Climate Change

The silver bullet train

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› steve@sfbg.com

There aren’t many easy answers to the environmental crisis facing California, a state with a fossil fuel–dependent culture that’s cooking the planet, congesting the freeways and airports, and hastening a tumultuous end to the oil age. But there is one: build a high-speed rail system as soon as possible.

All the project studies indicate this should be a no-brainer. San Franciscans could travel to Los Angeles in just a couple hours, the same time it takes to fly, at a fraction of the cost. And the system — eventually stretching from Sacramento to San Diego — would generate twice as much money by 2030 as it costs to build. The trains use far less power than planes or cars and can be powered by renewable resources with no emissions. The system would get more than two million cars off the road and single-handedly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 12 million metric tons per year.

High-speed rail is a proven green technology that works well everywhere it’s been implemented, including most of Europe and Asia. In France the TGV line from Paris to Lyon connects the country’s two most culturally important cities in the same way that Los Angeles would be linked to San Francisco — from one downtown core to the other — allowing for easy day trips and ecofriendly weekend jaunts. Advocates for high-speed rail say it’s an essential component of California going green and the only realistic way to meet the ambitious climate change targets approved last year in Assembly Bill 32.

Yet for some strange reason, the idea of high-speed rail has barely clung to life since San Franciscan Quentin Kopp first proposed it more than a decade ago as a member of the State Senate and set the studies in motion, all of which have found the project feasible and beneficial. Today Kopp, a retired judge, chairs the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA), which has fought mightily to move the project forward despite severe underfunding and sometimes faltering political support.

Growing awareness of climate change has increased support for high-speed rail among legislators and in public opinion polls (among Democrats and Republicans), leaving only one major impediment to getting energy-efficient trains traveling the state at 220 mph: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

While posing for the April 16 cover of Newsweek with the headline "Save the Planet — or Else" and touting himself around the world as an environmental leader, Schwarzenegger has quietly sought to kill — or at least delay beyond his term — high-speed rail.

The $10 billion bond issue to build the LA-to-SF section was originally slated for 2004, then pushed back to 2006, then pushed back to 2008 because Schwarzenegger worried it would hinder the $20 billion transportation bond, Proposition 1B, which was focused mostly on new freeway construction.

Part of the deal to delay the train bond involved giving the CHSRA the money it needed to start ramping up the project, which included $14.3 million last year, the most it has ever received. But rather than give the authority the $103 million that it needs this year to honor contracts, set the final Bay Area alignment, start buying rights-of-way, and complete the engineering work and financing plan, the governor’s budget proposed offering the agency just $1.3 million — only about enough to keep the lights on and not fire its 3 1/2 staffers.

And now Schwarzenegger is asking the legislature to once again delay the 2008 bond measure, which would take a two-thirds vote of both houses. "Investing in it now would prevent us from doing bonds for any other purposes," the governor’s spokesperson, Sabrina Lockhart, told us, citing prisons, schools, and roads as some other priorities for the governor. "It’s not cost-effective in the short term."

The stand baffles environmentalists and other high-speed rail supporters, who say the project is expensive but extremely cost-effective over the long term (although it gets less so the longer the state delays, with about $2 billion tacked on the price tag for every year of delay).

"If the governor would get up on his bully pulpit and talk about high-speed rail to the California people, we would be starting construction in 2009," Kopp told the Guardian. "What you have is political fear instead of political will."

Asked why Schwarzenegger doesn’t seem to understand the importance of this issue — or how it relates to his green claims — CHSRA executive director Mehdi Morshed can only guess. Some of it is the daunting price tag and long construction schedule, some of it is that the governor tends to defer to the Department of Transportation for his transportation priorities, "and they’re in the business of building more roads, so that’s what they say we need."

But mostly, it’s a failure to understand the kind of transportation gridlock that’s headed California’s way if we do nothing. "It’s an alternative to meeting the travel demand with more highways and airport expansions," Carli Paine, transportation program director with the Transportation and Land Use Coalition, told us. But as Morshed told us, "The governor doesn’t suffer much on the freeways, and he has his own plane."

The person doing Schwarzenegger’s dirty work on high-speed rail is David Crane, an attorney turned venture capitalist who, although he’s a Democrat from San Francisco, is one of the governor’s top economic advisers and his newest appointee to the CHSRA board. Despite thick stacks of detailed studies on the project, Crane seems to want to return the project to square one.

"There’s never been a comprehensive plan for how you’re going to finance this thing," Crane told us, noting that the LA-SF link is likely to cost far more than the bonds would generate. "The bond itself is a red herring. You could raise the $10 billion now and still not have a high-speed rail."

Yet supporters of high-speed see the Schwarzenegger-Crane gambit as mostly just a stall tactic. While Crane argues that the private sector funding — which could account for about half his estimated $40 billion in total project costs (other documents say around $26 billion) — needs to be nailed down first, supporters say California must firmly commit to the project if it’s going to happen.

"Private capital won’t be interested unless they know there is a public commitment," Kopp told us.

"You need to take a leap of leadership. When there is something that makes sense in so many ways, you need to have that initial public buy-in," said Bill Allayaud, legislative director for the Sierra Club California.

Support for that stance also seems to be strong in the legislature, where San Francisco’s newest representative, Assemblymember Fiona Ma, has emerged as the point person on the issue. She even went on a fact-finding mission in France, aboard the TGV train when it reached 357 mph to break the world rail speed record.

"We can’t do it until we have that public investment," Ma told us, noting that holding detailed financial debates right now is a diversion considering that "this project will pay for itself."

"My assembly caucus is extremely positive about high-speed rail. Right now it’s on the ballot for next year, and I think it’s going to stay there," Ma said. She isn’t sure that she can get the CHSRA the full $103 million it wants this year, "but whatever we can come up with is going to be better than $1 million."

"The governor needs to get on board. This is an important environmental issue," Ma told us. "For him not to be behind it doesn’t make sense."

Californians also seem to have a hard time fully understanding the project, probably because polls show that only about 10 percent of them have ever used high-speed rail in another country. Yet polls show climate change is a top public concern among Democrats and Republicans.

"Number one, the dollar figure is daunting," Kopp said. "Number two, we’re Americans, and we just haven’t experienced it."

Yet when the project and its benefits are explained, it doesn’t seem to have any opponents outside the Schwarzenegger administration. Morshed said not even Big Oil and Big Auto — two deep-pocketed entities with a history of fighting large-scale transit projects — have opposed high-speed rail. Once people get it, everyone seems to love it.

"The reaction you get almost every time is ‘Why aren’t we building it?’ That’s the thing that is universal, people saying, ‘Why don’t we have this? What’s wrong with us?’ " Morshed said.

For such a massive project — with construction spanning almost the entire state — it’s notable that none of the state’s major environmental groups have challenged the project’s environmental impact reports, which were certified in November 2005. That’s largely because the route uses existing transportation corridors and has stops only in urban areas, thus not encouraging sprawl.

"Environmental groups generally don’t like big projects, but they like this one," the Sierra Club’s Allayaud told us. "There aren’t a lot of negatives that we’re having to balance out, and there are a lot of positives."

Yet politics being what it is, other obstacles are likely to present themselves. The CHSRA is now setting the route into the Bay Area, either through the Altamont Pass or the Pacheco Pass, both of which have political and environmental concerns.

Morshed — an engineer who served as consultant to the Senate Transportation Committee for 20 years before heading the CHSRA — expressed confidence that the project will happen if the state’s leaders support it: "It’s moving ahead, and we have very good support in the legislature. The only soft spot is the governor, who wants to postpone it and seems to have other priorities." *

The green issue

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Climate change is a global problem. A lot of the solutions, at least in the United States, are going to be local.

And a lot of them are going to start and end with the way we use land.

That’s a critical theme for this year’s Earth Day: cities like San Francisco, which claims to be (and really ought to be) a world leader in environmental sustainability, have to rethink everything from housing and consumption to open space and energy use — and particularly transportation.

Cars — private-use automobiles, the center of so much of American life and public policy for the past 100 years — are also one of the greatest threats to the future of the planet. The byproducts of tens of millions of internal combustion engines on the roads every day are a major component of greenhouse gases (not to mention other environmental pollutants). And the oil that fuels them drives a foreign policy that leads, as we’ve seen, to tyranny, instability, and millions of deaths.

It’s not enough to raise gas taxes or promote hybrids or increase fuel-efficiency standards (although all of those should be on the national agenda). Cities and states have to profoundly change the way people get around and the way they use public and private space.

Some of this is just so simple you can’t believe it’s not already happening. As Steve Jones reports ("The Silver Bullet Train"), a high-speed rail connection from San Francisco to Los Angeles would get almost two millions cars off the road and cut down immensely on the use of airline fuel. It would also pay for itself in a few years. It’s a form of public transit that would work right away: nobody likes to drive to LA. If you could take a train, get there in less time than it takes to fly, and pay less than $50 for the trip, why would you travel any other way?

Some of it requires more political vision (and political guts). If San Francisco wants to fight sprawl and encourage less car use, it has to be willing to build housing for people who work here — and that means, by city estimates, ensuring that two-thirds of all new housing be affordable.

And if San Franciscans want to reconnect to urban land and encourage bikes and walking, we have to think seriously about open space — even if it means that roads and private developments have to be sacrificed. That’s what Deborah Giattina describes ("Open Water,").

Cities and states also have to think about energy policy, and that means reclaiming energy as a public good, not a private commodity. San Francisco’s private utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., is spending millions trying to tell us how green it is; as Amanda Witherell notes ("Green Isn’t PG&E,"), that’s a big lie.

On this Earth Day 2007, the time to mess around and debate has run out. Think globally, act locally — and push for a city and state environmental agenda that is more than hot air. *

Gore speaks, conveniently

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Intern Sam Devine snuck into Al Gore’s recent local event. Here’s his report

On Tuesday night Former Vice President Al Gore appeared at the Nob Hill Masonic Center in an event sponsored by City Arts and Lectures and the California Academy of Sciences. He spoke in discussion with John McCosker, Chair of Aquatic Biology at the Academy, on the recently championed topic of global climate change.

Copies of Gore’s books, including “An Inconvenient Truth”, were for sale in the lobby. A few minutes after 8p.m. the lights went down in the sold-out Masonic Auditorium. Greg Farrington, Executive Director of the California Academy of Sciences, gave a brief introduction; noting that the Academies’ soon-to-be Golden Gate Park building will be one of the first publicly owned “green” buildings in the nation.

Gore and moderator McCosker took the stage and sat down in the artificial living room habitat – cushy red chairs and a round wooden coffee table with tulips. Gore wore a blue suit with the standard democrat blue tie and choice Tennessee footwear – cowboy boots. It’s safe to say that no one can recall the clothing McCosker wore -– his black-and-white Wicked-Witch-of-the-West socks eclipsed all else.

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Ranting Gore
Photo from uglydemocrats.com

Unanswered questions

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› sarah@sfbg.com

Bayview–Hunters Point resident Espanola Jackson says her phone rang off the hook after the San Francisco Chronicle printed her photo — but none of her concerns — under the headline "Residents Like Plan to Revitalize Area." It was part of the newspaper’s extensive coverage of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s plan to rebuild the community around a football stadium.

"People called to say, ‘You need to sue the Chronicle,’ " Jackson told the Guardian. Newsom wants to entrust Florida-based developer Lennar Corp. with cleaning up the five highly contaminated Hunters Point Shipyard parcels. Jackson finds this plan worrisome because, as the Guardian recently revealed ("The Corporation That Ate San Francisco," 3/14/07), Lennar was cited multiple times last year for failing to monitor and control dust and asbestos at Parcel A, the first and only piece of the shipyard that the Navy has released to the city as ready for development. Lennar is also being sued by three employees for allegations of racially charged whistle-blower retaliation in connection with the problems on Parcel A (see "Dust Still Settling," 3/28/07).

Beyond her problems with Lennar, Jackson worries that Newsom’s plan doesn’t account for climate change or the true cost of shipyard cleanup.

"Because of global warming, that entire area is going to be underwater," Jackson said. "And if Michael Cohen [of the Mayor’s Office of Base Reuse] and the rest of them are really interested in cleaning up the area, they should send a resolution to the Board of Supervisors requesting that Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, and Nancy Pelosi appropriate $5 billion, which is what it will really take to clean up the shipyard."

Jackson was also frustrated that neither the Hunters Point Shipyard Restoration Advisory Board, which is composed of local residents, tenants, and environmental and community groups, nor the regulators overseeing the cleanup have been consulted by the mayor in his haste to try to keep the 49ers in town by quickly building a new stadium.

Jackson, who bought a home in the Bayview 34 years ago, said residents want a thorough cleanup, not a rush job. That was what city residents said in November 2000 when they overwhelmingly approved Proposition P, demanding that no transfer of property take place "until the entire Shipyard is cleaned to residential standards."

"It’s a landfill, and it needs to be removed," Jackson said.

Yet Lennar, which won the contract to redevelop the shipyard, is in a worsening financial position to deal with unexpected challenges at the site. The company’s profits plummeted more than 70 percent in the first quarter of 2007 because of the slumping housing market. Jackson doesn’t believe the cleanup will cost $300 million, a figured touted by Cohen, but she questions where the cleanup money will come from.

"Only white folks will be able to afford the 8,900 housing units that Lennar is proposing to build near the stadium," Jackson said.

The Chronicle‘s overwhelmingly positive coverage of the mayor’s shipyard plan came shortly after Lennar Urban president Kofi Bonner wrote to the Board of Supervisors and the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency claiming that articles in the Guardian and the Chronicle about Lennar’s asbestos and dust problems at the shipyard and the lawsuit by employees "are full of errors, inaccuracies and misinformation."

Asked what errors Bonner was referring to, Lennar spokesperson Sam Singer told the Guardian, "My main complaint is with the lawsuit, which contains numerous false allegations, and with the Chronicle‘s article, which called these employees ‘executives.’ " Lennar has not requested any corrections of Guardian articles.

Asked about the lawsuit’s claim that Bonner sat by and allowed the alleged discrimination to happen, Singer told us, "Kofi is one of the leading African American executives in the nation." Neither Bonner nor Lennar vice president Paul Menaker, who are both named in the whistle-blower suit, returned the Guardian‘s calls as of press time.

Attorney Angela Alioto, who represents the three African American Lennar employees suing the company, told the Guardian that Singer’s defense of Bonner is "racist."

"Just because Kofi is African American means he couldn’t discriminate?" Alioto asked.

Equally disturbing is the Mayor’s Office’s reliance on Lennar for accurate information about the developer’s performance at the shipyard. When the Guardian contacted Newsom press secretary Nathan Ballard for comment about Lennar, he wrote to the Guardian, "You might want to give Sam Singer a call. He’s the spokesperson for Lennar and can really answer questions about that stuff … accurately."

After making it clear that we wanted Newsom’s perspective, not Lennar’s, Ballard wrote that the Mayor’s Office is "confident the systems we have in place will protect human health," an answer that dodges our question about the violations that happened over a six-month period in 2006.

Insisting that Lennar will not be asked to take over the cleanup, Ballard claimed that "if the city pursues an ‘early transfer’ with the Navy, a specialized environmental remediation firm, not Lennar, would finish certain elements of the cleanup. And the city will have extensive oversight over any such work."

Ballard refused to comment on the suit brought against Lennar by three of its employees but went into detail about the Restoration Advisory Board, which he said was "created by the Navy to advise the Navy."

"The city created its own Citizens Advisory Board independent of the Navy for local input from the Bayview community," Ballard claimed.

He also maintained that the "Navy is and will always remain legally responsible for paying for the cleanup. Over the last three to four years, we have secured more cleanup money for the shipyard than any other closed Navy base in the county. We intend to have those robust funding levels continue."

This was also one of the most toxic bases in the country, which is why the conversion effort has been difficult. Plaintiff Guy McIntyre also alleges it is complicated because of chicanery. Before being demoted, McIntyre said he told his bosses there were "severe discrepancies in the invoicing submitted by Gordon Ball," which has a $20 million construction contract with Lennar.

"Specifically, while Gordon Ball stated that over $1 million was going to a certain minority-owned subcontractor, only a small fraction of that money was actually going to the subcontractor," the lawsuit contends.

We have been trying to review those public records, so far without success. James Fields, contract compliance supervisor for the Redevelopment Agency, told us that Gordon Ball subcontracted with several minority business enterprises, including Michael Spencer Masonry, Oliver Transbay, Remediation Services, Bayview Hunters Point Trucking, and Gordon Ball’s joint-venture partner, Yerba Buena.

Fields said, "I have been advised that the project manager usually presides over the collection of the data but that they are out of the country. Because the project is substantially completed, we will ask the prime contractor, which is Ball, and the minority business enterprises and the women business enterprises under Ball to show us how much they were paid, then compare the sets of records."

In other words, there are still more unanswered questions about Lennar and its subcontractors. *

666 days until Bush is history

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By Sarah Phelan
When a friend gave me a Bush countdown clock, it was registering 1,111 days until Bush will be gone.
At first, I was excited. (You can see the seconds hand ticking away.)
The next day, I was pissed off. (There were still 1,110 days of Bush and Cheney to go.)
434 days later, and a Justice Department official has just taken the Fifth in the firing of the US Attorneys scandal.
The House has set a date for withdrawal from Iraq.
The Senate is debating the same.
Climate change is no longer in doubt, but it’s clear that the Bush admin worked hard to cloud the issue.
It’s also clear that Cheney had a hand in the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name and the falsification of prewar intelligence that led the US to invade Iraq, kill thousands, maim thousands more and spend billions.
666 days is a spooky length of time for this nation to continue to be misled, misinformed–and mistrusted.
Impeach Bush and Cheney now.

Power play

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› news@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors will soon decide the fate of the Trans Bay Cable (TBC), a privately financed, underwater power line that would plug the city’s electric grid into power plants in the East Bay.

Backers call the cable the best way to avoid blackouts, like those the city saw in the wake of the energy deregulation debacle of the late 1990s. But green power activists argue that the developer of this 57-mile extension cord is cashing in on California’s blackout fears and that approving the project would go against the city’s commitment to finding sustainable sources of energy.

Australian financial firm Babcock and Brown has staked $300 million on the cable’s construction and offered more than $28 million for a community benefits package if the project is approved. The developer plans to profit on its investment with a guaranteed 13.5 percent rate of return, granted to it by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the sale of power running through the cable. Power plants in and around Pittsburg would generate most of the juice going though the 400-megawatt-capacity line. Ratepayers across the state would foot the bill.

The California Independent System Operator (Cal-ISO), the public benefit corporation in charge of the state’s electric grid, has asked for San Francisco supervisors to approve the cable as soon as possible so that it can begin service by 2010. Cal-ISO’s sole mission is to keep the lights on, and when there isn’t enough power in the system, it coordinates the dreaded rolling blackouts that most Californians remember from the energy crisis. CAL-ISO representative Larry Tobias brought up those dark days at a San Francisco Port Commission meeting Feb. 27. "Without the Trans Bay Cable project," he warned, "we will be back in that situation again." Electricity from the TBC, Tobias told commissioners, will give the city’s system the "reliability" to prevent blackouts.

Tobias said if supervisors reject the cable project, CAL-ISO will have to seek alternative proposals. At a January meeting of the city’s Local Agency Formation Committee (LAFCo), Tobias brought up a plan previously put forward by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which looked to bring power across the bay from a substation in Moraga. In 2005, PG&E asked for more time to finish its design. CAL-ISO rejected its request and chose the TBC instead.

But some local activists say the city does not need the cable, or any other privately funded power line. Steven J. Moss of San Francisco Community Power told the Guardian a 400-megawatt cable would flood the power grid with "an enormous oversupply" of electricity. "That would be a waste of resources," he said. Moss claims CAL-ISO is understandably obsessed with reliability but the probability of its doomsday blackout scenarios is incredibly small. How small? At the Port Commission’s March 13 meeting, Moss said his calculations indicate there is only a "0.0002 percent chance that the [TBC] will be needed."

