[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Loni Hancock
Member of the California State Assembly

I want to thank all of you for helping me run a positive grassroots campaign, talking with voters about my legislative record and the many issues facing our state. Today is Election Day and I need your help one more time. Please vote today, June 3rd.

In my five years in the California Assembly, I've written and co-authored 592 bills to improve the lives of Californians. I have proven myself to be an effective regional leader who addresses real concerns in the communities I represent. One example of this is my response to the recent Cosco Busan Oil Spill. As Chair of the Natural Resources Committee, I held a hearing within a week of the disastrous spill to carefully evaluate the government's response. In the aftermath of the hearing, together with other Assembly members who represent districts surrounding the San Francisco Bay, we introduced a package of bills to prevent future spills and to ensure more effective responses to any environmental threat to the Bay. More than 1,000 volunteers offered to help clean up the Bay in the aftermath of the spill, but emergency responders had to turn them away because they were not properly trained.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By John Geesman
Green Energy War

Based on the historic US Supreme Court decision that brought him to the White House, George W. Bush probably ranks first among all US presidents in his acute appreciation of the co-equal role which the American Constitution affords the judicial branch of government.

That may explain the disdain his climate speech earlier this month expressed regarding the role of the courts:

"Some courts are taking laws written more than 30 years ago — to primarily address local and regional environmental effects — and applying them to global climate change. The Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act were never meant to regulate global climate."

by David Dayen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

The Bush Administration's Department of Transportation proposal to raise fuel economy rates faster than Congress mandated last fall comes with a catch - obliterating California's proposal to regulate tailpipe emissions.  Think Progress has the relevant passage in the report.

(b) As a state regulation related to fuel economy standards, any state regulation regulating tailpipe

carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles is expressly preempted under 49 U.S.C. 32919.

(c) A state regulation regulating tailpipe carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles, particularly a regulation that is not attribute-based and does not separately regulate passenger cars and light trucks, conflicts with:

1. The fuel economy standards in this Part

2. The judgments made by the agency in establishing those standards, and

read more »

by Susan Rowe [courtesy of Blog for America]

Action Gram

Plug In America!

Written in a message from DFA Member Heather Bernikoff, Catheys Valley (Mariposa Co.)

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) will vote on amendments to the Zero Emission Vehicle regulation on March 27, 2008 in Sacramento.

Proposed revisions would allow automakers to delay meaningful EV production for years.  This proposal will profoundly weaken the program again instead of propelling our country toward a pollution-free and petroleum-free future.

Click here to send a message to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Click here to send a message to CARB Chair Mary Nichols.

read more »

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Sara S. Nichols

Although the job of (statewide elected California) Insurance Commissioner is not often associated with environmental issues, both the current and the immediate past job holders ran green. With the Southern California firestorms highlighting the effect of global climate change on the possibility of disasters and their attendant insurance claims, one wonders, what will/have these insurance commissioners done to move the insurance industry into political/economic reality?

In Europe, the insurance industry has been a crucial partner with environmentalists to pursue sane environmental policies that stem the production of greenhouse gases, thereby slowing global climate change, and protecting their bottom line.

In the U.S., the insurance industry routinely acts in lockstep with the Chamber of Commerce to oppose environmental bills which inconvenience polluters.

Past (Democratic) Insurance Commissioner and current Lt. Governor John Garamendi wants to be governor of California. He calls himself an environmentalist and campaigns on the need to do something about global climate change. Yet, when he was Insurance Commissioner did he use his position to nudge the insurance industry out of its historically anti-environmental stance? I don't recall hearing about such efforts.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

The Temp’s Rising -
Do you live in an Urban Heat Island?
How to turn your ‘urban heat island’ into a ‘cool city’

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Dan Bacher

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's address to the United Nations today about global climate change is one of the most blatant examples of hypocrisy that I've ever witnessed. Schwarzenegger challenged the leaders of the world's nations to “solve global warming” as he continues to push the Legislature to accept a $9 billion water bond package that would build an environmentally devastating Delta canal and more dams.

Schwarzenegger addressed delegates and invited guests for the United Nations conference – “The Future in our Hands: Addressing the Leadership Challenge of Climate Change” at the General Assembly Hall at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, NY. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon invited the Governor to speak at today's special session in July, when they toured a San Jose business that is developing the technology for countries to help reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

“What we're doing is changing the dynamic, preparing the way and encouraging the future,” Schwarzengger told the U.N. “The aerospace industry built the modern economy of Southern California. The computer industry and the Internet built the economy of Silicon Valley. And now green, clean technology - along with biotech - will take California to the next level.”