites pioneered methods that have become familiar today, from deploying populist rhetoric in the interests of big business to funding ostensibly grassroots organizations. (Encore presentation.)

Resources:

Kathryn Olmstead, Right Out of California: The Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism The New Press, 2015

A surprising number of dolphins are washing up on Southern California beaches this February, and the Pacific Marine Mammal Center (PMMC) wants to know why.

The PMCC has responded to six beached dolphins in just 14 days, it said in a Monday press release. By this time last year, it had only responded to one stranding.

"This drastic and unexpected increase in cetaceans has had a significant impact on our Center. With so many incidents concentrated in such a short period of time, this has taken up much of the attention as well as our resources away from our more 'traditional' animal care operations focused on seals and sea lions," PMMC CEO Peter Chang said.

PMCC is working with scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NOAA certified labs at universities across the country to determine what is causing the uptick in dolphin deaths.

"There are a variety of potential reasons as to why these dolphins are stranding. These include, but are not limited to, viral infections, bacterial infections and toxins," PMCC veterinarian Kristen Sakamaki said.

One source of toxins could be algae blooms that the Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System (SCCOOS) has observed off the coast of Southern California. Algae blooms can release domoic acid, which is poisonous for humans, marine mammals and seabirds.

Another potential source could be the storms and heavy rainfall that Southern California has received this winter, which flushes more excess nutrients and pollutants from land into the oceans.

...

https://earthjustice.org/news/press/2019/gray-wolves-will-keep-california-endangered-species-protection

GRAY WOLVES WILL KEEP CALIFORNIA ENDANGERED SPECIES PROTECTION

California Becomes First State to Require Solar on New Homes

Sunny California is officially the first state in the nation to require solar panels on most new homes.

The California Building Standards Commission unanimously confirmed the standards during a vote on Wednesday, The Mercury News reported.

Keep reading...

The only way for the party of old white dudes, rape, forced pregnancies, Islamophobia, homophobia, selfishness, pollution, climate denial, unchecked police violence and murder, xenophobia and hatred of Latinx people can get and keep power is by cheating: voter suppression, gerrymandering, etc.

In California, the 2018 elections hold out a hint of what the GOP would look like without cheating. The state party's flirtations with white supremacy 20 years ago with an anti-migration initiative "eviscerated" its support among Latinx people, and ever since, its star has been sinking, and as the national party has moved to defend rape, pollution, climate denial, the elimination of health services for all but the super-wealthy, blanket bans on abortion, and naked hatred of every kind of brown person: Latinx people, African-American people, and any person of Muslim faith or Arab extraction.

The result was a total rout of the California GOP. Even Orange County (political birthplace of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan) flipped; and the state's sole Latinx Republican Assemblyman, Dante Acosta, also lost his job.

California Republicans are spitting nails and pointing fingers, calling for the party to be "burned to the ground" and are watching with dismay as the party looks to put the Trumpian Assemblyman Travis Allen in charge of the state party, doubling down on white supremacy in a state that is increasingly brown and/or inhospitable to to anti-immigration white nationalism.

Even the "reasonable" wing of the GOP establishment are pinning their hopes on Californians moving to the right in response to Democrats instituting wildly popular reforms like allowing cities to change their property tax rates, restoring rent controls, etc. Others have taken up the Trumpian conspiracy charge that Democrats are winning due to voter fraud, despite the evidence of any such fraud.

California is not without its problems, and many of these can be traced to right-wing initiatives, like the big money spent to drain the public school system of dollars and funnel them into the charter system; or policies friendly to Silicon Valley tax-cheats; etc. Some are the result of traditionally liberal blocks run amok, like the NIMBYism that has prevented the construction of high-density housing, especially close to transit corridors.

But whatever California's problems are, the state can be thought of as a lesson is what US politics might look like without cheating. After all, the reason voter suppression is so necessary to the GOP holding power in "red states" is that so many of them are primarily composed of people whom the GOP has declared war upon: poor people, people of color, queer people, working people...

“That’s the question: how do you start over?,’’ said Joel Fox, a longtime GOP strategist who publishes the “Fox & Hounds Daily” commentary site. He says the answer will be more wide-ranging than finding “one dynamic leader” — celebrity or billionaire — to rescue their cause.

“The rise of the Republican Party may really depend on the Democratic Party,’’ Fox said, and how it handles the heady times of having a $14 billion surplus and a supermajority under the leadership of the incoming Governor-elect Gavin Newsom. If progressives try to push their agenda too far, and land too many pro-tax ballot measures in front of the voters in future ballots — including revisions of the landmark property tax measure Prop. 13, soda taxes and oil taxes — it’s possible they will create an opening for the GOP to return to viability.

Not everyone agrees that Trump is the cause for the party’s bottoming out. This week, former state GOP chair Shawn Steel, a member of the Republican National Committee, argued in an op-ed published in the Washington Examiner that “it’s not Trump” who lost Orange County dominance for the party. He laid the blame on millions of dollars in “dark money” raised by Democrats, who he said were aided by better organization and help from the tech industry in Silicon Valley. And — without any substantiation — Steel also claimed Democratic voter registration drives produced “borderline fraudulent turnout rates” in some key districts.

RIP, California GOP: Republicans lash out after midterm election debacle[Carla Marinucci/Politico]

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13112018/california-deadliest-wildfire-climate-change-warnings-firefighting-costs-too-conservative-scientists

As s firefighters in California battle to contain the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in state history, a climate scientist says the reality on the ground is surpassing what a government report projected just months ago in assessing the links between climate change and an increasing frequency and severity of wildfires in the state.

After a dry summer and fall, powerful winds over the past week swept flames through the town of Paradise in Northern California, killing at least 71 people, with hundreds more unaccounted for, and destroying more than 9,800 homes, officials said Friday. Two more fires near Los Angeles chased more than 200,000 people from their homes as the flames quickly spread, adding to a string of fires that have causedbillions of dollars in damage this year.

"I think what we have been observing has consistently been outpacing what we've been predicting," said LeRoy Westerling, professor of management of complex systems at the University of California, Merced, who modeled the risk of future wildfires as part of the California Climate Change Assessment released in August.

...

Money advantage decided most House races, proved insurmountable for California GOP	Money advantage decided most House races, proved insurmountable for California GOP	Money advantage decided most House races, proved insurmountable for California GOP

With a handful of House races yet to be called, the candidate backed by more money has won exactly 90 percent of them. That means the candidate with less financial backing — including their own campaign funds and outside spending support — has won in just 41 of 411 House races that have been decided. Though 90 percent is a high number, it’s the lowest win rate for better-funded House candidates since 2010. Of the 49 races called in California, just four winners had less money behind them than their opponent. For Texas and New York, the number shrinks to three and two, respectively. ...	With a handful of House races yet to be called, the candidate backed by more money has won exactly 90 percent of them. That means the candidate with less financial backing — including their own campaign funds and outside spending support — has won in just 41 of 411 House races that have been decided. Though 90 percent is a high number, it’s the lowest win rate for better-funded House candidates since 2010. Of the 49 races called in California, just four winners had less money behind them than their opponent. For Texas and New York, the number shrinks to three and two, respectively. ...	With a handful of House races yet to be called, the candidate backed by more money has won exactly 90 percent of them. That means the candidate with less financial backing — including their own campaign funds and outside spending support — has won in just 41 of 411 House races that have been decided. Though 90 percent is a high number, it’s the lowest win rate for better-funded House candidates since 2010. Of the 49 races called in California, just four winners had less money behind them than their opponent. For Texas and New York, the number shrinks to three and two, respectively. ...

Money advantage decided most House races, proved insurmountable for California GOP

With a handful of House races yet to be called, the candidate backed by more money has won exactly 90 percent of them. That means the candidate with less financial backing — including their own campaign funds and outside spending support — has won in just 41 of 411 House races that have been decided.

Though 90 percent is a high number, it’s the lowest win rate for better-funded House candidates since 2010. Of the 49 races called in California, just four winners had less money behind them than their opponent. For Texas and New York, the number shrinks to three and two, respectively.

...

California Republicans faced a full-blown disaster in the midterm elections. In the south of the state, Reps. Steve Knight and Dana Rohrabacher of California's 25th and 48th Congressional Districts were unseated, Rep. Mimi Walters of the 45th District is trailing with more votes left to count, Democrats picked up outgoing Rep. Darrell Issa's open 49th District, and will probably also net Rep. Ed Royce's open 39th District as well.

But another huge red flag for the GOP was in the north of the state, where they lost another seat: Rep. Jeff Denham, who represents California's 10th District in the northern San Joaquin Valley, lost to venture capitalist Josh Harder.

In one sense, this race was like many of the other Democratic pickups in California. Harder aggressively tied Denham to his vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Denham, aware his district voted for Hillary Clinton, played up his opposition to President Donald Trump's immigration agenda and tried to run as a moderate, even though he voted with Trump 98 percent of the time.

But in another sense, this race — and this district — is a bellwether for broader cultural and demographic trends that are isolating Trump supporters and turning the suburbs from a GOP bastion into a Democratic one.

California's 10th District is home to many rural farming communities that produce much of America's agriculture. The Central Valley is full of such communities, which tend to be very conservative and distrustful of the urban coasts — other districts in this region include the 22nd and 23rd held by GOP Reps. Devin Nunes and Kevin McCarthy, who decisively won their elections, and the 21st held by David Valadao, who is favored to win but whose heavily-Latino district is extremely close.

One of the big differences with the 10th District is that it sits directly to the east of the Bay Area. The region's hyper-competitive job growth, combined with decades of anti-poor, anti-minority "not in my backyard" zoning laws, has resulted in a housing affordability crisis in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, with the median home price in the Bay Area soaring to over $900,000. As a consequence, upper-middle-class professionals in the region are pushing outward in search of affordable living, and people are increasingly choosing to move all the way out to the San Joaquin Valley and endure a long commute.

As a consequence of this, districts like Denham's are undergoing demographic change — and as all the new suburbanites are coming from some of the most liberal parts of California, a political change too.

And what is happening in California is not unique. Suburbs used to be heavily Republican, and the shift of political gravity from cities to the surrounding communities toward the end of the 20th century was once seen as a herald for Republican dominance. But one by one, suburbs have turned blue as college-educated voters have turned their backs on Trump. The realignment is also rearing its head in longtime GOP-controlled Sun Belt states like Georgia, where gun control activist Lucy McBath defeated Karen Handel a year after the GOP claimed the special election, and Texas, where Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke surprised everyone by winning the deep-red suburbs of Tarrant County.

If this trend continues, Democratic territory will gradually spread out from cities into smaller towns suburbs, with GOP support focused into the broad, sparsely-populated areas in between. Denham's loss should serve as a warning to Republicans that their brand is in retreat in growing parts of the country — and their old coalition rests on shaky foundations.

Wednesday night, a former Marine with a .45-caliber handgun opened fire at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Southern California, killing 12 people. Just a few hours after the horrific incident, NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch equated the mass shooting to the state’s gun safety laws, calling both “horrific.”

It is not the first time NRA figures have shifted blame in shootings to stoke fear about “evil” gun safety laws.

Loesch failed to note that California has one of the lowest gun death rates in the country; it dropped by 56.6 percent between 1993 and 2013, which was “29.9 percentage points more than the decline in the rest of the nation.” California also hashave some of the strongest gun safety laws in the country, including universal background checks, a ban on most assault weapons, regulations on gun show purchases, and a 10-day waiting period.

mma

LCV Victory Fund named three of the state's biggest polluter allies to the Dirty Dozen. Now we need your help to defeat them. We know that your friends and family are most likely to trust you when it comes to information about voting. So will you spread the word on social media about these anti-climate action candidates? Click each link below to get started.

Mimi Walters (CA-45): Where Donald Trump leads, Mimi Walters follows — even if it means sacrificing the health and wellbeing of her constituents. Her record says it all: Walters has voted for practically every one of Congress' extreme environmental attacks since Trump took office. That's at least 58 votes against our air, water, lands, and public health. She's also a vocal supporter for drilling off California's coasts.

Make sure your friends and family know to vote against Mimi Walters »

Dana Rohrabacher (CA-48): Emulating President Trump, Rohrabacher has called climate change a "fraud" and "big lie." He has a 10% lifetime environmental voting record on LCV's National Environmental Scorecard. Rohrabacher has also opposed several attempts to reduce carbon emissions and insists that carbon dioxide does not hurt people's health.

Help sound the alarm that Dana Rohrabacher needs to be defeated »

Diane Harkey (CA-49): As a state assemblymember, Harkey opposed cutting carbon pollution and sided with polluters time after time. She attempted to block California's efforts to decrease smog pollution, curtail climate change, and expand renewable energy like wind and solar. On offshore drilling, Harkey refused to vote against drilling off California's coast at least three times.

win!

weiner CA bill, jerry signs last minute

https://www.ecowatch.com/fracking-california-public-lands-2594203156.html

The Trump administration took the first steps on Wednesday towards opening up 1.6 million acres of public land in California to fracking and oil drilling, The Sacramento Bee reported.

In a notice of intent published on the Federal Register Wednesday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said it would prepare an environmental impact statement on the use of fracking on 400,000 acres of public land and 1.2 million acres of mineral estate overseen by BLM in California counties including Fresno, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, The Hill reported.

Concerned citizens have 30 days from Wednesday to comment on the proposal.

The move would lift a five-year moratorium on leasing federal land in California to oil companies, The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) said in a statement.

It also comes less than a week after the Trump administration proposed revoking California's waiver to set its own vehicle emissions standards under the Clean Air Act and just days after Trump blamed the state's environmental policies for the record-breaking wildfires it is currently battling.

"It's a coordinated attack on California by the Trump administration," CBD senior attorney Clare Lakewood told The Hill.

No federal lands in the state have been leased to oil companies since 2013, when a federal judge found that the BLM had leased land in Monterey County without fully considering the environmental impact of fracking.