Even in the worst-case scenario, Moss told us, the city is only "looking at a 50- to 60-megawatt gap [in energy supplies] 10 years from now." His figures, he said, are based on Cal-ISO’s own estimates, adding, "The real way to plug that gap [is] demand management — solar, wind, all the things that San Francisco talks about constantly and that are good for us."

At the January LAFCo hearing, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi questioned officials from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) about the city’s plans to acquire its own power line from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir’s hydroelectric stations. The city already owns most of the 200-mile transmission route from the Yosemite power stations, but PG&E possesses the last 30 miles and charges the city fees to bring electricity up the Peninsula from Newark. "Why can’t we have our own cable?" Mirkarimi asked SFPUC staffer Barbara Hale. She said the agency has been "studying the feasibility" of the proposed city-owned line but cannot yet commit to a firm "coming online date" like the TBC’s developer can.

For years the city has been seeking a way to secure full ownership of the Hetch Hetchy lines as a step toward forming a public power utility, independent of PG&E control. Ironically, if the TBC is built, a public power agency would own the cable and profit from it, just not San Francisco’s power agency. Pittsburg’s municipal utility is slated to take over the line once Babcock and Brown finishes its construction.

At the same hearing in January, Moss pointed to such projects as the proposed Hetch Hetchy line, as well as the city’s evolving plans to implement more renewable power sources, as proof that supervisors should reject the TBC. Calling the cable a "potlatch," Moss said, "Time is our friend" in power matters. "Technology will change and improve, [and] we’re potentially rushing into a very expensive project." Mirkarimi did not return calls for comment, but at the hearing, he indicated he is still studying the cable and has not yet formed a position on it.

Philip DeAndrade, chair of the city’s Power Plant Task Force, expressed concerns that Pittsburg’s power plants burn "very available fossil fuels" for their generation and that these cheaper sources of electricity "might take out of the market mix" more renewable energy. DeAndrade also brought up the four gas-fired combustion turbines, known as peakers, that the city is in the process of bringing online. With these generators scheduled to go into service in 2009, as well as several PG&E transmission projects either in the works or already operational, DeAndrade said, "I’m not convinced [the TBC] is a good deal for San Francisco. What it looks like is a good deal for Babcock and Brown and the City of Pittsburg."

CAL-ISO insists that the TBC is the best reliability option for the region. Spokesperson Gregg Fishman said the peakers and other local energy projects will allow the system operator to stop relying on the inefficient Potrero Hill Power Plant. "But all that really does is keep us even in San Francisco. It doesn’t improve the reliability of the system at all — and in fact, with load [demand] growth we are actually falling slowly behind." Fishman later mentioned the added benefits of having power come in from a different direction. Currently, all power lines feeding the city travel up the Peninsula.

On March 13 the TBC cleared its first local regulatory hurdle when the Port Commission approved a licensing agreement for the cable’s facilities. Port officials, along with staff from the Mayor’s Office and other city agencies, spent weeks negotiating the terms of the deal with Babcock and Brown. The agreement grants the port annual rent payments in excess of $1 million, a needed cash infusion for the strapped agency.

The community benefits package gives the port an additional $5.5 million, with an as yet undetermined portion of those funds to be spent on open-space and energy-related projects on port-owned land. In addition to payments to the port, Babcock and Brown pledged more than $23 million to the SFPUC for sustainable energy programs, such as solar, wind, and tidal power initiatives.

Despite passing the licensing and benefits packages, port commissioners and their staff said they were not ruling on the project’s merits in terms of energy policy. Port special projects manager Brad Benson, who spearheaded the negotiations, told us, "Port staff does not believe we have the required expertise to rule on energy policy aspects [of the TBC]. We believe the Board of Supervisors is the preferred venue" to settle those questions.

Reached for comment, several San Francisco supervisors, either directly or through staff, told us they are still making up their minds about the project. Sup. Sophie Maxwell told us even if the cable is built, the city will not allow the new power line to sidetrack its efforts to use more environmentally friendly energy. "The city’s policy is renewable energy. Fossil fuel is not our first and primary desire." But, she added, Cal-ISO "determine[s] our power needs, and so we have to go along with that. We can’t say, ‘No … you’re wrong.’ "

Babcock and Brown vice president Dave Parquet praised the Port Commission for approving the licensing agreement and benefits package, telling us, "We are very pleased with the port’s [approval] and look forward to the Board of Supervisors’ decision." Samuel Wehn, the TBC’s project manager at Babcock and Brown, said, "I don’t think San Francisco [officials are] going to put their city in the position where they’re not going to be able to provide the kind of energy that’s needed to keep this city running."

Moss said those kinds of arguments are "business as usual" for the state in terms of energy policy. "Here [we] go again with another large infrastructure project that doesn’t contribute to solving climate change or moving our energy agenda forward."

He added, "It’s classic political science. Out of [the average ratepayer’s bill] it’s pennies per month, so nobody cares about it … but that doesn’t mean it’s not an expensive project. It is." Babcock and Brown, he said, "saw an opportunity to make a very fat profit margin, and they went for it like any good profiteer." *

Middle of the Pack

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by Amanda Witherell

The Earth Day Network just released its Urban Environment Report ranking the environmental conditions of the top 72 cities in the US. The study takes into account 200 different factors and ranks for best conditions regarding toxics and waste, air quality, health and human services, parks and recreation, quality of life, drinking water, and global climate change. Oh boy, you’re thinking. It’s going to be so cool to see how San Francisco stands out, with a Mayor who brags about how clean and green the city is.

Good thing he’s pledged to make it better. According to the weighted rankings, we’re just above average. See for yourself.

At least we beat Detroit!

Middle of the Pack

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by Amanda Witherell

The Earth Day Network just released its Urban Environment Report ranking the environmental conditions of the top 72 cities in the US. The study takes into account 200 different factors and ranks for best conditions regarding toxics and waste, air quality, health and human services, parks and recreation, quality of life, drinking water, and global climate change. Oh boy, you’re thinking. It’s going to be so cool to see how San Francisco stands out, with a Mayor who brags about how clean and green the city is.

Good thing he’s pledged to make it better. According to the weighted rankings, we’re just above average. See for yourself.

At least we beat Detroit!

Sink or swim

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› sarah@sfbg.com


Click to view the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission subsidence map (PDF)

Will rising seas destroy San Francisco’s sewers? Should condos South of Market be on stilts? Could the huge Coca-Cola bottle at the Giants’ ballpark one day bubble with seawater? Can anyone explain why San Francisco still doesn’t have flood insurance?

As temperatures rise, snow packs vanish, and sea levels surge, San Francisco is waking up to its own inconvenient truth: surrounded on three sides by water, paved with concrete throughout, and erecting condo towers faster than you can say "bamboo," the city by the bay is particularly vulnerable to climate change.

