Climate Change

SF votes to ban plastic water bottles on city property

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San Francisco continues to lead the way in the nation’s environmental policy, with the Board of Supervisors today [Tues/4] voting unanimously to bar the city from buying plastic water bottles and to ban distribution of plastic water bottles smaller than 21 ounces on city property starting Oct. 1. The ban excludes city marathons and other sporting events.

“We all know with climate change, and the importance of combating climate change, San Francisco has been leading the way to fight for our environment,” Board President David Chiu, who authored the legislation, said at the hearing. “That’s why I ask you to support this ordinance to reduce and discourage single-use, single-serving plastic water bottles in San Francisco.”

Chiu held up a water bottle at the board meeting, a quarter of the way full with oil, to illustrate how much oil is used in the production and transport of plastic water bottles. He also reminded San Franciscans that the current fad of buying bottled water only started in the 1990s when the bottled water industry mounted a huge ad campaign that got Americans buying bottled water.

Somehow, Chiu noted, “for centuries, everybody managed to stay hydrated.”  

Proponents say they hope the ban will put a dent in the nearly 60 million water bottles Americans use daily and decrease the amount of plastics that take up room in the oceans and landfills.

“We applaud Supervisor Chiu and San Francisco’s leadership in the movement to think outside the bottle,” said Katherine Sawyer, Campaign Organizer of Think Outside the Bottle at Corporate Accountability International, which took part in a taste test event comparing SF tap water to bottled water before the hearing. “By taking this step, San Francisco continues to be a pioneer, paving the way for cities, states, and national parks across the country to follow suit and buck the bottle. Not only does this measure eliminate wasteful spending on such an eco-unfriendly product, but it also opens doors to increased investment in the most essential of municipal services—water.”

The ban will return to the board next week for a final vote, after which it will head to Mayor Ed Lee for his signature. 

Coal export facility considered for Port of Oakland

UPDATE: The Port of Oakland Board of Commissioners voted to reject the proposals.

A company that operates a coal mine in Colorado is looking to ship its fossil fuel products to Asia via the Port of Oakland.

A coalition of environmental organizations sounded the alarm that the Board of Port Commissioners could agree to consider a lease proposal from Bowie Resource Partners to operate a coal export facility at Oakland’s Charles P. Howard Terminal. The board will meet this afternoon.

Another proposal submitted for consideration, from California Capital Group/ Kinder Morgan/ MetroPorts, could also lead to coal exports, said Jess Dervin-Ackerman, Conservation Organizer for the Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club.

“We’ve really reduced our use of coal in this country, but that means we’ve just been sending it to Asia,” Dervin-Ackerman noted.

In addition to the global concerns about exacerbating climate change by shipping coal to be burned in power plants in Asia, where there are weaker environmental protections, environmentalists are worried that Oakland neighborhoods could be impacted by pollution from rail operations and fine coal dust that could leave airborne traces behind as it is transported to the marine terminals.

Bowie proposed to ship not only coal, but petroleum coke, a pulverized fossil fuel that is illegal to burn in California. Already 128,000 barrels of this product, called petcoke for short, is shipped daily from throughout the state.

Port of Oakland staff, however, has recommended rejecting the proposals from both entities.

“Staff believes that Bowie’s proposed use and operation of the property raises environmental concerns related to the handling of commodities such as coal. Environmental concerns about handling commodities such as coal stem primarily from issues of fugitive dust and climate change,” a staff report drafted in preparation for today’s meeting noted. “Port staff believes that operations such as those proposed by Bowie conflict with recently adopted Port policies and programs intended to create or support environmental sustainability.”

The report went on to note that there has been controversy and litigation over coal and coal export facilities along the West Coast.

As things stand, there are active coal and petroleum coke terminals at the Ports of Long Beach, Benicia, and Stockton.

Given the shipping routes and recent controversies surrounding coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest, “The Bay Area is a prime target” for fossil fuel companies, said Devin-Ackmerman. “These kinds of proposals just pop up overnight.”

Climate fight is a street fight

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STREET FIGHT

Prolonged warm-weather droughts seem a normal part of California life, but the intensity of drought impacts — shrinking snowpack, intense wildfires, crop failures, and the devastation of wildlife habitat and fisheries — is likely accentuated by global warming.

So it’s not enough to simply save water. In this drought, our sense of urgency about global warming should be ramped up. The science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, respected scientists like James Hansen, and even the World Bank (historically no friend to radical ecologists) all stress that droughts will get worse unless greenhouse gas emissions peak in the next decade.

The science is clear. If we are to avoid a disastrous future of ecological upheaval, violence, and forced mass migrations of hundreds of millions of people (many of whom produce the least amount of carbon emissions) then we must dramatically reduce emissions now, and we must do it in a globally fair and equitable way. And to be fair and equitable, we must reduce driving. Here’s why.

Globally, transportation is the fastest growing sector of greenhouse emissions, owing in large measure to the expansion of global automobility. Presently 500 million passenger cars are in use (approximately one-third of them in the United States), but by 2030, this figure is expected to reach 1 billion worldwide.

This increase in automobility will contribute substantially to the “trillionth ton” of cumulative carbon emissions, which is an emissions threshold signaling global climate catastrophe. Today we are more than halfway there (556 billion tons). At current rates of consumption, including America’s ownership of 800 cars and trucks per 1,000 persons, we hit the trillionth ton in 28 years.

To avoid this, we must keep as much fossil fuel as possible in the ground. Because the United States is disproportionately responsible for at least 27 percent of the cumulative carbon emissions since industrialization, and has a disproportionate number of cars compared to the rest of the world, we in the United States have a particular responsibility to keep carbon in the ground.

If China, which has produced 10 percent of global emissions so far, had the same per capita car ownership rate as the United States, there would be over 500 million more cars, doubling the current worldwide rate. This would be madness. It would be worse than building the Keystone pipeline, which is what Hansen called “game over” for the global climate because it’s a spigot into the sticky, tarlike oils in Alberta which, if fully tapped, would be a carbon time bomb.

Ask yourself this: If China (and possibly India) successfully copy American-style driving, how much tar sands would that require? What kind of world would that look like? And if Americans (and especially environmentalists) expect the global middle class in China and India to stand aside while we keep on driving, that is stark, crass, and inequitable.

Many well-meaning environmentalists and progressives think that driving a Prius or buying an electric car will be adequate in mitigating this conundrum. They must reconsider. There is no “green” car when a global middle class replicates American driving patterns.

If the world’s fleet of gasoline-powered automobiles magically shifts to electric, hydrogen fuel cells, or biofuels, the change will draw resources away from industrial, residential, and food systems, or it will have to involve an entirely new layer of energy production (more tar sands). Massive quantities of coal and petroleum will be needed to scale-up to wind turbines, solar panels, nuclear, and other arrays of energy, as well as for all the new “clean cars.”

Are environmentalists still planning to drive around the Bay Area while waiting for this magic? I sure hope not.

In these global warming days, with drought on everyone’s mind, we must avoid wasting precious water washing cars, and we must reallocate street space with fewer cars in mind. A critical piece of the puzzle is to prioritize public transit and bicycles over automobiles by building exclusive transit and bicycle lanes, remove the lanes and curbside parking available to cars, install signal prioritization for transit and bicycles at intersections, queue-jumping so that transit can bypasses traffic stalled at intersections, restrictions on turns for automobiles, and transit stop improvements including bus stop bulb-outs and amenities.

Reconfigured streets must furthermore exclude car-oriented land uses like more off-street parking in the 92,000 new housing units projected for San Francisco by Plan Bay Area. These units, whatever size or income, should be completely car-free. And this must include removal of existing parking beneath homes, replacing garages with housing and returning the privatized curb cut to the public.

 

VISIONS FOR HAIGHT

In many respects, the Haight Street corridor is a model for the kind of global warming mitigation strategy the rest of America should follow. The corridor has high density, transit dependent, and car-free households (over 30 percent in the Upper Haight and almost 50 percent in the Lower Haight/Hayes Valley) It has several walkable neighborhood commercial districts, as well as several hundred units of new housing (some of which are below market rate) under construction in Hayes Valley. Almost 25,000 passengers take the Haight buses (6-Parnassus and 71-Haight Noriega) daily, making it one of the busiest combined transit corridors in the city.

But the buses are crowded and often stuck in traffic, so the SFMTA has plans to improve service by increasing frequency, converting more of the existing route into faster “limited” service whereby some buses stop only at key points and removing the “jog” at Laguna and Page which adds delay to the inbound buses.

As I’ve written before, the Muni staff has a good plan known as the Transit Effectiveness Project, with a modest reallocation of street space for higher transit reliability, attracting more ridership, and potentially enabling San Franciscans to conveniently reduce driving to half of all trips by 2018 (it was at 62 percent in 2012). But on both ends of Haight Street, the city has fumbled. While not a disaster, hopefully Muni can learn some lessons and tweak the plans.

On the eastern end, Muni will shift buses off Page Street, converting a short segment of Haight back to two-way. The new two-way Haight includes a transit-only lane between Laguna and Gough/Market streets, which will dramatically improve travel times and reliability. Part of it will enable buses to bypass queues of cars making the right turn from Haight onto Octavia.

Where this scheme falls short is in the plans to simply give former bus stops on Page to private cars for parking. A more progressive plan would instead use the space to help make room for needed bicycle improvements on Page between Laguna and Market. Nearby are multiple housing construction sites where curbside parking has been temporarily removed — such as at the 55 Laguna site. The city has a great opportunity to innovate with transit-first policies at all of these construction sites.

Instead of turning space over to private cars when construction concludes, the city could instead build more bus lanes, pedestrian space, curbside car sharing, and bicycle space. The city could also return some of the space to parking, but only in exchange for parking removal upstream, such as at Haight and Fillmore, where bus stop improvements are sorely needed.

Throughout the city, there are block-by-block opportunities like these, where the city can help the climate instead of giving away parking. As the city discontinues bus stops and sees more housing construction, the policy should be to use curbside space for bicycles, pedestrians, or curbside car share — not simply giving it away to private car parking.

Meanwhile, at the other end of Haight, the city has also fumbled in proposing to reroute the 6-Parnassus, an important electric trolley bus line, off the Frederick-Cole-Parnassus segment. Bus riders in the Upper Haight are incensed. At a recent public meeting, a crowd of 90 people balked at the cut. Muni planners defended the proposal, arguing that ridership is low in the hilly segment above, and that a less productive segment would be shifted to the more crowded Haight Street.

This might seem logical but it may also be shortsighted, especially since the existing segment has overhead trolley wires. Drought notwithstanding, the electric trolley buses are the greenest motorized mobility in San Francisco, propelled by hydroelectricity from Hetch Hetchy.

Taking a longer and more progressive view, it might be useful to think of the debate over the 6-Parnassus this way: If the city is hoping to wean motorists from their cars by achieving the laudable goal of having 30 percent of all trips in the city by transit (up from 17 percent today), cutting service, even in relatively low ridership routes, is counterproductive. It raises the question: Is the ridership level low because the service was poor to begin with, including such irritating factors as less frequency, less reliability, or fewer hours of service? What would ridership levels look like if these less-crowded routes had high frequency, all-day and late-night service with high reliability?

Moreover, what would demand for these routes look like if parking were substantially reduced throughout the city while car-travel lanes were removed, creating space for bicycle lanes and transit lanes? Or what if there were a regional gasoline tax, a congestion charge, or other measures that priced automobility closer to its real social cost, thus producing higher demand for transit?

Surely, reducing the footprint of transit service, however inefficient that service might seem now, is not creating a template necessary for carrying 1.4 million daily passengers in the future, which is what it would take to reach significant emissions reduction goals and 30 percent mode share. Removing segments like the 6-Parnassus on Frederick will only make it harder to rebuild and accomplish that goal. And for political expediency it will also make it harder for Mayor Ed Lee to sell his transportation funding ballot proposals to progressive voters in November.

Muni planners ought to ditch the proposal to reroute the 6-Parnassus, and instead focus on maximizing improved reliability and transit efficiency on the other end of Haight Street by removing parking and prioritizing transit and bicycling on Haight and Page respectively.

Thinking globally about climate change means acting locally, on the streets of San Francisco.

Street Fight is a monthly column by Jason Henderson, a professor at San Francisco State University’s Department of Geography and Environment.

 

Drought

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steve@sfbg.com

I remember the dead lawns, 90-second timed showers, empty fountains and pools, and water cops issuing tickets for washing one’s dirty car. “If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down,” went the toilet edict they taught us in school. Water was too precious to just wantonly flush away.

I was 8 years old in 1976-77 during California’s last severe drought, but I retain vivid, visceral memories of that time. Water was an ever-present concern. I learned how dependent we are on the natural world and the role that individual responsibility plays in collective action, particularly in times of turmoil.

Everyone’s yards were brown; nobody’s cars were clean. We were in it together.

But even deeply implanted memories and learned behaviors fade. I may still feel subtle emotional pangs when I watch the water running down the drain when I shave or wash the dishes, yet I’d content myself with the knowledge that water is a renewable resource and we were no longer in a severe drought.

Or at least I was able to do that until this season. California experienced its driest year in recorded history in 2013, and it’s still not raining as we go to press. Yes, there are welcome predictions of finally getting some rain this week, but not the sustained precipitation we need to make a difference.

If current long-range weather forecasts hold true, this winter could be even drier than last winter, causing by far the most severe drought in state history, worse than ’76-’77, even worse than 1923-24, the driest winter ever and the beginning of a seven-year drought.

“We’re facing the worst drought California has ever seen,” Gov. Jerry Brown told reporters on Jan. 17 as he proclaimed a state of emergency, invoking powers to redirect water resources and asking Californians to reduce their consumption by 20 percent.

Yet as dire as this situation may be — and we’ll have a better idea by the end of March, when more stringent water restrictions will be enacted if we don’t get some serious rainfall by then — one of the scariest aspects to this drought is that it may be just a preview of things to come.

This could be the new normal by the end the century. Most reputable climate change models predict California’s average temperature will increase 3-8 degrees by 2100. That’s enough to radically change our climate, causing shorter winters with less precipitation, and more of it coming in the form of rain than snow, undermining the elegant system of storing water within the Sierra snowpack.

That also translates into more extreme conditions, from more flooding in the winter and spring to more dangerous heat waves and wildfires in the summer and fall — and more frequent and severe droughts.

“People should reflect on how dependent we are on rain, nature, and other another,” Brown said at the end of his news conference. “This is Mother Nature. At some point we have to decide to live with nature and get on nature’s side and not abuse the resources we have.”

That theme of interdependence was one he returned to several times during that 14-minute event. Brown was governor during that last big drought in ’76-’77, and when a reporter asked what lessons he took from that experience, he said, “We’re dependent on rain, we’re dependent on one another.”

He expressed confidence that Californians will find their way through even the most severe drought, although he acknowledged it will exacerbate existing conflicts between cities and rural areas, farmers and environmentalists, and Northern and Southern California as each fights for its interests.

“This takes a coming together of all the people of California to deal with this serious and prolonged event of nature,” Brown said. “This is going to take a lot of support and a lot of collaboration on the part of everybody.”

 

STATE OF DENIAL

California is on a collision course with reality. Whether or not it’s this drought that wakes us up, at some point we’ll awaken to the fact that a growing population can’t survive on dwindling water resources without a major shift in how we operate.

“California does not today live within its means. We want more water than nature is naturally providing, even in normal years,” said Dr. Peter Gleick, president of the Oakland-based Pacific Institute and a world-renowned expert on water issues whose research has fueled United Nations studies as well as his own books. “Some of the most serious impacts of climate change are going to be on water.”

That’s particularly true for California, whose large population and huge agricultural and other water-dependent industries belie a Mediterranean climate that is actually quite fragile and susceptible to droughts and the impacts of climate change.

“You’ve got 30 million people perched on the edge of a physical impossibility, unless we act with huge speed,” said Bill McKibben, an author and researcher who founded 350.org, one of the leading advocacy organizations for addressing climate change.

Gleick and McKibben are leading voices on the related issues of water policy and climate change, respectively, and they both told the Guardian that this drought should finally get people serious about conservation, efficiency, reducing our carbon output, and generally living in greater harmony with the natural world.

“The current drought ought to be a wake-up call to tell us we have to start thinking about our water resources differently,” Gleick told us, calling for far greater efficiency in how we use water, particularly in cities and the agriculture industry. “California has made great progress over the last several decades, but we’re nowhere near where we could be or should be.”

From low-flow toilets and shower heads to smarter irrigation techniques and recycled wastewater, California has made tremendous advances in its water efficiency since the last big drought. But Gleick and McKibben both say California needs a seismic shift in its thinking to grapple how a growing population can function within a changing climate.

“The assumption has always been that as we get larger populations, we’ll figure out their resource needs,” Gleick said, pointing out that climate change challenges that assumption and calls for more proactive thinking. “We need to do a better job at planning for future resource needs.”

Times of crisis can trigger that kind of shift in thinking. Gleick said Australia’s “Millennium drought” from 1995 to 2009 began with basic conservation measures and eventually led to a complete overhaul of water rights, “policies that we haven’t even contemplated” in California.

But Californians may soon be forced into such contemplations.

“It’s physics in action. This is what happens when you start to change the way the world has worked throughout human history,” McKibben told us. “Some people will be empowered to act, and some will have to go into denial. A truly interesting test will be Jerry Brown — he ‘gets it’ on climate, but he’d love to frack as well apparently. He’s like a Rorschach for the state.”

Brown’s call to work with nature and one another is encouraging, but neither Gleick nor McKibben were willing to wager that Brown is ready to lead the big discussion Californians need to have about our long-term needs.

Yet Gleick says something will have to start that conversation before too long: “It’s either going to take a more severe drought or better political leadership.”

 

FIRES IN JANUARY

California is a tinderbox right now, with a high risk of wildfires that could get unimaginably worse by this summer.

“We’re experiencing conditions in California that we typically see in August,” CalFire spokesperson Daniel Berlant told us. “We never really moved out of fire season in Southern California.”

And that will only get worse as global warming changes California’s climate.

“As summers get longer, it extends the window for fires,” Berlant said. “It’s a clear sign that this generation is seeing more and bigger fires.”

Farmers are also worried, facing the prospect of fields going fallow.

“There is considerable anxiety on farms and ranches throughout California,” Dave Kranz, spokesperson for the California Farm Bureau, told the Guardian. “We know it’s going to be bad, we just don’t know how bad.”

He described ranchers selling their animals before they reach market weight and farmers considering whether to plant field crops and how to keep trees and vines alive if things get bad.

“You have people irrigating crops in January, which is a very unusual occurrence,” Kranz said. And if the rains don’t come this winter, “hundreds of thousands of acres of land would be left unplanted.”

Kranz said that “farmers have become significantly more efficient in their water use,” citing stats that crop production doubled in California between 1967 and 2005 while the water used by the industry dropped 13 percent. “We talk about more crop per drop.”

But Gleick also said the fact that agriculture accounts for 80 percent of water use in California must be addressed, something that Kranz acknowledges. For example, he said Central Valley fields that once grew cotton, which takes a lot of water, have mostly switched to almonds. Pistachios are also big now, partially because they can be grown with saltier water.

“Farmers adapt, that’s what they’ve done historically in response to weather trends and market demands,” he said.

“There’s only so much water and much of it is spoken for for the environment,” Kranz said, acknowledging species needs but also complaining about much of the last big rains, in November and December of 2012, were released to protect the Delta smelt. “We should have saved some of that water.”

While the 1927-28 winter was the driest on record in the state, dropping just 17.1 inches of rain, this winter already looks worse, with just 3.5 inches falling so far as of Jan. 27. That could change quickly — indeed, a chance of rain was finally in the forecast for Jan. 30 and Feb. 2 — but it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll get enough to end this drought.

“Right now, we are saying the odds do not indicate a Miracle March, which is not good,” a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center told the San Jose Mercury News on Jan. 16 following release of its three-month forecast.

The worse it gets, the more heated the political battles will become over how to address it.

“You’re going to hear a lot of talk about additional water storage,” Kranz said. “We’re paying now for not creating more storage 10-15 years ago. Droughts happen in California.”

But even Kranz and his generally conservative constituency is talking about tweaks to existing reservoirs — such as increasing Shasta Lake’s capacity and expanding the Sykes Reservoir in Colusa County — rather than big new dam projects.

Gleick agrees that the era of building big dams in California is over. “You can’t build a new dam in California, with their enormous political, economic, and environmental costs.”

And that makes the challenges this state faces all the more vexing.

 

PAST AND FUTURE

California has dealt with drought many times before, including several that lasted for a few years. The last sustained drought was in 1987-1992, but it wasn’t nearly as dry as earlier droughts, such the 1928-1934 drought, the worst one on record.

Officials try to learn from each drought, studying what happened and trying to develop long-term solutions, such as the water banking and distribution systems established during the 1976-77 drought. Yet a study by the Department of Water Resources in 1978 also concluded that we’re essentially at the mercy of nature.

“The 1976-77 drought has again shown that finite nature of our resources and our limited ability to control nature,” read the introduction to the report “The 1976-77 California Drought: A Review.”

DWR’s then-Director Ronald Robie warned at the time that there was no way to predict when or how severe the next drought might be. “We can be assured, however, that drought will return,” he wrote, “and, considering the greater needs of that future time, its impact, unless prepared for, will be much greater.”

Those words could carry a special resonance now, but it’s even scarier given long-range climate change forecasts that Robie wasn’t taking into account when he wrote those words. California estimates it will add more than 15 million people between 2010 and 2060, crossing the 50 million people mark in 2049.

“California could lead the nation into renewable energy. You’ve got the sun. But it would take a 21st century statesman. I guess we’ll find out whether Brown’s that guy — he could be, freed from the need for political popularity after this next election,” McKibben said, calling Brown “a true visionary in many ways, but also a politician. What a fascinating gut check!”

Gleick said that he sometimes gets asked whether climate change is causing the current California drought or other specific weather incidents, and he said that question misses the crucial point: “All of our weather today is influenced by climate change.”

As the climate changes and the world warms, that becomes the new normal for California and other regions, affecting all of its weather patterns. “As goes our climate,” Gleick said, “so goes our water, and we’re not ready.”

State of the City: spin over substance

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It was maddening to watch Mayor Ed Lee deliver his annual State of the City address on Jan. 17. This was pure politics, from the staged backdrop of housing construction at Hunters Point Shipyard to the use of “regular people” props to the slate of vague and contradictory promises he made.

“This place, the shipyard, links our proud past to an even more promising future,” was how Lee began his hour-plus, invite-only address.

Later, he touted the housing construction being done there by Lennar Urban as emblematic of both his promise to bring 30,000 new housing units online by 2020 — the cornerstone to what he called his “affordability agenda” — and the opposition to unfettered development that he is pledging to overcome.

“A great example is the place we’re standing right now. This took us too long,” Lee said after decrying the “easy slogans and scapegoating” by progressive activists who place demands on developers.

But that implication was bullshit. As we’ve reported, progressive and community activists have long encouraged Lennar Urban (which has a close relationship to Lee) to speed up development on this public land that it was given almost a decade ago, particularly the long-promised affordable housing, rather than waiting for the real estate market to heat up.

That was just one of many examples of misleading and unsupported claims in a speech that might have sounded good to the uninformed listener, but which greatly misrepresented the current realities and challenges in San Francisco.

For example, Lee called for greater investments in the public transit system while acknowledging that his proposal to ask voters this November to increase the vehicle license fee isn’t polling well. And yet even before that vote takes place, Lee wants to extend free Muni for youth and repeal the policy of charging for parking meters on Sundays without explaining how he’ll pay for that $10 million per year proposal.

Lee also glossed over the fact that he hasn’t provided funding for the SFMTA’s severely underfunded bicycle or pedestrian safety programs, yet he still said, “I support the goals of Vision Zero to eliminate traffic deaths in our city.”

Again, nice sentiment, but one disconnected from how he’s choosing to spend taxpayer money and use city resources. And if Lee can somehow achieve his huge new housing development push, Muni and other critical infrastructure will only be pushed to the breaking point faster.

Even with his call to increase the city’s minimum wage — something that “will lift thousands of people out of poverty” — he shied away from his previous suggestion that $15 per hour would be appropriate and said that he needed to consult with the business community first: “We’ll seek consensus around a significant minimum wage increase.”

But Mayor Lee wants you to focus on his words more than his actions, including his identification with renters who “worry that speculators looking to make a buck in a hot market will force them out.”

Yet there’s little in his agenda to protect those vulnerable renters, except for his vague promise to try to do so, and to go lobby in Sacramento for reforms to the Ellis Act.

Lee also noted the “bone dry winter” we’re having and how, “It reminds us that the threat of climate change is real.” Yet none of the programs he mentions for addressing that challenge would be as effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions as the CleanPowerSF program that Lee and his appointees are blocking, while offering no other plan for building renewable energy capacity.

Far from trying to beef up local public sector resources that vulnerable populations increasingly need, Lee said, “Affordability is also about having a city government taxpayers can afford.”

State of the City speech filled with unsupported promises

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It was maddening to watch Mayor Ed Lee deliver his annual State of the City address this morning. This was pure politics, from the staged backdrop of housing construction at Hunters Point Shipyard to the use of “regular people” props to the slate of vague and contradictory promises he made.

“This place, the shipyard, links our proud past to an even more promising future,” was how Lee began his hour-plus, invite-only address.

Later, he touted the housing construction being done there by Lennar Urban as emblematic of both his promise to bring 30,000 new housing units online by 2020 — the cornerstone to what he called his “affordability agenda” — and the opposition to unfettered development that he is pledging to overcome.

“A great example is the place we’re standing right now. This took us too long,” Lee said after decrying the “easy slogans and scapegoating” by progressive activists who place demands on developers.

But that implication was complete bullshit. As we and others have reported, progressive and community activists have long encouraged Lennar Urban (which has a close relationship to Lee) to speed up development on this public land that it was given almost a decade ago, particularly the long-promised affordable housing, rather than waiting for the real estate market to heat up.

That was just one of many examples of misleading and unsupported claims in a speech that might have sounded good to the uninformed listener, but which greatly misrepresented the current realities and challenges in San Francisco.

For example, Lee called for greater investments in the public transit system while acknowledging that his proposal to ask voters this November to increase the vehicle license fee isn’t polling well. And yet even before that vote takes place, Lee wants to extend free Muni for youth and repeal the policy of charging for parking meters on Sundays without explaining how he’ll pay for that $10 million per year proposal.

“Nobody likes it, not parents, not our neighborhood businesses, not me,” Lee said of Sunday meters, ignoring a study last month by the San Francisco Muncipal Transportation Agency showing the program was working well and accomplishing its goals of increasing parking turnover near businesses and bringing in needed revenue.

Lee also glossed over the fact that he hasn’t provided funding for the SFMTA’s severely underfunded bicycle or pedestrian safety programs, yet he still said, “I support the goals of Vision Zero to eliminate traffic deaths in our city.”

Again, nice sentiment, but one that is totally disconnected from how he’s choosing to spend taxpayer money and use city resources. And if Lee can somehow achieve his huge new housing development push, Muni and other critical infrastructure will only be pushed to the breaking point faster.  

Lee acknowledges that many people are being left out of this city’s economic recovery and are being displaced. “Jobs and confidence are back, but our economic recovery has still left thousands behind,” he said, pledging that, “We must confront these challenges directly in the San Francisco way.”

And that “way” appears to be by making wishful statements without substantial support and then letting developers and venture capitalists — such as Ron Conway, the tech and mayoral funder seated in the second row — continue calling the shots.

Even with his call to increase the city’s minimum wage — something that “will lift thousands of people out of poverty” — he shied away from his previous suggestion that $15 per hour would be appropriate and said that he needed to consult with the business community first.

“We’ll seek consensus around a significant minimum wage increase,” he said, comparing it to the 2012 ballot measures that reformed the business tax and created an Affordable Housing Fund (the tradeoff for which was to actually reduce the on-site affordable housing requirements for developers).

But Mayor Lee wants you to focus on his words more than his actions, including his identication with renters who “worry that speculators looking to make a buck in a hot market will force them out.”

Yet there’s little in his agenda to protect those vulnerable renters, except for his vague promise to try to do so, and to go lobby in Sacramento for reforms to the Ellis Act. While in Sacramento, he says he’ll also somehow get help for City College of San Francisco, whose takeover by the state and usurpation of local control he supported.   

“City College is on the mend and already on the path to full recovery,” Lee said, an astoundingly out-of-touch statement that belies the school’s plummeting enrollment and the efforts by City Attorney Dennis Herrera and others to push back on the revocation of its accreditation.

Lee also had the audacity to note the “bone dry winter” we’re having and how, “It reminds us that the threat of climate change is real.” Yet none of the programs he mentions for addressing that challenge — green building standards, more electric vehicle infrastructure, the GoSolar program — would be as effective at reducing greenhouse gas emmisions as the CleanPowerSF program that Lee and his appointees are blocking, while offering no other plan for building renewable energy capacity.

Far from trying to beef up local public sector resources that vulnerable city residents increasingly need, or with doing environmental protection, Lee instead seemed to pledge more of the tax cutting that he’s used to subsidize the overheating local economy.

“Affordability is also about having a city government taxpayers can afford,” Lee said. “We must be sure we’re only investing in staffing and services we can afford over the long term.”

How that squares with his pledges to put more resources into public transit, affordable housing development, addressing climate change, and other urgent needs that Lee gives lip service to addressing is anybody’s guess.  

Plans for SF clean energy program still underway, despite political opposition

San Francisco’s longstanding effort to develop a municipal renewable energy program has been stymied by politics, but Sup. London Breed has taken up the cause of advancing aspects of the plan that haven’t been obstructed.

At a Dec. 13 meeting of the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo), a committee comprised of members of the Board of Supervisors that has been working to develop CleanPowerSF for years, Breed called for putting out a Request for Proposals to develop a concrete plan for building out local renewable energy infrastructure. LAFCo adopted the motion. 

With plans for solar panel arrays or wind power facilities that would generate hundreds of megawatts of electricity for the municipal energy program, the build-out is a key aspect of the plan that could lead to job creation and stable electricity rates in the long term.

“Part of what I think is important in developing a plan is to make sure that if there are people who oppose it, that we have answers,” Breed said. “And we have clear answers, so that we’re communicating what the real, true accurate message is: There is real possibility for local jobs.”

Earlier this year, members of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, a body composed of mayoral appointees, refused to approve a not-to-exceed rate, effectively obstructing any forward progress on the green municipal power program. But some advocates who are thinking long-term have merely taken the setback as an opportunity to put some time and energy into crafting a well thought out plan that serves the interests of job seekers and environmentalists alike, which would ulimately be politically difficult to oppose.

The rate approval was a necessary step toward inking a contract with Shell Energy North America, the contractor selected by the SFPUC to procure renewable energy on the open market until a build-out gets off the ground.

Just before the commissioners made their decision, opponents of the plan who are affiliated with Pacific Gas & Electric Company – the utility giant that stands to lose customers if CleanPowerSF goes forward – plastered San Francisco residences with flyers denouncing the program and Shell’s involvement. The mailers were paid for by IBEW 1245, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union that represents PG&E employees.

Breed reflected on that messaging as an unfortunate setback. “It created, I think, the challenges that we’re facing getting this program moving forward,” she said. “We need a clear communication strategy. We need a clear understanding of the build-out.”

Eric Brooks, a longtime advocate of CleanPowerSF who has attended hundreds of meetings to help shape the plan on behalf of his nonprofit, Our City, said he was pleased with the latest direction LAFCo talks had taken. He recently penned an editorial for the Bay Guardian calling on LAFCo to take control of the program.

“This does not get around the political problem we have,” he said. “Politically, the program isn’t moving forward. On Aug. 13, from [the SFPUC’s] standpoint, they put the program on hold.” Nevertheless, “the idea is to work on all the other things, and get those things done.” Once there is a practical plan spelling out how the city will move forward with building out green renewable energy infrastructure, he said, it could serve to “show the building trade unions what’s possible.”

From what Brooks said and what was voiced at the meeting, it seems the political strategy of project proponents will be to bring on a consultant to hash out more tangible goals with regard to job creation, and then use those shovel-ready plans to bring trade unions on board. From there, Brooks hopes there may be more leverage to push for approval – or perhaps to pursue an alternative management structure that gets around the SFPUC, such as joining with another municipality to form a Joint Powers Authority that would oversee the program.

Sup. David Campos, who has been a key supporter of CleanPowerSF along with Sup. John Avalos, did voice some reservations about moving forward with the RFP. “We are here,” halted from moving forward, “even though we have a program that has been approved by the Board of Supervisors,” he pointed out. “How do we avoid going down the path of doing additional work, only to find ourselves in the same predicament?”

The political pressure against CleanPowerSF, fueled by groups associated with PG&E in political alignment with Mayor Ed Lee, is formidable. Nevertheless, advocates from environmental organizations such as 350.org, the Sierra Club and others have kept pushing for the program out of a conviction that it represents an opportunity to curb greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change at the local level.

“This is a very important move,” said June Brashares, a steering committee member of the Local Clean Energy Alliance. “A key piece of work that has not yet been done is the selection of actual sites all over the city for the installation of hundreds of megawatts of local clean energy projects that will make up CleanPowerSF.”

UPDATE: After we posted this, Breed returned a phone call from earlier in the day. She shared some thoughts about the program:

“I just think we’re overdue, to do it. The fact that we have five commissioners appointed, not necessarily elected, [blocking the program] disturbs me,” she said.

Asked why she’s supportive of CleanPowerSF, Breed said, “It’s not just about the choice. It’s also about the environment, and the future. There’s a lot of money in energy in general, and part of that money should go back to the local economy through those jobs.”

When we asked her about the strategy for advancing the program, she responded, “We want labor to be a partner on this. We want to make sure that it’s clear, and more importantly, we want it to be a strong proposal … My goal is to make it difficult for them to oppose it.”

Finally, questioned on whether she was worried about the political opposition, Breed responded, “I can’t do my job in fear that someone may oppose it. I have to do it based on what I think is truly right for the city of San Francisco.”

We will survive! Annalee Newitz’s ‘Scatter, Adapt, and Remember’

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Spoiler alert: Humans survive at the end of the world.

It’s a bit more complicated than that, of course, but it’s good to start on a note of hope. It’s a hope we can afford to have, as Annalee Newitz (editor of science and culture site io9.com, and a former Guardian contributor) discovered in the research that yielded her book Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction (Doubleday, 320 pp., $26.95). She’s among the participants in tonight’s “Last Things”-themed InsideStoryTime at North Beach’s Glass Door Gallery.

Fascinated with the possibility of future disasters, Newitz set out to learn all there is to learn about the history of mass extinctions on Earth. From megavolcanoes to meteor strikes, the common thread of disaster on this planet is that something has always survived. An impressive amount of work is being done to make it possible for us to continue this streak of survival, and we all possess some tools of survival already.

Given my vague and largely unexplored interest in science and my undying obsession with Pacific Rim and the idea that humans could come together and build giant robots to fight giant monsters, Scatter was the book I didn’t know I needed until it was already in my hands. That’s not to say Newitz proposes that we focus our resources to build Jaegers in preparation of a kaiju apocalypse. But the message of world unity in the face of the threat of extinction that shines through in films like these shouldn’t be taken for granted. As Newitz writes, “We can only meet the challenges of surviving whatever the natural world throws at us by working together as a species in small and large ways.”

Perhaps you’re skeptical of humanity’s ability to get along on that great of a scale. I know I am. But in the face of something as dire as mass extinction, our instincts should kick in. As the title suggests, some of the strategies that may save us are to scatter – diaspora has resulted in the survival of groups of people over generations – adapt – to change our ways for a more sustainable future – and remember – passing on the knowledge that will advance us through the years. The latter is particularly important, because while we’re not all scientists, we’re all capable of telling our stories and doing our part.

But that’s not all we can do. Newitz proposes reshaping cities as we know them, and guess what city is said to be a great template for the “mutated metropolis”? That’s right, our very own City by the Bay. Historically considered a “wide-open city,” meaning that it’s a city “prepared to tolerate,” San Francisco is an ideal site for the types of change that could ultimately save us. So maybe we should be building a Jaeger, since San Francisco is the first city to be destroyed by a kaiju attack. Sorry, did I mention I really loved Pacific Rim?

But in all seriousness, the things we should be thinking about combating are climate change and pandemics. Newitz discusses the work we need to do to regulate the space around us and cool down the planet. And if you haven’t already dismissed anti-vaccination discussions, consider this: biomedical model expert Brian Coburn and his colleagues have found that “vaccinating 80% of children (less than 19 years old) would be almost as effective as vaccinating 80% of the entire population.” Meaning we should really consider how we can vaccinate globally.

But though we should be thinking about terraforming Earth to make it more sustainable, in the long run, we should be looking to the stars and considering terraforming other planets. Did anyone else first learn the word “terraforming” from Firefly? Because I sure did, and to think that Captain Malcolm Reynolds’ opening commentary on the show about the Earth getting used up and having to terraform other planets might actually be nonfiction one day is fascinating. And the space elevators that could make day trips off Earth possible are in the works!

Scatter, Adapt, and Remember is part cautionary tale, part how-to guide, and part super cool and nerdy science. Taken to heart, it’ll leave you more knowledgeable and hopeful for our continued existence, and possibly inspire more great minds to take action to ensure our survival.

InsideStoryTime: Last Things

With Annalee Newitz, Lucy Corin, Ransom Stephens, Guy Benjamin Brookshire, and Angelica Oung, with MC James Warner

Thu/21, 7-9pm, free

Glass Door Gallery

245 Columbus, SF

www.insidestorytime.com

Alerts: November 13 – 19, 2013

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Thursday 14

Forum: Our children, our city Cesar Chavez Elementary School, 825 Shotwell, SF. ourchildren-ourcity.wikispaces.com. 6-9pm, free. Mayor Ed Lee and San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Richard Carranza will join with other city leaders for this forum on public education in the city. The Children’s Fund and the Public Education Enrichment Fund, which together provide more than $100 million for young people in the public education system, will soon expire. Are there smarter and more effective ways for parents, educators and city officials to work together? Show up to share your opinions and ideas. Mayor Ed Lee, San Francisco Unified, and senior leaders from the City and SFUSD invite you to share your opinions and ideas.

Watch a film about climate change aboard a famous ship Pier 15, 698 Embarcadero, SF. tinyurl.com/PostcardsofClimateChange. 6-7:30pm or 8-9:30 p.m., free. RSVP required. Join Greenpeace on the deck of their intrepid environmental crusading vessel, the Rainbow Warrior, which is temporarily berthed in the San Francisco Bay. “Postcards from Climate Change,” was inspired by the unprecedented destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy. Greenpeace began collating climate change stories from the affected region and expanded its reach to the rest of the country.

Friday 15

Social Impact Film Festival The New Parkway Theater, 474 24th St., Oakl. Events.compathos.com. 6-11pm Friday, 5pm-12am Sat/16. Sponsored by the Compathos Foundation, the Relevate! Social Impact Film Forum will bring together community leaders to deepen an understanding of issues relevant to the Bay Area. With the theme New Worlds are Possible, it will include screenings of award-winning documentaries and nonfictional shorts by filmmakers and young, Oakland-based media artists tackling issues such as human rights, immigration, crime and violence, environmental and related heath issues and social injustice. Tickets can be purchased online in advance. Ticket proceeds benefit Compathos’ Youth Media Travel Abroad Program, which facilitates youth media and social justice. Cosponsored by KPFA.

Tuesday 19

Forum on a new county jail First Unitarian Universalist Center, 1187 Franklin, SF. 1-3pm. A debate is underway about a proposal to build a long-term jail, to replace seismically unsound county jails at San Francisco’s Hall of Justice. The planned facility would be smaller than the current jail and incorporate more space for programming and family visitation. But some prison justice advocates question the idea of building a new jail at all. At this forum, representatives from the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department and Californians United for a Responsible Budget, which seeks to reverse mass incarceration, will debate the best way forward for prison and restorative justice.

How San Francisco should really be helping the Philippines

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There were a couple good stories in today’s San Francisco Chronicle related to concerns the Guardian and its readers have sounded in recent months: Mayoral appointees blocking CleanPowerSF against the will of the elected Board of Supervisors, and the massive scale of the proposed Warriors Arena, which is now getting slightly downsized.

It was getting a little lonely beating the drum over the anti-democratic actions of the Mayor Ed Lee and his minions to undermine the only plan San Francisco has to substantially decrease its greenhouse gas emissions and meet its own ambitious goals for addressing climate change. Glad to see the Chronicle turn up the heat, at least in its news section (unlike the neocon neanderthals that write the paper’s editorials).

While the mainstream media sometimes does good work, it usually fails to connect the dots, which is an important journalistic function. So if I would find fault with the otherwise solid and long overdue story by reporters Marisa Lagos and David R. Baker, it would be with its failure to note that CleanPowerSF is really the only plan for seriously addressing climate change, which is one of the biggest and most impactful challenges we face.

This morning on KQED’s Forum, while discussing the devastating typhoon that struck the Philippines — one of the strongest ever recorded — they did connect the dots between the severity of that storm and the warming oceans of the world, albeit in fairly detached and non-urgent way.

So please allow me to connect another dot.

“Our hearts go out to all of those who have suffered in the Philippines from possibly the world’s strongest storm. The people of the Philippines are in our thoughts and prayers today, and we will continue to support them in the days and months ahead as we learn the true impact caused by Typhoon Haiyan,” Mayor Lee said Friday in a prepared statement sent to the media. “San Francisco stands ready to aid in the rebuilding and recovery efforts. The work of rebuilding communities begins immediately, and San Francisco understands how important a sustained, vigorous recovery effort is. Our City stands ready with the Bay Area Filipino-American community to assist today and into the future to help in the rebuilding efforts in the Philippines.”

What he didn’t mention was climate change. While it’s great that San Franciscans stand ready to address the effects of this and other natural disasters — which all the global warming models show will become stronger and more frequent — why aren’t we willing to show more leadership in addressing the root cause of this problem?

Instead of collaborating with developers on ever more ambitious schemes to build expensive buildings on a waterfront that will already be challenged by rising seas, the Mayor’s Office should be channeling its energies into making San Francisco a role model for other 21st century cities to follow.

The real challenges that we and other cities around the world face now are how to address poverty, the energy and transportation needs of a growing population, and a planet in peril; instead, this Mayor’s Office is focused on poaching Oakland’s basketball team and building more housing for the 1 percent.

If Mayor Lee is serious about the sympathies he’s expressing for vulnerable populations in the developing world, then he and allies should do more than send care packages when they are devastated by the byproducts of the wasteful and overly consumptive economic policies that they are promoting.  

California joins Oregon, Washington and British Columbia in climate action plan

Gov. Jerry Brown announced a regional agreement Oct. 28 with Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia to align policies for combating climate change.

“This is what is totally unique: We have a problem whose timescale is beyond anything we’ve ever dealt with,” Brown said as he gathered with Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber, Washington Governor Jay Inslee and British Columbia Premier Christy Clark (who joined remotely) to sign the agreement. “So, we have to take action before we see or experience all the problems we’re dealing with.”

In most political venues, “to actually utter the word ‘global warming’ is deviant and radical in 2013,” Brown said. “But you just watch … this will spread until we have a handle on the world’s greatest existential challenge.”

Called the Pacific Coast Action Plan on Climate and Energy, the pact commits all the jurisdictions to take a leadership role in national and international climate change policy by agreeing to emissions reduction targets; to transition the West Coast to cleaner modes of transportation such as high-speed rail; and to invest in clean energy and infrastructure through actions like streamlining permitting of renewable energy infrastructure and supporting integration of the region’s electricity grids.

Apart from this accord, Brown noted that “California has already signed a memorandum of understanding with several provinces in China,” concerning the need to work together on climate change, “and in fact with the national government itself.”

Meanwhile, a group of protesters gathered outside the Cisco-Meraki offices in Mission Bay, where the event was held, to oppose Brown’s unwillingness to support a statewide ban on fracking, an oil and gas extraction technique that environmentalists fear could contribute to groundwater contamination and increased greenhouse gas emissions.

“It’s starkly hypocritical for Governor Brown to be inking climate agreements while he’s at the same time green-lighting a massive expansion of fracking for dirty oil in California,” said protester Zack Malitz.

Asked to respond to the protesters’ concerns, Brown responded, “I signed legislation that will create the most comprehensive environmental analysis of fracking today,” referring to a bill that requires environmental review but has been criticized as flawed because it does not impose an outright ban.

“The big issue is the Monterey Shale,” he added, referring to an expansive underground oil reserve that environmentalists fear could be opened up to fracking, “and nobody is talking about doing anything there for an extended period of time, and not before the environmental document.”

Air District considers long-term action on climate change

A committee of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District approved a resolution on Oct. 23 that could shape the region’s approach to tackling climate change until 2050.

The proposal is to enact a regional climate protection program, geared toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

The idea of creating a policy framework lasting nearly four decades originated with 350.org, an environmental organization focused on climate change. Advocates with 350.org and the Sierra Club worked in collaboration with San Francisco Sup. John Avalos, who chairs the BAAQMD Climate Protection Committee, to formulate a resolution complementing climate change planning already underway at the Air District.

“The resolution did start from outside of the community, but I’m adopting it as a member of the Air District,” Avalos said at the Oct. 23 meeting, “and it’s something I’d like to see members of this body support.”

The resolution creates the emissions reduction target, launches a strategic planning process, and commits to developing a work plan that would guide the district’s activities in coming years. Implementing the plan would entail gathering more data about ambient greenhouse gas emissions and finding ways to reduce the pollutants, which are linked to climate change.

The full BAAQMD board will vote on the plan at its Nov. 4 meeting. The Air District is governed by a 22-member body composed of locally elected officials from nine Bay Area counties.

In 2006, the California Legislature enacted AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act, which established a goal of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. That’s now only about six years away, so a Scoping Plan process is in the works to figure out how to meet a new goal of reducing statewide greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Enacting a regional plan at this juncture would position the Bay Area as a leader on addressing climate change, said Henry Hilken, director of the Air District’s Planning, Research and Rules Division.

Avalos emphasized the need to focus on metrics and to stay abreast of the region’s progress on meeting emissions reduction targets over time. Assuming the climate action plan is approved by the full board, he said, the next step is to hold a focused session “to put some meat on the bones to talk about how we will work toward achieving actionable items.” 

