Memo to the California State Senate on the California Environmental Quality Act

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

Senate Floor Memo

To: All Members of the California State Senate
From: The Planning and Conservation League
RE: Reject Republican Caucus Budget Proposals on CEQA
Date: July 27, 2007

A recently- released State Senate Republican Caucus memorandum claims that “California’s need for vital infrastructure” is being threatened by the Attorney General’s efforts to use the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to help address the global warming crisis. This is not true. Implementing the current Republican Caucus proposal would be an attack not only on the Attorney General, but on California’s most powerful environmental law – and would fundamentally cripple the state’s efforts to address global warming.

There is no need to “amend” CEQA. Nothing in CEQA is going to prevent infrastructure and other projects from proceeding. This is just hysteria – and, again, it’s UNTRUE!

The “reform” or “solution” proposed by the Republican Caucus is to “suspend” the operation of CEQA, with respect to global warming impacts, until the year 2012. In the
meantime, thousands of projects that would otherwise feasibly mitigate their global warming impacts would be let “off the hook,” and we would be “digging the hole deeper” from which we’re hoping AB 32 can help extricate us.

The Republican Caucus proposal would say that we will DO NOTHING on global warming impacts that we could feasibly mitigate, while we wait for a yet untried and untested program under AB 32 to kick into gear. In other words, the current Republican Caucus proposal would DELAY economically feasible actions we can take right now.

Please do not agree to delay economically feasible actions to reduce global warming! The global warming crisis is real, and we can’t lose a moment in our efforts to address it.

A PPIC poll, released yesterday, tells you where the public is: