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GLOBAL WARMING ACTION ENDANGERED IN STATE BUDGET NEGOTIATIONS: DON’T LET THE OSTRICHES WIN!

Gary-Patton.gif
By Gary A. Patton
Executive Director
Planning and Conservation League

Last Friday, a group of California State Senators launched another attack on California’s ability to reduce global warming pollution by attempting to slash our premier environmental and public participation law, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).

Several Republican Party Senators have threatened to block the entire state budget unless the California Legislature accepts a recent polluters’ plea to ignore global warming pollution when assessing a project’s environmental impacts under CEQA. This “ostrich exemption” would allow polluters to continue sticking their heads in the sand, pretending that projects like oil refineries, freeways, and suburban sprawl simply don’t create greenhouse gases. It’s dangerously loopy logic, but if they can convince the Senate to play along, we could see California’s bourgeoning fight against global warming come to a skidding halt.

The Senate will reconvene Wednesday morning to continue negotiations on the state budget. We’re asking Governor Schwarzenegger and state legislative leaders to turn back this assault. But they need to hear from you too!

Please call Senate leader Don Perata, Governor Schwarzenegger, and your state Senator AS SOON AS YOU CAN!

Here’s what they need to know:

• Please fight this latest attempt to create an “ostrich exemption” in the California Environmental Quality Act. If developers are responsible for global warming pollution they need to admit it to the public and clean up their act, not bury their heads in the sand.

• The California Environmental Quality Act is our best tool to hold these polluters accountable. For more than thirty-five years it has shed light on decisions that could harm the environment and public health and forced polluters to take reasonable actions that improve their projects. It must continue to carry out its key roles as California fights global warming pollution.

• When the Legislature and the Governor passed AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, it was a call for strong, decisive action, not an opportunity to dismantle California’s existing environmental laws.

• Please publicly denounce this attempt by polluters to hold the state budget hostage. Global Warming is too serious to let these ostriches win.

If possible, please call before the Senate reconvenes on Wednesday morning.

Senate Pro Tem Don Perata
916-651-4009

Governor Schwarzenegger
916-445-2841

To contact your state Senator click here.

For more information please contact PCL’s Global Warming program manager Matt Vander Sluis at mvander@pcl.org or (916) 313-4515.

Gary Patton is the Executive Director of the Planning and Conservation League, a statewide, nonprofit lobbying organization. For more than thirty years, PCL has fought to develop a body of environmental laws in California that is the best in the United States. PCL staff review virtually every environmental bill that comes before the California Legislature each year. It has testified in support or opposition of thousands of bills to strengthen California's environmental laws and fight off rollbacks of environmental protections.

Posted on July 24, 2007

Comments

The study found that global warming since 1985 has been caused neither by an increase in solar radiation nor by a decrease in the flux of galactic cosmic rays. Some researchers had also suggested that the latter might influence global warming because the rays trigger cloud formation. I am write a blog which gave complete information about Global Warming.

Posted by: Tarun K Juyal at July 25, 2007 02:08 AM

Pollution is a killer not only to humans but to our food chain, lets forget global warming how about no smog in our cities like Los Angeles and every others or how about reducing the cost of heating and cooling your homes by 50% the side effect is a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
I live in a place where it snows and freezes several months of the year I have not turned my heat on for five years in a row.
A year of intense talk about glogal warming has come and gone with no clear solutions to combat this questionable problem.
I would like to challenge the Governor as I don't believe he is sincere about global warming, just his future as a Senator.

Posted by: Greg Cragg at July 25, 2007 01:17 PM

Our former Governor, Moonbeam Jerry Brown, the Attorney General is showing us the real mischief which the 2006 Environmental Protection law (AB32), combined with the 1970 California Environmental Quality Act can do to California by calling CO2 a pollutant. Because of these laws, the Attorney General is demonstrating that virtually any development project can be halted in its tracks. Republicans are fighting it because California needs to grow to continue to prosper and make a home for our children and grand children. We need more power plants, more freeways, and more homes to serve our current population and the growth we have historically had.

Now, CO2, according to recent science reports (See ‘Global Warming Swindle’ on Yahoo video) is not responsible for Global Warming: the Sun's energy variations are. The earth's temperature has never varied because of CO2 concentration and it never will. But, nearly everyone says CO2 is causing Global Warming. But most reputable climate scientists deny man is causing either substantial increase in Green House Gases, or in changing the climate. And, we have had no world-wide warming since 1998: None, Zero. How can anyone believe man is causing the climate variations which are no more severe than those before the industrial revolution? How can we explain that Mars and other planets are warming is exactly the same pattern as is the case on earth? Well, the answer is man is not causing warming, the Sun is doing it.

So, why are our legislators so foolish as to pass a law which doomed to be a total waste of money? It is a political and almost religious phenomenon of the Environmentalist movement that we must stop growth, stop the rich, stop consuming resources and live like man did in olden times. This fairy tale is 35 years old, and it caused the silly “End of Growth” Club of Rome fraud, the Global Cooling Scare, the end or resources scare, and now, it is convenient to use the same old Environmentalist "old wine in new bottles" scheme of using Global Warming to stop the world.

Making CO2 a pollutant under the law makes it possible to halt future growth and to slow down or stop construction by restricting permits. This means fewer or no power plants, refineries, freeways, cars, and housing developments, etc. This seems to be the intent of the law and the Democrat’s acceptance of the Environmentalists dream of a return to a simpler way of life. Well, it’s a fantasy.

The Environmentalist’s prophet, Rachael Carson’s book (many years ago) caused a worldwide ban on DDT. In 2006, the UN said this policy caused at least a million deaths in Africa be cause of Malaria. The ban was lifted. Now, Environmentalists believe fewer people is a good thing, so, what the hell, 30 million fewer people is a good thing, isn’t it?

The only way to reduce CO2 emissions is by using less energy. This means fewer trips in smaller cars, colder homes in winter, hotter homes in summer, and riding bicycles and walking instead of driving. If construction is slowed or halted, owners of property will not be able to sell to developers, and the environmental laws can be used to "take" the value of agricultural land. It is, in effect, a control scheme for halting growth in every community in California. If no more refineries or power plants are built, the costs of energy will go up, way up. Companies will not be able to expand, and employment will decline as more firms leave the state. And, if Environmentalists have their way, this is exactly what will happen.

And, it puts the power of stopping growth into the hands of Environmentalist extremists who can file suits based on these laws in any and all parts of the State. So, control over development is lost by the communities, the counties and the State and passes into the hands of un-elected meddlers and those who would want to turn the clock back in time.

Radical Environmentalists have a weapon to do to our society what their environmental terrorists tried to do -- curb growth by destroying businesses and cars, burning construction projects to the ground, spiking trees, and causing hundreds of millions of dollars damages to private and public facilities. The law now on the books in California is a much better weapon for Environmentalists than illegal terrorist activity. It is better for them, and much more effective. Jerry Brown is showing that lawsuits can be filed to virtually stop any development project in California.

The Republicans are right, .We should at least waive implementation before 2012 (which is actually the law), stop it now, and the Governor and the Legislature tie to remedy this terrible situation.

And, the press can help by doing its homework and not just repeating the same old lies being told every day about CO2 emissions and Global Warming -- just for political purposes to stop California in its tracks.

Whose side are you on anyway?

Posted by: Arthur E. Lemay at July 27, 2007 03:58 AM

if the trees take in Co2 and we are cutting down so many maybe that is one reason that there is so much CO2.

Posted by: Kate at January 10, 2008 08:00 AM

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