And after it has secured the approval of the full board, a work program would be drafted to include increased staffing levels, noted Jeremy Pollock, Avalos’ legislative aide. That would require increasing the fees that are extracted from the region’s major greenhouse gas emitters – primarily oil refineries.

Best of the Bay 2013: BEST GUIDE FOR A CHALLENGING FUTURE

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The organization has offered lectures and panel talks on key policy issues to Bay Area audiences for years, but the Commonwealth Club of California’s Climate One series deserves a shout-out for bringing the most pressing environmental issues of our time to the fore. Climate One was founded by Commonwealth Club Vice President Greg Dalton in 2007 after he visited the arctic circle in a Russian icebreaker boat and saw firsthand the effects of climate change on life in that part of the world. So far, the series has brought together public officials, academic experts, key business players, and advocates for serious, in-depth conversations on everything from fracking and the implications of rising sea levels to “Corn, Cows, and Cars.” The result: scary stuff, but with a reach toward actual solutions. Educate thyself with a Climate One talk at the Club’s San Francisco headquarters or download a podcast from a recent event.

www.climate-one.org

Fighting climate change, with crowd funding and Google Hangouts

A young San Francisco couple, Ryan Kushner and Amanda Ravenhill, are trying out a new approach to climate change activism that they hope will ultimately reach thousands of people via online videos and interactive web-based trainings.

Called Hero Hatchery, the ambitious project launched earlier this week. Celebrity-status environmentalists such as Bill McKibben, head of 350.org, and Tim DeChristopher, who made headlines for throwing a monkey wrench into a Bureau of Land Management auction, will lead free weekly online trainings on climate change, administered via Google Hangout, as part of the effort.

Concurrently with the massive open online training, they’re hoping to generate wind in the sails of a queer climate activist, Lauren Wood, who worked alongside other climate activists to start an organization called Peaceful Uprising in Southern Utah and has been designated as a Hero Hatchery fellow. When not working as a restaurant server to make ends meet, Wood spends her days organizing against the expansion of mining operations in Southern Utah. She got started through support work for DeChristopher, who spent two years in prison for derailing a federal land auction by bidding on parcels that were about to be opened up to mining.

An underlying goal of Hero Hatchery, Kushner said in a recent phone interview, is to reframe a debate that’s all-too-often controlled by PR strategists hired by corporate oil and gas interests. To this end, the plan is to use crowd funding to generate enough money for the fellowship, and to hire their very own professional-grade PR machine.

Kushner and Ravenhill met at the Presidio Graduate School, a San Francisco institution, where they earned MBAs in sustainable business. They traveled to Washington, D.C. last year and got arrested at the Keystone XL pipeline protests outside the White House, alongside activists from 350.org.

Their approach to activism seems to be less about staying at a public hearing till the wee hours to try and halt a mining permit from being issued, and more about using laptops to generate a buzz that can be converted into a form of popular pressure. There are thousands of environmental organizations doing grassroots organizing nationwide; rather than honing in on a specific issue, the Hero Hatchery team seeks to position itself as a kind of megaphone to amplify existing work. Kushner likes to use the word “elevate” when describing how Hero Hatchery will lend assistance to Wood, whom he hopes will be the first of many fellows.

Wood is the daughter of two river guides, and grew up rafting in Southern Utah, where she spent five years as a river guide in her own right. Now, her organization is focused on challenging open pit mining operations that have broken ground at PR Springs on the Tavaputs Plateau, which sits near the top of the drainage to the Green and Colorado river systems.

“The Green River and the Colorado River: they’re the front lines,” she told us, speaking by phone from Salt Lake City, where she was born and raised. Her connection to the rivers brought “this climate change problem into my heart and my gut,” she said.

She said she’d seen river-rafting companies that could no longer operate because the water is running so low, due to drought conditions. Mining operations will only consume more water, making the problem worse.

But as a Hero Hatchery fellow, Wood has bigger plans than just telling the story of what’s happening in her own backyard. She wants to get the word out about a wide variety of campaigns focused on climate change as a way to help support a more cohesive national climate movement.

“I think what I’m most excited about with this project is acting as the veins in a body, and acting as the interconnection between people who want to get involved and don’t know how,” she said.  “This movement is increasingly interconnected. I want to be able to go around the country and talk to different communities about what it’s going to take to build a national movement.”

Mayor Lee distorts reality in defending CleanPowerSF obstruction by his appointees

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Mayor Ed Lee yesterday answered a series of five questions from the Board of Supervisors about CleanPowerSF, the renewable energy program it approved last year on a veto-proof 8-3 vote, but which three of Lee’s appointees on the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission are now blocking.

Lee reaffirmed his opposition to the program and support for the three commissioners who are refusing to approve a maximum rate for the program, while making a series of statements that were misleading, contradictory, and, according to Sup. John Avalos, some outright falsehoods.

CleanPowerSF would group tens of thousands of city residents into a renewable energy buying pool, a system called Community Choice Aggregation authorized by state legislation, which would compete against Pacific Gas & Electric’s illegal local monopoly. Initally, the energy would be purchased under a contract with Shell Energy, but the main goal of the program is to build city-owned renewable energy facilities by issuing revenue bonds supported by the program’s ratepayers.

Yet the program Lee described has little resemblance to CleanPowerSF — and his statements of support for the concept belie his longstanding opposition to the program and support for PG&E, whose union is leading the campaign to kill CleanPowerSF.

“I know that many members of the Board of Supervisors are upset,” Lee began in his first answer to similar questions posed by Sups. Eric Mar, David Chiu, London Breed, David Campos, and John Avalos, who all represent the odd-numbered districts whose turn it was to submit questions to the mayor for this month’s appearance.

Lee then explained that one of the duties of  the SFPUC is to protect ratepayers, which he called “the overriding concern they have when faced with any issue,” adding that, “The commission ultimately decided that the rate wasn’t a fair rate.”

Ironically, the top rate that the commission is being asked to approve in order to finally launch CleanPowerSF was just 11.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, only slightly more than current PG&E rates and a substantial reduction from the rate that was discussed last year when supervisors approved the program.

PG&E, Lee, and other critics of the program had attacked its high cost, so SFPUC staffers tweaked the program to allow the initial use of Renewable Energy Credits, which support the creation of renewable energy projects, rather than being purely juice directly from solar, wind, and other renewable sources, which is more expensive.

So Lee criticized that change as a departure from what the board approved last year, telling the supervisors that the program should be at least “95 percent renewable on day one,” saying that, “This is what a green power program should look like.”

Yet when it did look like that, Lee opposed it, something he didn’t mention yesterday. And yet he still made the argument that the SFPUC was simply exercising its fiduciary responsibility in blocking a program that has gotten cheaper than when the board approved it.

“The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission did its job in protecting ratepayers,” Lee said. “I agree with the majority of the PUC.”

So, on one hand, Lee said that CleanPowerSF has “gotten progressively more expensive as time goes on,” citing statements made years ago about the goal of trying to meet-or-beat PG&E’s rates, which have been subsidized by taxpayers over the years.

And when the program then got close to matching those rates, he criticized the use of RECs to get there, saying the climate change benefits “need to be real and tangible and not based on vague promises.”

Yet even city-commissioned studies have shown that San Francisco won’t meet its own greenhouse gas reduction goals without substantially changing the energy portfolio of city residents, and CleanPowerSF is the only plan on the table to get there, except for PG&E’s vague promises to offer more renewable energy in the future.

While Lee touted city efforts to improve the energy efficiency of commercial buildings and the recent launch of a regional bike share program — neither of which will come close to meeting city climate change goals — even he acknowledged the “need to expand our in-city renewable energy generation,” citing the $4 million SolarSF as an example.