Environmentalists are concerned that fracking can increase the risk of earthquakes and contaminate groundwater, The Sacramento Bee reported.

The later risk is increased in California, a 2015 report from the California Council on Science and Technology found, because fracking in the state happens in areas with shallow depths close to groundwater and uses an especially high amount of toxic chemicals, The CBD reported.

Residents of San Luis Obispo are even considering a ballot measure this November that would ban new fracking operations and oil wells in parts of the county that are unincorporated, though it would have no impact on what happens on federal land, The Sacramento Bee reported.

One of the key movers behind that initiative, Charles Varni of the Coalition to Protect San Luis Obispo County, told The Sacramento Bee that he was angered by the BLM's decision.

"We don't want to see any expansion of oil and gas extraction in San Luis Obispo County," he said. "We want to protect our groundwater resources for higher uses."

Earthjustice attorney Greg Loarie said that, while he was glad that the BLM was investigating the impacts of fracking, he thought such an investigation was a little beside the point.

"[A]nalyzing the impacts of fracking is like analyzing the impacts of smoking cigarettes: there's really no question that more fracking would be terrible for California," he said in the CBD statement.

What Would 100% Zero-Carbon Power Mean?

California would not be the first state to commit to carbon-free electricity; Hawaiiset a 100 percent renewable energy goal in 2015. But as the most populous state and the fifth-largest economy in the world, California's decision would be a landmark in the global effort to drive down carbon emissions.

"While Trump is taking the nation backwards by deregulating and subsidizing the coal, oil, and natural gas industries in D.C., California is rolling up its sleeves to build bold climate protections," said Paul Cort, an attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice who led the California Right to Zero campaign.

"Victory for humankind and science-based 100 percent roadmaps," tweeted Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson, who has published studies on the feasibility of a global transition to all-renewable electricity.

As the bill made its way through the Legislature, Jacobson and his colleagues faced off against conservative critics like Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Studies, who warned in a *Los Angeles Times*editorialthat the legislation would "require wrecking vast onshore and offshore territories with forests of wind turbines and sprawling solar projects." The Manhattan Institute has in the past received funding from the petrochemical billionaire Koch brothers and Exxon Foundation.

The carbon-free electricity commitment will also help California meet its ambitious goals of putting 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on its roads by 2025, and 5 million by 2030. Currently, even though California leads the nation in electric cars, those vehicles still draw power from a grid that gets 34 percent of its electricity from natural gas, its largest source, and 4 percent from coal. As recently as 2008, California obtained 46 percent of its power from natural gas and 11 percent from coal.

Leading Climate Charge as Trump Backpedals

The move to ramp up California's climate commitment comes as President Donald Trump's administration is pushing in the opposite direction.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has proposed ending state obligations to decarbonize electricityunder the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan and weakening fuel economy standards while revoking California's long-standing authority to establish its own greenhouse gas emissions standards and zero-emissions vehicle program.

The state is bracing to fight the Trump administration in the courts. Meanwhile, lawmakers in Sacramento are doing their part to push back on Trump's fossil-fuel-friendly agenda. In May, they approved legislation to require all new homes built in the state to have solar power. The state Senate is also considering a measure, already passed by the Assembly, that would trammel Trump's offshore oil drilling plans by banning construction of any new pipelines in state waters out to three miles offshore.

"California keeps proving we know to invent a future few could even imagine," former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger saidin a letter urging lawmakers to pass the 100 percent carbon-free electricity legislation.

Former Vice President Al Gore also weighed in with his endorsement."While our federal leadership is failing to act to solve the climate crisis," he said in a letter, "it is imperative that California continue its world-renowned efforts to reduce global warming pollution and provide a blueprint for other states and nations on how to address climate change while continuing to grow your economy."

PUBLISHED UNDER:

https://www.ecowatch.com/fracking-california-public-lands-2594203156.html

Trump Moves to Open 1.6 Million Acres of California Public Lands to Fracking

The Trump administration took the first steps on Wednesday towards opening up 1.6 million acres of public land in California to fracking and oil drilling, The Sacramento Bee reported.

Concerned citizens have 30 days from Wednesday to comment on the proposal.

The move would lift a five-year moratorium on leasing federal land in California to oil companies, The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) said in a statement.

"It's a coordinated attack on California by the Trump administration," CBD senior attorney Clare Lakewood told The Hill.

Environmentalists are concerned that fracking can increase the risk of earthquakes and contaminate groundwater, The Sacramento Bee reported.

One of the key movers behind that initiative, Charles Varni of the Coalition to Protect San Luis Obispo County, told The Sacramento Bee that he was angered by the BLM's decision.

"We don't want to see any expansion of oil and gas extraction in San Luis Obispo County," he said. "We want to protect our groundwater resources for higher uses."

Earthjustice attorney Greg Loarie said that, while he was glad that the BLM was investigating the impacts of fracking, he thought such an investigation was a little beside the point.

no maps

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-california-state-climate-change-assessment-20180827-story.html

Heat waves will grow more severe and persistent, shortening the lives of thousands of Californians. Wildfires will burn more of the state’s forests. The ocean will rise higher and faster, exposing California to billions in damage along the coast.

These are some of the threats California will face from climate change in coming decades, according to a new statewide assessment released Monday by the California Natural Resources Agency.

The projections come as Californians contend with destructive wildfires, brutal heat spells and record ocean temperatures that scientists say have the fingerprints of global warming.

“This year has been kind of a harbinger of potential problems to come,” said Daniel Cayan, a climate researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and one of the scientists coordinating the report. “The number of extremes that we’ve seen is consistent with what model projections are pointing to, and they’re giving us an example of what we need to prepare for.”

State leaders vowed to act on the research, even as the Trump administration moves to unravel climate change regulations and allow more pollution from cars, trucks and coal-fired power plants.

“In California, facts and science still matter,” Gov. Jerry Brown said in a statement. “These findings are profoundly serious and will continue to guide us as we confront the apocalyptic threat of irreversible climate change.”

The state’s assessment draws on the latest science, including more than 40 new peer-reviewed studies, to project the effects of the continued rise in greenhouse gases on California’s weather, water, ecosystems and people and offer guidance on how officials across the state might adapt.

It’s the fourth such report since 2006, when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered a climate change assessment as precursor to the Global Warming Solutions Act, the pioneering law California adopted that year to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels.

This latest one for the first time scales down global climate models to project climate’s effect at the regional level or smaller. That approach is intended to provide local officials on the ground with more relevant, community-level information they can use to prepare.

“The difference between the San Joaquin Valley and the nearby coastal or Sierra Nevada mountains is enormous, so we have to have ways to unpack the large-scale global model calculations,” Cayan said.

Rising temperatures, deadlier heat waves

California has already warmed 1 to 2 degrees since the beginning of the 20th century as a result of the human-caused buildup of greenhouse gases. That figure could rise to between 5.6 degrees and 8.8 degrees by 2100, depending on the amount and rate of pollution spewed into the atmosphere, according to the report.