With a recent California Climate Change Center report predicting sea levels will rise between four inches and three feet by 2100, San Francisco can expect increased flooding and damage to vital infrastructure and the destruction of fragile ecosystems and low-lying neighborhoods.

The evidence of impending doom is already there.

Addressing a climate change summit last month, Tom Franza, assistant general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, revealed that seawater already tops the city’s weirs for about an hour during very high tides. Franza expects this salt water intrusion, which threatens to kill helpful microbes that digest our solid waste, to get worse as sea levels continue to rise.

So what steps is the city taking to combat climate change?

The SFPUC is already building safety valves on floodgates and pushing for environmentally friendly development toward a future where green roofs, grassy swales, and permeable sidewalks will help stop rainwater from inundating already stressed sewers. It’s also working with the Departments of Planning and Public Works to map blocks and lots that are already sinking — known officially as subsidence — and therefore especially vulnerable to flooding from rising seas.

It comes as a shock to learn that the Planning Department doesn’t already have maps of areas that are prone to floods, but zoning administrator Larry Badiner told the Guardian, "In the past, floods were related to free-running streams, and since there aren’t any in San Francisco anymore, it wasn’t an issue."

Senior planner Craig Nikitas did confirm for us that city planners are working with the SFPUC and the DPW to flag blocks and lots prone to sinking, a phenomenon associated with rising seas that city officials don’t quite understand.

"If I had to guess, I’d say [they’re sinking] because most are on sandy soils or fill and over time there’s been a settling of sand or because of subterranean flooding," Nikitas said.

As the city’s subsidence map shows, the problem is biggest in SoMa and along the bay — where concrete-intense development is on the rise.

In the future, Nikitas told us, "If a developer comes in to do something in those areas, the system will flag it, and builders should pay extra attention to drainage and elevation, using raised entrances three steps up from the street and trench drains and installing sump pumps if there’s a subterranean garage."

As small a step as subsidence mapping sounds, it’s a sea change for city planners. SFPUC principal engineer Jon Loiacono recalls how in the past he was trained to say, "If flooding happens on your property, it’s your problem."

Loiacono remembers only one instance when the SFPUC built a pump station in response to a developer’s concerns. That was almost a decade ago.

Advising developers about the perils of building in flood-prone areas sounds obvious, but with that step comes responsibility that threatens to drown the city fiscally. Asked who’ll pay for flood damage, Loiacono pointed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"FEMA is currently mapping San Francisco, but the city would have to join FEMA’s flood insurance program to get coverage," Loiacono said.

Surprised that the city doesn’t already belong, the Guardian called FEMA’s Oakland-based spokesperson, Frank Mansell, who revealed San Francisco is the only city in the Bay Area that isn’t part of FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). Participating in the FEMA mapping program would allow residents to qualify for federally subsidized flood insurance and get rebuilding grants after a disaster. FEMA’s Henry Chau says San Francisco will have to raise its standards "slightly higher" to join the agency’s flood insurance program.

Noting that FEMA’s San Francisco map is due this summer and includes development that lies in the city’s floodplains — development FEMA strongly discourages — Mansell said he doesn’t know why San Francisco doesn’t belong. But he does know cities that do must build to code and enact ordinances to ensure people aren’t living in flood zones. He said cities that do build in flood zones must take preventive steps such as raising buildings.

"If cities don’t comply with FEMA’s requirements, they’re put on notice and could be removed from the flood insurance program," Mansell said, adding that disasters such as Hurricane Katrina illustrate why private brokers won’t sell flood insurance.

But as FEMA digitizes and puts its maps online and predicts that 92 percent of US residents will belong to the NFIP by 2010, not everyone is singing its praises. San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission executive director Will Travis faults FEMA’s flood maps for not factoring in climate change.

"Instead, FEMA looks to the past to determine floodplains. As a result, their maps are inadequate and show less inundation than is already occurring," Travis told us. The BCDC just released maps that show a two-meter sea level rise in the bay that would put the San Francisco and Oakland airports and the Giants stadium underwater.

"But we won’t allow the Giants’ ballpark to flood, SFO to be underwater, and San Francisco to become Venice," Travis said. "Instead, sea walls and levees will be built. It’ll require more investment in infrastructure and shoreline protections. The point of the maps is to show people what could happen and get them to take action. Sea level rise doesn’t belong in the realms of science fiction. It’s happening now."

With the California Climate Change Center reporting a seven-inch rise in the bay since 1900 — and the feds refusing to address the role of carbon emissions in climate change — Travis predicted that insurance companies will have the biggest impact in land use planning.

"There’s always an effort to shift costs from the private to the public sector, and from there, from the local to the state to the federal government," Travis told us. "But insurance companies are looking at potential huge losses and won’t be offering policies at all, or offering them at very high prices."

Mansell defended FEMA’s flood maps, arguing that they’re used primarily for insurance and so can’t be used for forecasting.

"We look at existing data," Mansell said. "Otherwise everyone’s premiums would be unpredictable and probably high. FEMA does encourage communities to build to the highest standard, which means the 100-year flood event that has a 1 percent chance of occurring. And FEMA doesn’t conduct the studies. The Army Corps of Engineers does."

Army Corps spokesperson Maria Or confirmed that her agency collects data at different times of the year — data showing the climate has been changing and helping forecast what those changes will mean.

"But we can’t base maps on pure speculation," Or told us. "We continuously look at new data and reanalyze the situation based on that new information. The more relevant question is how often a FEMA map is updated."

Mansell said it takes FEMA one to two years to create a flood map, using computer models, precipitation and tidal patterns, rivers and stream flows — and tracking how much concrete is laid down in an area and how much is built in a floodplain.

"Areas are mapped and remapped and show three levels of risk — low, moderate, and high risk," he said. Based on these ratings, FEMA reviews flood insurance premiums once a year.

But with FEMA the main hope of covering sea rise–related flood damage, experts such as Dr. Peter Gleick of the Oakland-based Pacific Research Institute join the BCDC’s Travis in accusing FEMA of having "failed miserably in integrating climate change into its planning."

"BCDC included climate change in their maps. FEMA did not. Why aren’t there flood maps everywhere around the country that integrate climate change?" asked Gleick, who produced a map 17 years ago showing the impact of a one-meter sea level rise on the bay.

"It’s a little depressing to have been working for two decades on this," Gleick conceded. "I’m glad people are starting to pay more attention and accept that sea level is going up, because the impacts will depend on how we react and how quickly, but we’re decades too late to prevent bad things from happening."

Outraged by President George W. Bush’s we-can’t-afford-to-unilaterally-cut-greenhouse-gases argument, Gleick said, "They’re putting short-term economic gain ahead of long-term survival." But he praised California for establishing a cap to reduce the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

In light of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that suggests a 10- to 20-foot sea level increase in the next 1,000 years, Gleick observed, "That means hundreds and millions of people will be potential refugees. So we better reduce our greenhouse gases starting now. We can’t prevent some change, but we hope to prevent disastrous sea level change."

Gleick said he’s worried that we won’t protect low-income areas or move fast enough to prevent damage, a shortcoming that will also have devastating environmental impacts.

"Marshes and wetlands have no place to retreat, since the areas around them are already built up," he explained. "Bay Area communities should make parks, bay and coastal trails, and wetlands bigger, so they’ll have greater protection 50 years from now. And if you’re developing a building that’s supposed to last for 50 years, you need to design it now for the changes that are to come." *

Newsom’s dodge

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By Chris Albon
Mayor Gavin Newsom is still dodging questions about his affair with his campaign manager’s wife and his alcohol problem, even as masses of reporters show up at his public appearances, such as today’s event touting a PG&E program.
The small press conference at the Academy of Art University on San Francisco’s new $11.5 million Energy Watch program, sponsored primarily by PG&E, was Newsom’s first event since he announced yesterday that he was seeking treatment for alcohol abuse at Delancey Street Foundation.
Newsom was 15 minutes late and a small crowd of reporters were anxiously loitering and watcing every Lincoln Town car that crept through lunchtime traffic. When the limo finally arrived, Newsom locked in a smile, looked forward, and walked in the building to PG&E’s display table of high-tech light bulbs.
The mood was tense and the event’s organizers and the mayor’s staff seemed skeptical that the media was there to get information on the plan to distribute more energy efficient light bulbs to small businesses.
“I know many of you are here because you care so deeply about climate change,” was how Jared Blumenfeld, director of the San Francisco department of the environment, expressed his cynicism.
When Blumenfeld introduced Newsom to speak, the room was awkwardly quiet. No one applauded.
“Thank you everyone, for the applause,” Newsom said. Only then did the small crowd applaud.
After his speech on the new plan, the mayor did take questions, but he was not going to dive into the affair or his alcohol problem.
“Any more questions,” Newsom asked adding, “on this issue?” before it was too late.
As the mayor walked out, I thought it a perfectly appropriate and respectful question to ask the mayor “if there was going to be a time when he would take questions on his alcoholism or his affair,” but apparently he didn’t agree.
“You’ve taken liberty with the question,” he said.
I took that as a “no.” Maybe I should have asked why a mayor who purports to support public power was helping to prop up PG&E’s aggressive greenwashing efforts. Next time.

It’s Getting Hot in Here

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It’s Getting Hot in Here
Sarah Phelan
Hours before all hell broke loose over at City hall over news that he’d been having an affair, Mayor Gavin Newsom showed up at the SFPUC’s Climate Change summit to endorse long overdue efforts to combat global warming.

“God’s delays are God’s denials,” began Newsom, blissfully unaware that his former appointments secretary Roby Rippey-Tourk was about to confess to her husband Alex Tourk about the affair, and that Tourk would immediately confront the mayor–and resign from his post as Newsom’s campaign manager. Ouch.

Looking chill in his trademark ice-blue tie, Newsom remarked that there had been no snow in the Alps during his recent trip to Davos, Switzerland, little suspecting that he’d be quite so red-faced by the end of the day.

In addressing climate change today, observed Newsom, “we’re burdened with mistakes from the past,” adding that this past, and not just the future, must be part of “the next narrative.”
Expressing enthusiasm for tidal wave and solar power, and efforts to measure where we’re at with our carbon emissions’ levels , the Gavsta wrapped up saying, “We’re willing to take great risks in San Francisco.”

And then Newsom was gone, little guessing that while water managers heard incontrovertible evidence that global temperatures and sea levels are rising, bringing a host of nasty side effects and consequences, he’d be finding himself up to his neck in political and emotional hot water as a result of his own past denials and risk takings. Double Ouch.

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s getting a bit creepy how easily and casually we are all starting to joke about global climate change.

It’s not coming, it’s here. My brother is framing houses in a T-shirt in upstate New York. And it’s so cold in California that the citrus crop is ruined. The other day one of my colleagues mentioned that global warming might not make every place warmer; "it’s just going to kill us all."

Maybe it will.

One of the most chilling (sorry) depictions of what’s about to happen comes not from Al Gore’s movie (which was powerful) but from a book called A Friend of the Earth, which is a pretty bad novel by a very good writer, T.C. Boyle. The story line is weak, but the scene — Santa Inez in 2025 — has a strange air of realism. It’s almost impossible to live there in Boyle’s future; the storms are so regular and fierce that only specially constructed homes can survive them, and almost nobody spends much time outdoors.

I have a friend who’s a very, very successful investment adviser, a self-made millionaire several times over, who has been living a dream of a life in Boca Raton, Fla., diving and spearfishing and cruising around on his yacht … and he just sold his place and bought a dirt farm in Kentucky. Florida is going to be wiped out by the hurricanes, he says. He’s also shut down a lot of his business, since he thinks the US economy is going to completely tank soon. He wants to be someplace where he can grow his own food.

I think this is crazy. I’ve never been into doomsday. I have two kids, which by itself is an act of optimism and hope. As we say in my family (which has elevated the art of denial to world-class levels), everything is going to be just fine.

So I laugh about the weather like everyone else. I live way up on a hill; if the ice melts and the sea rises all the way to my doorstep, it will be time to buy an ark. I’ve always been into boats anyway.

But right now it really feels like this is coming at us a lot faster than anyone expected. And the much-heralded moves by the governor of California to reduce greenhouse gases a little bit by a few years from now seem so incredibly puny.

In politics I’ve always felt that intent matters. There are some wonderful programs that don’t work as well as they should, not because of corruption but because the money is inadequate or the staff isn’t properly trained or somebody made some mistakes. That’s different from somebody deliberately lying, cheating, and stealing to game the system.

Pacific Gas and Electric Corp. is a corrupt institution with sleazy lawyers and consultants who abuse the local political system. Carolyn Knee, who was the treasurer for a group fighting on behalf of a ballot campaign for public power in 2002, is a good person who apparently made some mistakes in the complex process of filing all the campaign finance documents on a volunteer basis for a grassroots initiative. And she just told me the SF Ethics Commission wants to fine her $26,700.

