Salon.com > Proposition 23

How the rejection of Prop. 23 affirms the California dream

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 16:17:00 +0000

Californians woke up Wednesday morning in an alternate reality. Across most of the nation, hard-right Republicans swept to dramatic victories, taking a lock-step hold on the House of Representatives and thoroughly upsetting the political calculus for at least the next two years. But in the Golden State, liberalism prevailed. Jerry Brown walloped Meg Whitman in the governor's race, brushing off $160 million dollars worth of negative advertising like so many evanescent moonbeams. In a tighter Senate race, liberal stalwart Barbara Boxer held off Carly Fiorina. And perhaps most importantly, voters decisively rejected Proposition 23, the Texas-oil-company financed effort to negate California's landmark global warming law.

As of 8:30 a.m. PST, with 96 percent of the precincts reporting, 61.3 percent of California voters had said no to Prop 23. Environmentalists across the country -- hell, the world -- who have been dismayed to see climate skepticism take such deep hold of the Republican Party should take heart. 60 percent of the state boasting the largest population in the U.S. affirmed their commitment to tackling the challenge of climate change and our dependence on fossil fuels. California's economy is so large that the state can, by itself, make a huge, globally relevant impact on the development of clean and renewable energy technology. Prospective clean energy investors who have been holding back in fear of Proposition 23 passing can jump right back into the action. While most of the country expressed a profound discontent with the direction the country is headed, Californians said yes to the path they were already on.

The Texas golfer plot against California

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 21:57:00 +0000

If you were watching a movie, and you saw a scene in which a group of oil company executives assembled on a Texas golf course and, in between making off-color jokes about Tiger Woods and shanking their drives, conspired together on how best to screw over California, you might well dismiss the plot twist as ludicrously heavy-handed. Enough with the stereotypes! Even the TV show "Dallas" was cleverer than that!

But reality is often far more stupid than fiction can ever hope to be. CaliforniaWatch environmental reporter Susanne Rust tells us today about a heretofore unsuspected link between the out-of-state funders of the Prop 23 campaign to gut California's climate legislation: They all play golf together.

California Watch has found that of the 10 out-of-state companies contributing to the "Yes on 23" campaign since mid-May, nine attended and contributed to Valero's 2009 charity annual golf tournament in San Antonio, Texas.

Valero would not release the 2010 roster to California Watch. However, since Valero began hosting the event in 2003, most of the same sponsors have returned every year, said Bill Day, Valero's spokesman.

Meg Whitman sees the writing on the Proposition 23 wall

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 22:33:00 +0000

The No on Proposition 23 campaign is trumpeting the news that Meg Whitman, the Republican candidate for governor of California, has announced that she will not endorse the out-of-state oil-company-funded ballot initiative aimed at suspending AB 32, California's Global Warming Solutions Act.

However, Whitman is still calling for a one-year "moratorium" on the implementation of AB 32, which she remains determined to keep calling a "job killer."

"While Proposition 23 does address the job killing aspects of AB 32, it does not offer a sensible balance between our vital need for good jobs and the desire of all Californians to protect our precious environment. It is too simple of a solution for a complex problem. I believe that my plan to fix AB 32 strikes the right balance for California. I will vote "no" on Proposition 23."

Oil companies cower before the Terminator

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 16:04:00 +0000

The New York Times' Adam Nagourney got his hot hands on a fundraising e-mail that draws the fight over Proposition 23 in California in the starkest possible terms.

One on side, "environmental zealots" led by the Dark Lord himself, Arnold Schwarzenneger. On the other, the beleaguered oil companies, at risk of vanishing from the earth entirely!

Prop. 23 is the California ballot initiative that aims to suspend California's pioneering Global Warming Solutions Act -- AB 32. To suggest that the oil companies abhor it is akin to saying that Sarah Connor has a problem with robots. Die! Die! AB 32 must die!

Some excerpts from the memo, sent Tuesday morning by Charles T. Drevna, the president of the National Petrochemical Refiners Association:

"We've raised about $6 million so far, but unfortunately in California's expensive media market this is not enough to win the fight against environmental zealots led by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who seems hell-bent on becoming the real-life Terminator of our industry."