Those climbing temperatures could cause 6,700 to 11,300 more heat-related deaths annually in California by midcentury, the assessment found. Such fatalities will dominate economic damage to the state from climate change, costing up to $50 billion a year by midcentury.

Scientists have long projected more intense and longer-lasting heat waves by midcentury but have observed those changes occurring faster than anticipated.

“Something that used to happen every 10 years is happening every year,” said Rupa Basu, chief of air and epidemiology for the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

[pix]

Adding to the risks, scientists say, are trends toward higher humidity and warmer nights. Such conditions hinder people’s ability to recuperate and raise the likelihood of hospital and emergency room visits for a variety of illnesses, from heat stroke and dehydration to heart attacks, kidney disease, gastrointestinal illness and preterm births.

The report also highlights shortcomings in how authorities classify heat waves and alert the public.

In one study cited in the assessment, researchers identified 19 heat waves that landed more than 11,000 people in the hospital between 1999 and 2000. The National Weather Service issued heat advisories for just six of the events.

That led researchers to devise a new way of identifying heat spells that may fall below established temperature thresholds but pose similar health risks. Such episodes, called heat-health events, are defined not by temperature readings but on the public health effects they cause at the local level, particularly to the elderly, young children and other populations most prone to falling ill or dying from the heat.

Modeling by researchers found those health-threatening heat spells will become a persistent fixture in summer months within a few decades, lasting two weeks longer on average in the Central Valley by midcentury.

More air conditioning could attenuate some of the harm, at least for those who can afford it.

Somewhat counterintuitively, researchers expect the health damage from higher temperatures to be worse in coastal areas with historically milder climates, where people are less acclimated to extreme heat and fewer have air conditioning. Researchers have found heat-related deaths to be less common in hotter, inland regions where more people have air conditioning units in their homes.

Seas rise higher than anticipated

As the ocean continues to warm, California’s coast will face more beach erosion, flooding and storm damage.

Until recently, scientists and state policymakers worked with a projection that sea level rise by the end of this century could amount to about 5.48 feet in California under the worst case scenario. But the latest reports and state policies are now accounting for theextreme possibility that sea level rise could exceed 9 feet.

These broader projections incorporate the potential rapid melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet.

Even if the sea rose 6.56 feet rather than the higher possible extreme now adopted by the state, more than 250,000 residents, $38 billion in property and 1,400 miles of roads along the coast are at risk of flooding during a severe storm in Southern California, according to a study led by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Among the most vulnerable communities:

San Diego, Coronado, Imperial Beach and National City in San Diego County
Huntington Beach, Seal Beach and Newport Beach in Orange County
Long Beach, Los Angeles and Malibu in Los Angeles County

[map ani?]

Scientists modeled a 100-year flood — a severe but realistic storm that has a 1 in 100 chance of occurring in any given year this century — based on the latest climate science and sea level rise projections.

Almost all of those areas are at lower elevation and were built on former marshes, researchers said. San Diego County has the most wetlands prone to permanent flooding, and Ventura County is most prone to flooding of agricultural land.

Sea level projections are often presented at a global scale that’s too abstract, said the researchers, who hope their localized projections help the public better understand what’s really at stake when it comes to critical roadways and utilities, businesses and high-value properties.

“It highlights the urgency to act now and to manage the coast appropriately,” said Patrick Barnard, research director of the USGS Climate Impacts and Coastal Processes Team and a co-author of the study.

One such response is the creation of natural shoreline infrastructure, such as vegetated dunes, native oyster reefs or seagrass beds that help buffer wave action and hold back the encroaching sea, according to a report led by the Nature Conservancy....

At Surfers Point in Ventura County, officials turned an eroding parking lot and collapsing bike path into a cobble beach backed by vegetated dune. It has fended off erosion, widened the beach and become the most visited beach in Ventura County, the report said. During high wave conditions in the winter of 2015-16, no damage occurred at the project site: Wave run-up reached the bike path only where dunes were absent.

Other parts of the local shorelines were not so lucky: Ventura Pier was damaged in the storm and the Pierpoint neighborhood suffered inundation, the report said.

Water supply shifting

Northern California — the source of much of the state’s water supply — is likely to grow a bit wetter with climate change. But global warming will alter the timing and form of precipitation, making it tougher for the state to hold on to it.

Warmer temperatures mean mountains will get less snow and more rain and the state snowpack — nature’s reservoir — will melt earlier. That will shorten the season of high stream flows, giving water managers less time to capture the additional water.

Rising sea levels also will increase salinity levels in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the state’s main transfer point for Northern California supplies headed south. As a result, more freshwater must move through the delta to maintain water quality. And higher temperatures will drive up agricultural water use north of the delta.

Taken together, those effects could reduce delta exports to San Joaquin Valley agriculture and Southland cities by 10% by 2060, researchers found. The amount of water stored in key Northern California reservoirs at the end of the summer season could decline by a quarter.

“The good news is that we may have the same amount of water. But it may come in a different form and a different time,” said John Andrew, assistant deputy director of the Department of Water Resources. “We’re going to have to be a much better manager of the resource.' The water world has proposed various responses to expected shifts in California’s hydrology.

Those include modifying reservoir operating rules to allow dam managers to hold on to peak winter flows, which they must now sometimes release to create space for spring snowmelt. Floodwater could be used to recharge the San Joaquin Valley’s over-pumped groundwater basins. Existing reservoirs could be expanded and new ones built.

Southern California water agencies want to construct two massive tunnels under the delta to divert high flows from the Sacramento River and transport them to pumping operations that send supplies south. Water districts are also moving to develop more local resources, such as recycled water.

“Everybody has their favorite solution,” Andrew said. “[But] there is no favorite solution. It’s all of them in some amount.”

The study found that computer modeling showed a wetting trend in Northern California and part of Central California, while most of Central California and Southern California would experience a drying trend by 2060.

Another study released as part of the climate assessment found that, on average, annual precipitation was expected to increase in most parts of the state but that the projected changes were small compared to natural variability — California’s year-to-year precipitation levels swing up and down more than any other state in the lower 48.

More destructive wildfires

As rising temperatures drive more wildfire in California, the greatest increase is expected in the forests of the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade mountain ranges.

Forest area burned every year could more than double by the end of the century, according to research by UC Merced professor Anthony Westerling.

Climate change will have more of a wildfire effect in mountain forests in the northern two-thirds of the state than in other parts of fire-prone California because those regions are cooler and moister. When mountain regions grow hotter, soil and vegetation dries out more quickly in the summer, fostering conditions conducive to the spread of wildfire. Westerling modeled increases in fires of more than 1,000 acres based on two scenarios of global greenhouse gas emissions. Under one scenario, emissions peak and then begin to decline in midcentury. In the second, they continue to climb until late in the century. Under the first scenario, annual average burned forest in much of the Sierra increased by 48% by midcentury and by 120% by century’s end. Under the higher emissions scenario, burned area could surge by as much as 400% by century’s end.

In recent years, bark-beetle infestations killed more than 100 million drought-stressed trees in California. But contrary to conventional wisdom, the study found that in the near term, those dead trees would not significantly increase wildfire.

Westerling cited two reasons for that. When dead needles fall from trees within a few years of a fire, the risk of them fueling an intense blaze drops. And while the dieback is extensive, it is patchy and intermixed with green trees.

Decades from now, when beetle-killed trees fall, the heavy fuel load of downed logs and limbs could increase the risk of mass fires. But Westerling said the effects can’t be quantified because there is no historical analogue on which to base the models.

More air conditioning, but lower gas bills

Rising temperatures will increase demand for electricity across the state as more people install and use air conditioners — even in coastal areas where people have traditionally gone without them.

“If San Francisco with its pleasant coastal climate gets Fresno’s hot climate by end of century, even cool San Franciscans will install window units in existing apartments and new construction will be built with central air conditioning,” according to one study included in the state’s climate assessment.

UC Berkeley environmental economics professor Max Auffhammer, who authored the study that analyzed utility bills for households across the state, found a silver lining: increased electricity demand will be more than offset by reductions in natural gas use for heating as a result of milder winters.

“Electricity consumption is going to go up in the summer,” he said. “But it looks like climate change is going to save many California consumers a bunch of money on their heating bills in the winter."

[pix]

More air conditioning will place added strain on the electrical grid by increasing peak demand. To avoid blackouts, utilities will have to make costly upgrades, such as additional generating capacity, substations and energy storage facilities, to meet demand during hot months.

State energy officials said the assessment underscores the urgent need not only for swift global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions but also local actions to protect California from warming that’s already threatening people, natural resources and infrastructure.

“We’re seeing that in the fire situation, we’re seeing that in sea level rise, we’re seeing that in heat spells, in declining snowpack,” said California Energy Commission Chairman Robert Weisenmiller. “The climate is changing now so we need to be adapting our communities.”

Read the full assessment »

Read the state's summary of the assessment »

he and brodbent junket? --> 100 tanker tar sand oil? kpfa 818

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/tanker-superhighway/

no lnx maps

Tar Sands Tanker Superhighway Threatens Pacific Coast Waters

Published: 06-26-2018

Download: PDF

Summary Results

The proposed Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMEP) would increase the number of oil tankers carrying tar sands from Vancouver, Canada through the Salish Sea and down the Pacific Coast of the U.S.

This report presents a map and analysis of 176 oil tanker and barge departures from the Westridge Marine Terminal in British Columbia from 2013 to the beginning of 2018.

Over half (94) of those departures then sailed the length of the Pacific Coast to the port of Long Beach, California, with significant numbers heading to destinations in Washington State (36), the San Francisco Bay Area (23), and various locations in Asia and Hawaii (17).

These results indicate that while the physical pipeline may stop at the water’s edge, a diluted bitumen spill remains a risk for coastal communities all along the Pacific Coast — from British Columbia to Washington to Oregon to California.

Studies have estimated a 10%-29% chance of a “worst case” tanker spill (>100,000 barrels) over the next 50 years.

The endangered Southern Resident orca population could be driven toward extinction by the increased ship noise, and risk of oil spills and ship strikes, resulting from TMEP.

Coastal communities that rely on fishing and tourism have suffered billions of dollars in economic damages following previous catastrophic marine oil spills.

The $60 billion coastal economy of Washington, Oregon and California currently supports over 150,000 jobs in commercial fishing and over 525,000 jobs in coastal tourism.

In the British Columbia Lower Mainland, industries that rely on a clean coastline employ more than 320,000 people. Studies have found that a major oil spill in Washington would cost $10.8 billion, and one in Vancouver would cost $1.2 billion (CAD).

Introduction

The existing Trans Mountain pipeline currently transports ~300,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) from Alberta, Canada, to the Pacific Coast. A majority of this oil arrives to refineries in Washington State via the Puget Sound Pipeline, but around 9-27% reaches the Westridge Marine Terminal (WMT) in Burnaby, British Columbia, where it is loaded onto oil tankers and barges for transport to refineries and other locations along the Pacific Coast and across the Pacific to Asia.[1]

The proposed Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMEP) would expand the capacity of this system to 890,000 bpd,[2] and would increase the number of tankers leaving WMT by a factor of almost seven — from 5 per month to as many as 34 per month, or more than 400 a year.[3] Much of the oil transported by TMEP is expected to be diluted bitumen, or dilbit, extracted from Alberta’s tar sands.

While any oil spill into water is harmful and extremely difficult to clean up, the unique properties of dilbit could make clean-up even more difficult than a conventional oil spill.[4] Furthermore, dilbit is one of the most carbon-intensive fuels on the planet, with total lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions more than 30% higher than standard crude oil.[5] The tar sands are currently hampered by a lack of pipeline capacity and so the proposed construction of TMEP, Keystone XL and the Line 3 expansion pipelines could facilitate further investment in tar sands extraction and lead to greater global carbon emissions.[6]

Numerous reports have warned of the threat to the waters of the Salish Sea in British Columbia and Washington, and the Pacific Coast from increased marine shipments of tar sands oil.[7][8][9] Research has shown that since 2010, the U.S. Oil refinery in Tacoma, WA has received ~20 shipments of tar sands oil per year (>1.5 million barrels per year) via articulated tug barge (ATB)[10] traveling from WMT.[11][12] Other reports have found that much of the tar sands leaving the WMT is shipped by tanker to refineries in California that have capacity to process heavy crude oil.[13]

Greenpeace and Mosquito Fleet activists block a Kinder Morgan barge from entering the company’s Seattle facility by locking themselves to the pier and displaying banners.

A movement to oppose the construction of TMEP has arisen, led by several First Nations who have emphasized their lack of consent for the project, inadequate consultation by the Canadian government, and violations of Indigenous sovereignty.[14] Recently, Trans Mountain pipeline owner Kinder Morgan reached a deal with the Canadian government to sell the existing pipeline for $4.5 billion (CAD) and build the TMEP. This deal allows Kinder Morgan to walk away but potentially leaves Canadian taxpayers on the hook for a troubled and controversial project.[15]

In this briefing, we present a visualization of 176 tar sands tanker (and some ATB) shipments leaving WMT from 2013 to 2018, showing the paths taken by those tankers down the Pacific Coast to refineries in the San Francisco and Long Beach areas.

Oil Tanker Traffic

The goal of this report is to illustrate which areas are at risk from increased tanker traffic and which destinations have received oil shipments originating from WMT. Using ship location data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS), we were able to identify 176 departures from WMT from January 2013 to February 2018.[16] In Figure 1, we map the tracks taken by those 176 departures from WMT to their next destination.[17]

...

2016

https://ecology.iww.org/node/1679

crude awak

will parrish

In recent years, oil corporations have intensified their push to make the San Francisco Bay Area and other areas of the West Coast into international hubs for refining and shipping of one of the world's most carbon-intensive and polluting fuel sources: the Canadian tar sands.

In April, that long-standing effort spilled into Santa Rosa mailboxes. Constituents of 3rd District supervisor Shirlee Zane received a letter, addressed to Zane herself, from a group called Bay Area Refinery Workers.

"As a member of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District," the letter read, "you'll soon vote on a proposal that will impact our jobs, our refineries and the important work we do refining the cleanest gasoline in the world."

It asked that Zane "please remember that the Bay Area refineries provide more good-paying union jobs than any private sector employer in the region."

Twelve refinery employees provided signatures, but the letter was produced and mailed by an organization called the Committee for Industrial Safety, which is bankrolled by the oil giants Chevron, Shell, Tesoro and Phillips 66. According to state and federal records, each corporation annually provides the group between $100,000 and $200,000 to advocate on their behalf.

The letter's apparent aim was to influence Zane's upcoming vote on a little-known but potentially far-reaching Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) regulation called Refinery Rule 12-16 that's aimed at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emmissions. If enacted, the measure would make the BAAQMD the nation's first regional air district to go beyond state and federal mandates in regulating refinery GHG emissions, the pollutants that fuel global climate change.

Zane is one of the BAAQMD's 24 directors, along with elected officials from nine Bay Area counties extending from Santa Clara in the South Bay to Sonoma and Napa. They will determine the measure's fate at a yet-to-be-scheduled meeting later this year.

Staff members at BAAQMD have proposed four alternative forms of Refinery Rule 12-16. But only one has the support of a coalition of environmental groups and the unions that represent refinery employees: a quantitative limit, or cap, on GHGs.

Processing the tar sands would dramatically increase greenhouse gas pollution at the refineries under the BAAQMD's jurisdiction, and advocates from groups like Oakland's Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), an environmental justice organization, say an emissions cap would turn back what they call the "tar sands invasion" from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Critics warn that without the cap, the oil industry will continue pursuing new tar sands infrastructure on the West Coast at a frenetic pace. "We've seen them come at us at a 10 times faster rate in the last few years," says CBE senior scientist and refinery expert Greg Karras. "Up and down the refinery belt, refineries are retooling for the tar sands and creating infrastructure for export of refined tar sands products overseas."

Experts have warned of the effects of a significantly expanded production of the tar sands—a sticky mixture of sand, clay and bitumen trapped deep beneath Canada's boreal forest. It would lock in dramatic increases in global temperatures and result in devastating impacts to ecosystems and human societies throughout the globe. A 2015 report in the journal Nature found that trillions of dollars' worth of known and extractable coal, oil and gas reserves (including nearly all remaining tar sands and all Arctic oil and gas) should remain in the ground if global temperatures are to be kept under the safety threshold of 2 degrees centigrade that's been agreed to by the world's nations at the Paris climate summit last year.

In an ecologically minded region like the Bay Area, an emissions cap to stop a dramatic increase in regional tar sands production (and tar sands exports from local ports) might seem like a political no-brainer. But staff and some members of BAAQMD say they are concerned that GHG emissions averted in the Bay Area would simply occur somewhere else, since the oil industry would increase production elsewhere. Doing so would render Refinery Rule 12-16 ineffectual in curbing climate pollution because other regions might not be so attentive.

Karras and other advocates believe the opposite is true. The cap offers local elected officials a rare opportunity, they say, to make a significant contribution to heading off the catastrophic impacts of global warming.

REFINERY ROW

The San Francisco Bay Area has been a core oil-refining area for over a century. In 1881, the Pacific Coast Oil Company opened California's first refinery on the island of Alameda. Pacific Coast Oil Company went on to become Chevron, rated by Forbes as the world's 16th wealthiest corporation.

In 2014, the Bay Area's five refineries, including Chevron's flagship Richmond facility, processed an average of 754,000 barrels of oil per day (45.5 percent of California's production total)into gasoline, jet fuel, propane and other products. California, in spite of its reputation as a haven for tree huggers, is the third leading oil producer among U.S. states, much of it exported to surrounding states.

The Bay Area refinery corridor in Contra Costa and Solano counties constitutes the country's second largest oil production center west of Houston. The largest is in Southern California, particularly the south Los Angeles areas of Wilmington and Carson, where the population is over 90 percent Latino, black, and Asian-Pacific Islander. Most people downwind of the Contra Costa and Solano refineries are also people of color.

As with the tar sands, some of California's petroleum sources—including the oil fields in Kern County—are much denser than more conventional, lighter forms of crude. California refineries have developed a unique capacity to refine heavy crudes.

A little over 8 percent of oil produced in the U.S. comes from the tar sands. Due to opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, however, the tar sands industry has been unable to expand its production in the Louisiana–Texas Gulf Coast. Without the pipeline, say industry experts, it's left to the West Coast to provide the infrastructure for the tar sands' specialized production requirements on a large scale.

"The tar sands are potentially very cheap, and a lot of refineries in California are already optimized to process it," says Joshua Axelrod, a policy analyst at the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC). Axelrod is a tar sands expert who co-authored a 2015 report called "West Coast Tar Sands Invasion."

Oil consumption in Central and Latin America is starting to outstrip production, another factor driving the tar sands industry's West Coast ambitions. California producers could make up the difference via shipments from nearby ports. The 2015 NRDC report concluded that West Coast tar sands refining could increase eightfold—from 100,000 barrels per day in 2013 to 800,000 over the next decade.

One argument in favor of the tar sands, repeated by most leaders of the Republican Party and some Democrats, is that greater tar sands production would wean the U.S. from oil sources in more politically hostile regions. Environmental advocates counter that the oil industry already receives more than $1.5 trillion in government subsidies, according to a 2015 International Monetary Fund study, that should instead be dedicated to low-carbon transportation and renewable energy.

OVER A BARREL

Growing public opposition has slowed the tar sands' entry into the U.S. in recent years, including the grassroots campaign largely responsible for convincing President Obama last year to veto the Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline would have carried tar sands crude from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Indigenous people in Western Canada have played a decisive role in delaying two pipelines through British Columbia that would enable large-scale shipments to Washington and California via tanker, barge and train.

In 2013, Valero announced its intention to bring large volumes of tar sands crude oil into Los Angeles and the Bay Area by rail, and applied for permits to the South Coast Air Quality Management District and BAAQMD. The pipeline proposals were already in limbo, so the company saw railway shipments—up to 70,000 barrels a day, according to the company's permit application—as an alternative. Both the Bay Area and Southern California air districts have granted the permits; the Benicia City Council is set to make a ruling on the Bay Area spur of the project sometime this year.

Phillips 66 already receives a small volume of tar sands via an elaborate delivery system that involves a railroad line to Bakersfield, truck deliveries to a pumping station and a pipeline extending between its refineries in Santa Maria and Rodeo, with the latter processing it into jet fuel. The company now proposes new Southern and Northern California rail projects that would bring a far greater quantity of tar sands to each facility.

Other possible projects include a Bakersfield rail hub that would bring tar sands crude to existing California pipelines and rail-to-ship projects in Portland and Vancouver, Wash.

A coalition of environmentalists and refinery employees have opposed the oil industry's push to refine dirtier fuels. The tar sands are a major focus in their efforts, along with Bakken shale oil from North Dakota and other U.S. sources. Among the organizations are the Bay Area chapter of 350.org, the Sierra Club, the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Richmond Progressive Alliance, CBE and Steelworkers Union Local 5 —which represents 80 percent of the workers at three refineries.

While climate change impacts are a major focus of this opposition, these groups also oppose the threat that increased tar sands refining poses to public health. Oil refineries have imposed an especially large pollution burden on the low-income people and people of color who have been disproportionately forced, by historical and economic circumstance, to live alongside them.

The same combustion processes that release climate pollution also emit toxic effluents that cause cancer and neurological damage, as well as particulate matter that penetrates lungs and clogs arteries, as the federal Environmental Protection Agency and state and regional air districts have acknowledged.

In a conversation at a restaurant on San Pablo Avenue in southeast Richmond, CBE community organizer Andrés Soto, who has lived downwind of Chevron for most of his life, described his community's struggles with cancer, autoimmune disorders and other health problems, and linked local struggles to eliminate pollution to the broader climate-change fight.

"You can either move and hope to get away from it, or you can try to fight back and try to help everybody's lives," Soto says. "And I'm not just talking about fighting for people in Richmond or Benicia or Martinez. Because of global warming, I'm talking about the whole planet."

This merging of climate change and environmental-justice activism solidified following a 2012 episode when a crack in a steel pipe at Chevron's Richmond refinery caused a fireball to ignite inside the facility. Nineteen workers escaped with their lives. For several hours, the flame was visible throughout the Bay Area. A toxic plume spread over Richmond and San Pablo, and prompted 15,000 residents to seek medical treatment.

In response, the BAAQMD proposed a set of refinery regulations geared toward monitoring refinery emissions and requiring further health studies. By 2014, the BAAQMD board of directors unanimously passed a resolution directing staff to "prepare a strategy to achieve further emissions reductions from petroleum refineries which shall include as a goal a 20 percent reduction in refinery emissions, or as much emissions reductions as are feasible."

Three years after the Chevron fire, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board pinpointed managerial negligence as one cause. But the main factor was the refinery's reliance on oil with high sulfur content, which caused rapid corrosion of the pipe. The tar sands contain even more toxic metals and chemicals than Chevron's existing crude sources, as well as higher concentration of sulfur, the BAAQMD notes, and thus threaten more frequent spills, fires and explosions.

Frustrated by BAAQMD staff members' slow progress, numerous environmental groups demanded last year that the agency impose a refinery-wide numerical cap on particulate matter and greenhouse gases. The tar sands are more carbon-intensive and more toxic to refine than conventional crude. Tar sand bitumen is heavy and takes more energy than conventional crude to refine into usable products. The refining process also leaves behind large quantities of petcoke, the only fossil fuel the EPA regards as dirtier than coal.

The 2015 "Tar Sands Invasion" reportnoted that tar sands oil production causes about three times the carbon pollution of conventional crude, and that 800,000 barrels per day of the sticky substance—the amount the oil industry is pushing to bring to California in the next decade—equals the annual emissions of 33.7 million vehicles.

Meanwhile, existing BAAQMD regulations have reduced smog, but have failed to reduce emissions of very fine, extremely small particles, which are greatly increased in tar sands refining. Particulate matter is already causing an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 deaths in the Bay Area—it's the region's most lethal pollutant. Refineries are the largest industrial source of GHGs and particulate matter pollution alike, with refined products—namely, gas and diesel burned in vehicles—being the biggest source overall.

Yet BAAQMD staff declined to include the particulate matter emissions-cap proposal as part of Refinery Rule 12-16. Instead, they proposed four possible means of regulating GHG pollution: a refinery-wide emissions cap; limits on GHG emissions from specific pieces of refinery equipment; restricting refinery emissions of methane; and a two-pronged regulatory structure like the one in Washington state that requires refineries either to increase their energy efficiency or reduce GHG emissions by a set amount by 2025.

At a June 1 BAAQMD committee meeting in San Francisco, executive officer Jack Broadbent acknowledged that three of the measures would take years to study and implement. The only option that could happen quickly is a cap.

But Broadbent and other BAAQMD staff members were strongly critical of the cap idea and asserted that they had no legal authority to implement it. Staff member Eric Stevenson said in an interview that the biggest flaw in the emissions-cap proposal is that it would "cause production to go somewhere else to meet the demand in California, so that you don't end up achieving an overall reduction in emissions."

About 50 proponents of an emissions cap attended the meeting and several said the BAAQMD should adopt all four of the proposals. Some noted that the cap would be a first step in meeting the air district's long-range goal of reducing regional GHG emissions by 40 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050. Refineries are responsible for roughly 15 percent of Bay Area GHGs.

"It's really absurd, in the truest sense of the word, that these folks from communities alongside refineries have to be here to implore you to not allow emissions to be going up in an era of declining emissions, and given what the air district's job is," said Jed Holtzman of 350 Bay Area. "Preventing an increase is part of reducing. If you know you're going the wrong way, then arguing about how fast you're going, or whether you know everything you could about your tires, is not a smart move, and it's not what you're here for."

Greg Karras has also expressed frustration with BAAQMD staff and noted in an interview that their proposals are disconnected from the refineries' tar sands push. "We can cap refinery emissions immediately to prevent a tar sands invasion from increasing them irreversibly and take the first step toward deeper emission cuts later by setting an interim goal for significant partial cuts of 20 percent," he says. "It is unfortunate, to use a polite term, that BAAQMD staff has aligned with the oil industry in fighting us to overturn the board's direction with respect to that critical first step—the emission caps."

The danger in addressing the tar sands threat, he says, is that "the oil industry's push to rebuild for even dirtier tar sands oil could be locked into place for another generation if we fail to act now."

One episode that validates the BAAQMD's authority to impose the cap, proponents say, took place in 2014. California attorney general Kamala Harris joined Richmond residents and environmental organizations in sharply criticizing plans for an expansion of Chevron's Richmond refinery. Harris supported a greenhouse gas cap as a condition of the project's approval.

TIP OF THE CAP

Ironically, one of the main bulwarks against the emissions cap so far has been the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the agency that implements California's climate change programs. In a letter to the BAAQMD last September, executive officer Richard Corey flatly stated that "a local cap on Bay Area refinery emissions will have no effect on overall GHG emissions . . . Any emissions reductions from a Bay Area refinery cap would likely be compensated by emissions increases (also called emissions leakage) in other parts of the state. This emissions leakage would likely be associated with shifts in business activity outside the Bay Area."

Corey's reasoning is tied to a state-level greenhouse gas reduction program that applies to stationary pollution sources like refineries and power plants: cap and trade. The program caps carbon emissions from these entities, with yearly reductions in allowable levels of pollution. From 2015 to 2020, for example, the cap is dropping by 3 percent per year.

But the program is aimed at providing maximum flexibility to the oil industry, so it allows them to buy credits, or offsets, from carbon-saving projects elsewhere in the United States, or in Quebec, or to sell credits themselves if they've reduced their own emissions.