There’s something very wrong here. *

“Yah Mo B There”

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com
ONLINE TV Contrary to what you might mistake as your better judgment, the soft-rock world of the late 1970s and early ’80s produced some top-notch sounds. Admittedly, nary a twentysomething peer confesses to joining me in enjoying the music of Michael McDonald, but even societal relegation to guilty pleasure status can’t stop the soothe sounds — a sentiment thankfully shared by JD Ryznar and Hunter Stair, creators of the online television series Yacht Rock.
Released by Channel 101, a group based in Los Angeles, Yacht Rock presents humorous, five-minute vignettes (starring Ryznar and Stair kitted out in soft-rock drag) explaining the origins of some “remarkably smooth” hits from such champs as McDonald, Steely Dan, and Toto. “We’re not just sailing the seas of smile on a gentle bed of rock,” says “music industry mogul” character Koko Goldstein, the show’s key promoter of smooth music in the industry. “My artists fuel their vessels with their blood … and their broken dreams!”
It’s some serious business — the songs of that era are given rather dramatic, hilarious backstories that, while stretching the truth, are based in hard facts: for instance, there are indeed Toto members playing on Michael Jackson’s return to smooth production, “Human Nature.”
“Hollywood” Steve Huey, a critic from the All Music Guide, hosts the show, guiding viewers through the hits of 1976 to 1984 in the yacht rock genre, a label referring to smooth pop that would seemingly please the affluent ears of champagne-sipping, island-cruising millionaires. Aside from being completely hysterical, the series presents many facts of interest to yacht rock aficionados: did you know that Ted Templeman, producer of the McDonald-period Doobie Brothers material, also produced the first Van Halen record?
Sellouts come in the form of Hall and Oates, the ever-present bullies who took the funkier, somewhat grittier route away from the Holy Church of Smooth. Kenny Loggins, while presented in a notably heroic light throughout, also comes off as something of a jerk, betting that McDonald’s “I Keep Forgettin’” would never make it past number four on the charts (and although Loggins is initially correct, the salt ’n’ pepper smooth OG comes out on top as the tune is later sampled in Warren G’s hit “Regulate,” ultimately reaching number two).
The myriad brilliant one-liners include such fortunate turns of phrase as “You guys just checked into Hotel Cali-ass-kick!” and McDonald’s ice-cold response to Toto’s threat of a musical climate change in the ’80s, “Me? An irrelevant joke? Please.”
That anybody would want to reexamine the music of this period is certainly unusual, especially considering the reverence Yacht Rock has toward the music. Never before have I seen Loggins placed in anything resembling a heroic light. Not since Footloose anyway. Sadly, Yacht Rock has now ceased production of new episodes, but it’s never too late to tune in to old installments — you’ll soon be sailing away again with Christopher Cross and company. SFBG
www.yachtrock.com

Bill Clinton kicks Big Oil’s ass, says yes to Prop. 87

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By Sarah Phelan

Say what you will about Clinton, but when it comes to raising morale, the 42nd President still has what it takes.
“One side says stay the course, the other says, ‘We can do better,'”said Clinton, as he urged us all to vote Yes in Prop. 87, which raises $4 billion by taxing oil, and uses those funds for alternative energy research and development, including incentives for buying alternative-fuel vehicles. Too bad Big Oil didn’t spend $100 million on improving air quality, reducing asthma and lung cancer, instead of on all those misleading ads that try to frighten people into voting no.
“They can’t deny climate change, the national security implications, that too many of us, especially children, are breathing air that doesn’t meet minimum requirements, so they’re just spending $100 million to defeat Prop. 87,” said Clinton. “They’re really just saying, ‘We’re against any positive change.”

Bill Clinton kicks Big Oil’s ass

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By Sarah Phelan

Say what you will about Clinton, but when it comes to raising morale, the 42nd President still has what it takes.
“One side says stay the course, the other says, ‘We can do better,'”said Clinton, as he urged us all to vote Yes in Prop. 87, which raises $4 billion by taxing oil, and uses those funds for alternative energy research and development, including incentives for buying alternative-fuel vehicles. Too bad Big Oil didn’t spend $100 million on improving air quality, reducing asthma and lung cancer, instead of on all those misleading ads that try to frighten people into voting no.
“They can’t deny climate change, the national security implications, that too many of us, especially children, are breathing air that doesn’t meet minimum requirements, so they’re just spending $100 million to defeat Prop. 87,” said Clinton. “They’re really just saying, ‘We’re against any positive change.”

EDITOR’S NOTES

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› steve@sfbg.com
There’s an intriguing confluence of anniversaries coming up that together offer an opportunity for societal awakening.
This week I’ll be among thousands of Bay Area residents leaving for Burning Man and the 20th birthday of the most significant countercultural event of our times. Five years ago, right after my first Burning Man, the Sept. 11 attacks ushered in radical changes to US foreign policy and political dialogue. And last year during the festival, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, another event of international significance, which New Orleans writer Jason Berry explores in this week’s cover story commissioned by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.
Burning Man, Sept. 11, Hurricane Katrina — aside from the timing of their 20th, 5th, and 1st anniversaries, what’s the connection? Before I answer that, let me layer on a more personal anniversary: this summer marks my 15th year working as a reporter and editor for various California newspapers.
I got into the business mainly because I felt like the American people were being duped, at the time about Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, a war used by the first President Bush as a pretext for establishing permanent US military bases in the oil-rich Middle East.
American bases in Saudi Arabia caused Osama bin Laden to threaten a terrorist war against the United States unless we withdrew — a threat that we seemed to ignore while he carried through with a series of attacks that culminated in Sept. 11. Rather than reevaluating our relationships with oil and the Islamic world, this Bush administration upped the ante: invading and occupying two more Islamic nations, adopting energy policies that increased our oil dependence, and withdrawing the United States from international accords on global climate change and human rights.
Then Hurricane Katrina hit, opening up a second front of attack on the choices this country is making. I was already at Burning Man, in an isolated bubble of ignorant bliss that was eventually popped by the news. As we left the playa, burners gave significant money, supplies, and people to the relief effort. An eight-month cleanup and rebuilding encampment turned into a movement dubbed Burners Without Borders, which is still developing ambitious goals for good works and greening the event.
I believe Burning Man will be using its 20th birthday as a transition point. We’ve built our community and allowed it to mature, and now we’re talking about where we go from here. Most of those discussions are happening right here in San Francisco, where Burning Man was born and is headquartered. There is tremendous will to use our creation as a force for good.
Progressives will use the anniversaries of Sept. 11 and Katrina to urge our government to reevaluate its relationships with oil, other countries, and its own cities and poor people. Unfortunately, San Francisco isn’t where those decisions will be made.
But if there is a will to change this country’s direction, what better place to launch that movement than here? And what better army than Burning Man’s attendees, expected to number more than 35,000 — people known for their resourceful ability to build a city from scratch, clean it up, and leave no trace?
We’ll be back in a couple weeks, ready for what’s next. SFBG