Prop 23′s threat to the California dream

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 21:29:00 +0000

The fact that a report released by UC-Berkeley's Center for Law, Energy and the Environment would "slam" Proposition 23, the oil-industry-funded attempt to suspend California's climate change law, is hardly surprising. One of the authors of the study, California at the Crossroads: Proposition 23, AB 32, and Climate Change, is Berkeley professor Daniel Kammen, who helped former California Assemblymember Fran Pavley design AB 32, the landmark Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. The day Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the bill, Kammen commemorated the event in the San Francisco Chronicle, comparing its symbolic importance to the publication of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," the first Earth Day in 1970 and the passage of the Clean Air Act.

The Koch brothers invade California

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 21:35:00 +0000

If you haven't already read Jane Mayer's devastating New Yorker profile of the billionaire Koch brothers who, among other things, have been bankrolling the Tea Party and funding climate change skepticism on a massive scale, well, what are you waiting for? I can't think of a better way to ruin a great three-day weekend!

But if you have read the piece, and might somehow still be wondering whether these guys are as bad as they sound, here's another data point, fresh from the keyboard of Todd Woody, in Grist. Through one of their many subsidiaries, Flint Hills Resources, a Kansas petrochemical company, the Kochs just donated $1 million to Proposition 23, the California ballot initiative designed to sabotage the state's global warming law, AB 32.

The Koch donation came a day after Tesoro, a Texas oil company that has been bankrolling the pro-Prop 23 campaign, put $1 million into the campaign coffers.

According to the [No on 23] campaign, 97 percent of the $8.2 million raised by the Yes forces has been given by oil-related interests and 89 percent of that money has come from out of state. Three companies, Koch Industries, Tesoro, and Valero -- another Texas-based oil company -- have provided 80 percent of those funds.

Ask Google: Jobs trump global warming

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 22:19:00 +0000

The provocative research conclusions of Matthew Kahn, an environmental economist at UCLA, have intrigued How the World Works on numerous occasions, with the most recent occasion being just this March. But his latest discovery -- that people care less about global warming and more about unemployment during recessions -- belongs in the way-beyond-obvious category. (Hat tip: Freakonomics.)

Using data from Google Insights, we have created a weekly database from January 2004 through February 2010 of keyword searches by state for two terms --"global warming" and "unemployment." We then ask the question: How do changes in a state's unemployment rate affect Internet search activity for these two keywords within the state?

We find that higher unemployment rates within a state decrease Internet search activity for global warming, but increase search activity for unemployment. Based on this revealed preference for interest in global warming, therefore, it appears that recessions crowd out concern for the environment, while not surprisingly increasing concern about unemployment.

Decoding Meg Whitman’s shout-out to New York

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:18:00 +0000

Calbuzz spots a bizarre outburst in Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's otherwise un-noteworthy speech to the Republican state convention in San Diego Friday night.

"Do you know who's as excited about this election as we are? The people of New York. They have suffered the financial reforms that are going to crimp our ability to raise capital and they want California to turn the corner."

The people of New York? I haven't seen any good polling numbers about how Meg Whitman is regarded by the people of New York, although presumably she still has some fans among the horse-riding set in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, where she grew up. And while it's true that a return to strong economic growth in California would be good for the whole country, Whitman's emphasis on those "who have suffered the financial reforms" seems to refer to a specific group of New Yorkers -- the executives of financial institutions with headquarters in Manhattan.

California’s choice: Build the future, or burn the planet

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 22:07:00 +0000

As midterm elections go, California faces a doozy this November. There's a juicy governor's race, with former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, a Republican, determined to spend whatever it takes to deny Jerry Brown a second go-round in Sacramento. There's an equally high-profile senatorial showdown, featuring former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina's attempt to dethrone the longtime Bay Area liberal stalwart Barbara Boxer. Both races are getting plenty of national attention, and deservedly so.

But the most important choice Californians will make this year won't be between a Republican or a Democrat. Also included on the ballot will be an initiative asking voters to decide whether to proceed as previously planned in shaping a future aggressively oriented toward clean, renewable energy, or to instead take a giant step backward.

Climate change legislation may be dead at the national level, but in California, a far-reaching law is already in place: AB 32, the "Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006." AB 32 mandates that California must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020. But California's crazy government-by-initiative system means that just because a law has been passed by the California House and Senate and signed by the governor doesn't make it secure. On the ballot this November, voters will get their own chance to weigh in on AB 32 by deciding whether or not to pass Proposition 23, the misleadingly named "California Jobs Initiative."