Environmental-justice advocates have criticized the program for allowing polluters to buy their way out of reducing emissions at the source—and thereby allowing them to continue burdening communities with pollution. Chevron is a case in point. The company was California's second-largest greenhouse gas emitter in 2013, according to CARB data. But it was also the largest purchaser of offsets under the cap-and-trade program in its inaugural two years between 2013 and 2014, according to a recent study by the Oakland-based California Environmental Justice Alliance.

The company used forests in Maine, Michigan, South Carolina, Willits and Humboldt County—and an Arkansas-based project to destroy ozone-depleting substances—to offset its pollution, which mainly occurred in Richmond. As a result, its emissions were undiminished. If the company were to increase emissions through full-tilt tar sands processing, it could purchase additional credits. Another state program, the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, also creates an incentive to reduce at-source refinery emissions but does not require it.

The proposed Bay Area emissions cap would have no trading component.

While some sources say that CARB may be reconsidering its stance, the oil industry's chief regional lobbying group, Western States Petroleum, has seized on the agency's current position. In a statement for this story, lobby president Catherine Reheis-Boyd noted that "if BAAQMD is considering a local greenhouse gas cap on refinery emissions, [Western States Petroleum] strongly encourages the District to take into account the California Air Resources Board's concerns. CARB has clearly stated that a local cap will: (1) not reduce statewide GHG emissions; (2) reduce cap-and-trade efficiencies; and (3) undermine statewide efforts to reduce GHGs."

Environmentalists describe these arguments as right-wing and defeatist. "Cap and trade is being used as a barrier to creating a simple limit on refinery pollution," Karras says. "Tell me if their argument doesn't sound a lot like what the Republicans are saying about why we shouldn't have a climate policy, which typically goes something like, 'China will just pollute more anyway, so we might as well get the economic benefits.'"

The NRDC's Axelrod agrees. Though his organization supports California's cap-and-trade program, he called the argument that emissions' "leakage" would result from a Bay Area refinery emissions cap "far-fetched."

"Fundamentally, it sounds like the same argument that happened with Keystone XL, which we labeled 'the inevitability argument,'" he says. "The oil industry's line was that if you reject Keystone XL, the amount of tar sands it would have facilitated would inevitably happen anyway. But that obviously hasn't been the case." Not yet at least.

Cap proponents note that any increases in Bay Area refinery production are likely for export.

One of the BAAQMD's most influential directors is Contra Costa County supervisor John Gioia, a fourth-term Democrat who represents the county's westernmost urban area, including Richmond. He serves as the Bay Area representative on the California Air Resources Board, a post he received from Gov. Jerry Brown.

Following the signing of the Paris climate change pact in December, whereby 195 countries pledged to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, BAAQMD voted to convene a regional climate change summit this October. It will explore strategies for achieving a regional 80 percent reduction in GHG emissions by 2050.

Gioia is taking a wait-and-see approach on Refinery Rule 12-16."The main point is that we need to keep the pressure on to keep reducing criteria pollutants, toxic pollutants and greenhouse gases," he says. "Whatever the board ends up adopting will be the most far-reaching regulation at a local air district of greenhouse gas emissions and I think that's an important acknowledgment."

San Francisco County supervisor John Avelos is among the BAAQMD directors who unambiguously support the emissions cap. Los Altos city councilmember Jan Pepper has not publicly committed to voting for the cap, but said in an interview that she is motivated to prevent the tar sands from coming to the Bay Area. A version of the same Bay Area Refinery Workers letter sent to Zane's constituents also landed in mailboxes in Pepper's district, a fact that she "didn't appreciate, although it provided a teachable moment where I could communicate with my constituents who didn't already know about these issues."

The letter also went to BAAQMD directors' districts in Alameda and Contra Costa County districts. Steelworkers Union Local 5 organizer Mike Smith said his office had received numerous calls about the letter and that he was also upset by it. He noted the union's continued support for stronger refinery regulations.

"We're the first people affected by the emissions, whether they're from catastrophic failures or longer-term emissions," he says. "Our members are a part of these communities, and we want to have the cleanest and safest workplaces possible."

Sonoma County's other BAAQMD representative, Petaluma city councilmember Teresa Barrett, is also in wait-and-see mode. "I want to make sure that what we're doing is scientifically verifiable and really will get us to the outcome that we're looking for."

Napa County's lone BAAQMD delegate, 2nd District supervisor Brad Wagenknecht, takes a similar position and emphasizes the difficulty in navigating a regulatory process with the knowledge that the air board is likely to be sued no matter what it does, and calls for "both sides" to temper their criticism of the agency's work.

Zane did not respond to a request for comment.

The Committee for Industrial Safety's most recent disclosure statement with the California secretary of state lists Walt Gill, government affairs manager at Chevron, as the organization's president; Chevron attorney James Sutton is listed as treasurer. Neither Gill nor Sutton responded to requests for comment. Gill was among those who signed in as an attendee at the recent BAAQMD meeting.

Phillips 66 spokesperson Aimee M. Lohr confirmed that the Bay Area Refinery Workers letter came from the "Committee for Industrial Safety, sponsored by energy companies."

BIG OILED

The oil industry has been California's biggest spender on lobbying and elections for years, with much of their effort aimed at climate-change legislation, California secretary of state data reveals. California mandates GHG emissions reduction by 20 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. Last year, the state moved beyond that goal with SB 350, which requires that 50 percent of electricity generation must come from renewable sources, and that energy efficiency of buildings double, both by 2030.

In the run-up to the adoption of SB 350, oil companies unleashed a gusher of cash. The industry spent more than $31 million lobbying California legislators in 2015, according to data on the California secretary of state website. The effort appeared to pay off, as moderate Democrats agreed to strip a provision from SB 350 that would have required a 50 percent reduction in petroleum use by California's cars and trucks by 2030.

Gioia says he has never seen anything quite like the industry's recent Bay Area Refinery Workers mailer. At the June 1 BAAQMD meeting, he noted that it has become well-known in Sacramento that the oil industry will attempt to pass legislation to limit the authority of local air districts if Refinery Rule 12-16 goes forward.

Proponents say that a regional refinery emissions cap will enable the BAAQMD to fulfill its role in a struggle to starve the tar sands beast, and to stand up to the power of the oil industry. In that way, the agency would fill a regulatory gap not addressed by state climate programs, such as cap and trade and the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

But proponents say the cap is also a pragmatic approach to the tar sands invasion the Bay Area faces. The full BAAQMD board of directors will hear a staff presentation on Refinery Rule 12-16 at a San Francisco meeting June 15. Expect it to be well-attended. "Oil refining is the largest industrial emitter of GHG and [particulate matter] in the Bay Area," reads a recent letter from 13 regional community groups who are tracking the tar sands invasion, "and yet refineries here have no facility-wide limits on these emissions, though other industries do. Keeping emissions from increasing would not require any change in current operations of any refinery."

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

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Bay Area Refinery Corridor Coalition

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