No more dam discussion

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EDITORIAL The state Department of Water Resources released a long-awaited study July 19 concluding that restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley would cost at least $3 billion and possibly as much as $10 billion.
Let us put this in perspective.
The state of California is facing extreme pressure on its electrical grid because of record high heat. If this is an early sign of rapid and dramatic climate change (and that’s a very possible scenario), then the problem is going to get worse before it gets better. Most electricity in this country is generated by burning fossil fuels, which contributes to global warming, which puts more pressure on the grid…. It’s getting so bad that some desperate environmentalists, flailing around for answers, are starting to argue that nuclear power might be an option.
Renewable energy? Gee, the experts say: It’s just not financially feasible right now.
And with some very scary problems looming, the state is actually talking about tearing down a hydroelectric dam that provides clean electricity for 200,000 homes — and spending $10 billion to do it.
This is insanity.
The O’Shaughnessey Dam, which holds back the Hetch Hetchy reservoir, flooded a spectacular Sierra valley, breaking the heart of conservationist John Muir. Even the San Francisco Chronicle, which supported the dam and attacked Muir about 100 years ago, now agrees that it was a mistake.
But there’s a lot more to the story. For starters, the compromise legislation that gave San Francisco the right to build the dam required the city to use it as the centerpiece of a public power system — a legal mandate that the city defies to this day. As long as the dam is generating power, it offers a huge opportunity for San Franciscans to get out from under the private power monopoly of Pacific Gas and Electric Co. And while hydroelectric dams have serious environmental problems, they don’t create greenhouse gases — and a dam that’s been around this long is actually a fairly ecologically sound way to generate power.
The price tag for wiping out the dam is staggering — and from a purely environmental perspective, spending that cash on this scheme would be a gigantic mistake. For $10 billion, California could undertake a huge crash program in developing renewable energy, spurring a lucrative industry that would create tens of thousands of jobs. With that kind of money behind it, solar power would not only be competitive, it would be cheaper than other forms of electricity. And the state would be leading the nation into a new era of safe, clean power.
Sure, in 50 years when solar, wind, and tidal power provide 90 percent of the state’s energy needs, and California has joined Nebraska in outlawing private electric utilities, and there’s money to burn … then restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley will be a fine idea. But for now it’s time to put this foolishness to rest. San Francisco — which, after all, owns the dam — should take the lead here. The supervisors should pass a resolution stating that the city will not consider any further proposals to tear down the dam — at least not until the city’s and nation’s energy policies have advanced a long way in a very different direction. SFBG

Blackouts

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By Tim Redmond

We knew this was coming, but the California authorities just announced that there may be rolling blackouts today as the searing heat overwhelms the state’s creaky old electricity grid.

That’s lovely: It’s 115 degrees in the Central Valley and senior citizens are going to lose their air conditioning.

Two things:

1. Global warming is here. It’s not coming soon. It’s here, and the climate change Al Gore warns about is happening faster than anyone anticipated. No, I’m not a climate scientist, but I don’t need a weatherman to know how hot the sun glows.

2. Responding is going to be a massive challenge, even more than Al Gore suggests. Step one: take the entire system of providing electricity (and eventually, all energy) out of the private sector.

Arnold and Emily

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This is a story about a muscle-bound governor, a nine-year-old girl, and some polar bears. The governor is Arnold Schwarzenegger, the girl is Emily Magavern, and the polar bears or at least photos of them served as backdrops for a pair of speeches the two gave on global warming.

Emily, the daughter of a Sierra Club lobbyist, gave her speech in Sacramento on April 3 at a press conference outlining legislation that Democratic lawmakers have introduced to create a mandatory limit on greenhouse gases.

“I don’t want the polar bears to lose their homes,” Emily told the gathering.

That bill was triggered by a report from the Climate Action Team, which was commissioned by Schwarzenegger in June 2005 to recommend how California should address global warming. The report’s suggestions include a tax on gasoline, the monitoring of factory emissions, a cap-and-trade system (which caps the amount of greenhouse gases that factories may produce and sets up a trading market in which businesspeople can buy or sell emissions credits), as well as other less contentious initiatives.

But when Schwarzenegger came to San Francisco April 11 to outline his recommendations, he embraced almost none of the controversial schemes, with the exception of mandatory reporting of emissions (something most factories don’t now report), even as he claimed climate change to be a “most pressing issue.”

“The debate is over, the science is in, and it’s time for action,” boomed Schwarzenegger, who then contradicted his own call to action by telling the crowd that he was concerned about scaring businesses out of the state. “Must take cautious steps and the right steps.”

There are telling contrasts between the approaches of our tough-talking governor and this soft-spoken little girl. In some ways it seems their roles are reversed, with Schwarzenegger unwilling to connect cause and effect and Emily taking a more mature view of the problem.

Emily diagnosed what is essentially a simple problem. Humans are causing cataclysmic, global climate changes through excessive consumption of fossil fuels. The changes are having a negative impact on many species, including polar bears in the Arctic and animals closer to home, like California’s state bird, the California quail.

Some of the top contributors to the problem are the humans living right here in California, which is the world’s 12th largest producer of greenhouse gases, of which 58 percent come from cars. The solution: Burn less fossil fuel, even if that’s a difficult thing to do.

“We can’t rely on oil forever,” Emily said.

In contrast, Schwarzenegger spun a compelling vision of what California’s future would be like if it cleaned up its greenhouse gas emissions. Yet he remains politically intimidated by business interests, such as the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, which says that addressing global warming would hurt the state’s economy.

In the beginning of his speech at San Francisco City Hall, Schwarzenegger touted the need for immediate action by developing a mandatory reporting and cap-and-trade system, emphasizing the economic benefits of recently implemented initiatives. Yet he later said he opposed caps, leaving it unclear how such a system would work or exactly what he’s calling for.

“We should start off without the caps until 2010,” Schwarzenegger said. “Caps could scare off the business community.”

Schwarzenegger’s response has many global warming advocates feeling deflated, while a number of businesses are breathing sighs of relief. The governor also appears to be letting the driving public off the hook by refusing to support the gas tax that his committee recommended, a problem addressed by Emily.

“If people try to not drive cars as much and try to drive cleaner cars, that would help the problem,” Emily said.

There are also many grown-ups out there who agree with Emily and say that dealing with global warming may be difficult, but doing so proactively and taking a lead role in the effort might actually help the state’s economy by encouraging development of new technologies and industries rather than hurt it.

“The chamber’s very good at having 20/20 vision in the rearview mirror,” said Bob Epstein, cofounder of Environmental Entrepreneurs. “All businesses need are the creation of simple rules, and then the legislators can step back and let business innovate.”

That seems to be what the legislature is trying to do, with Assembly Bill 32 seeking to cap factory emissions and reduce them by 30 percent by the year 2020. But whether the governor will sign this bill (and others to come) and start saving the polar bears and Emily’s generation is a question he seems unwilling to address. SFBG

 

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