But Lee never made reference to CleanPowerSF’s plan to build up to $1 billion in renewable energy projects whose impacts would be far more impactful. Instead, he said the program “creates no local jobs,” which wouldn’t be true during the buildout phase.

While praising PG&E, Lee also glossed over the fact that a majority of supervisors still support CleanPowerSF, and that the SFPUC vote was supposed to be on the rate and not these ancillary issues, raising fundamental democratic issues when three mayoral appointees can override the decision of elected supervisors who represent all city residents.

“When a final project is so vastly different than the original intent, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has to intervene,” Lee said.

Avalos called many of Lee’s statements “lies,” so I followed Mayor Lee back to his office after the hearing and we had the following conversation as several reporters from other media outlets listened in:   

SFBG: Supervisor Avalos just said that you’ve made a number of statements that are not factually accurate, and certainly misleading, including saying that the program has changed substantially. Given that you opposed the program initially, and you seem to make statements that criticize those changes, and clearly the majority still supports it, how can you make the argument that the PUC is acting against it because the program has changed?

Mayor Lee: Well, you know, I know that elements of this are somewhat complicated cause you have to actually read a lot of volumes of materials to understand the choice aggregation program, cause it has those three aspects and I would….

SFBG: As guidelines, not as rates….

Mayor Lee: I would point to those numbers that were discussed at the board and presented to the [SF] Public Utilities Commission, because that’s what I’m quoting from. I’m taking it, not from even verbiage, I’m taking it exactly from facts that were presented at the commission at the Board of Supervisors and I specifically lifted quotes from the board about their comments about local jobs and all the other things, so, I don’t think I’m inaccurate at all. I think I’m actually quite on point.

SFBG: But the rates have come down from when they approved it and you made it sound like the rates have gone up.

Mayor Lee: The rates were up and they came down in trade off with less green.

SFBG: Right…

Mayor Lee: That’s about the point I was trying to make is that we wanted these other goals to happen and they couldn’t happen cause people were trading off things in order to set the rates and that was going to become a bigger and bigger gap as to what the original goals were. That’s the way…

SFBG: But the board clearly wants this program. Why, as a matter of policy, as a matter of city procedure, why isn’t the elected body the one to make this decision, instead of your appointees?

Mayor Lee: Well, I think that’s the whole reason why they presented it to the Public Utilities Commission. They’re charter mandated to set these rates. It’s not just an automatic acceptance of what the board says. They also independently review what the board has said. And in their independent review, they said they had gone well beyond what they stated their goals were and so they couldn’t set the rates and still honor all the goals that the board was suggesting.

SFBG: But those rates are less than what the Board has approved. How can they be exercising fiscal oversight… I mean, it doesn’t make any sense.

Mayor Lee: I think we have a big disagreement there. They’re mandated by the charter to set those rates responsibly, not just to follow what the board has stated and so, in their independent review, they went and reviewed all the goals that the board has said and said ‘This is not the program that they have stated should be fulfilled.’

SFBG: Even though the majority of the Board of Supervisors disagree with that statement that you just made?

Mayor Lee: Well, you know, then again, are we not respecting peoples’ right to disagree over what is being done here?

SFBG: But your argument that the program changed from what they approved, a  majority is saying ‘that’s not true,’ that you’re misrepresenting that.

Mayor Lee: No, I don’t think that I’m misrepresenting that. I disagree with that.

SFBG: A majority of the Board of Supervisors who approved it says you are.

Mayor: Well, I disagree with that assessment.

 

 

 

Supervisors to grill Mayor Lee over CleanPowerSF sabotage

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Mayor Ed Lee will be on the hot seat for his unqualified support of Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and his related opposition to the CleanPowerSF renewable energy program, which his appointees to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission are trying to sabotage, when he shows up for the monthly mayoral question time at the Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday.

Hopefully the boring, scripted question time format that Lee created in collaboration with Board President David Chiu will finally give way to what the voters intended when they required the mayor to engage with the legislative branch: an actual, substantive, back-and-forth policy discussion meant to illuminate issues of public concern.

Because that’s what’s needed on this important issue. After more than a decade in the making, the board last year cast a historic vote to create the project on a veto-proof 8-3 vote. But the SFPUC is now refusing to set the maximum rate for the program, which should be a fairly technical and pro forma action, instead raising unrelated issues that the supervisors have already considered. In other words, unelected mayoral appointees have decided to veto a hard-won democratic gain, creating something akin to a constitutional crisis in a city that values public process and input. 

So for the first time ever, all the of the supervisors scheduled to ask questions (it rotates because odd- and even-numbered districts each month) have focused various aspects of a single important issue. Even though Lee has mastered the politicians’ dark art of speaking without saying anything, this one should still be a doozy as supervisors ask the following questions:

1. Mayor Lee – As you know, San Francisco has set ambitious goals to combat climate change. In many ways, the City is making great strides in this direction, from increasing bicycling, to pursuing zero waste goals, to hiring a new, excellent environmental policy advisor in Rodger Kim who has a strong background in environmental justice and community engagement. However, the Public Utilities Commission has repeatedly failed to set rates for CleanPowerSF, the most impactful local proposal yet designed to curb carbon emission. This program was adopted by the Board of Supervisors, the legislative body of the City. However, there are some allegations that your office is stalling its implementation. What specifically are you doing, as the City’s head executive, to implement this policy in a timely fashion? (Supervisor Mar, District 1)

2. Mr. Mayor, can you please outline your objections to the CleanPowerSF program as approved last year on an vote 8-3 by the Board of Supervisors? (Supervisor Chiu, District 3)

3. Recognizing the constraints imposed by state law, particularly with respect to opt-out provisions, how would a clean power program need to be structured in order for you to support it? Are you willing to work with the Board of Supervisors, and have your staff and commissioners work with the Board of Supervisors, to revise CleanPowerSF so that you can support it? Can we come to the table and make clean power a reality without any further delay? (Supervisor Breed, District 5)

4. The Board of Supervisors has been very supportive of CleanPowerSF. Do you think it is appropriate for a City Commission to go against the policy the Board of Supervisors set when it approved CleanPowerSF? (Supervisor Campos, District 9)

5. Days after the one-year anniversary of the 2010 PG&E San Bruno pipeline explosion, you called PG&E a “great local corporation” and a “great company that gets it.” However, the examples of PG&E’s immoral, illegal, and greedy behavior are legion:

– PG&E avoided admitting fault in the San Bruno explosion, failed to cooperate with the investigation, fought against paying a fair fine, and hopes to make ratepayers pay for the fine.

– PG&E’s current electric mix is only 20% California-certified renewable.

– Outages of PG&E-owned streetlights have increased over 400% in recent years, and PG&E wants to increase by $600,000 a year the amount it charges the City for streetlight maintenance without committing to improved service.

– Despite the fact that PG&E already has some of the highest electric rates in the country, PG&E is seeking to further increase rates in each of the next three years.

– While PG&E has proposed a new Green Tariff program, it remains only a vague proposal and there is no guarantee that it will ever be implemented.

– PG&E’s previous green campaigns-such as ClimateSmart and “Let’s Green This City”-have proven to be short lived and ineffective public relations stunts. Multiple public surveys conducted by the PUC to gauge the level of support for CleanPowerSF have all found that a substantial number of San Franciscans want the opportunity to pay a slight premium for a 100% renewable alternative to PG&E.

Why does your office continue to oppose providing City ratepayers with an alternative to PG&E’s monopoly by implementing CleanPowerSF? (Supervisor Avalos, District 11) 

The Rim Fire and climate change

The monstrous blaze that swept through Yosemite and burned 237,841 acres was a record breaker. According to the latest statistics from Cal Fire, the Rim Fire was the fourth highest in the history of California, with a $77 million price tag. Thanks to the efforts of more than 4,000 firefighters and support personnel, the blaze was 80 percent contained as of the latest update on Sept. 4.

While the exact cause remains a mystery for now, it’s worth pointing out that the Rim Fire could not have reached such epic proportions if it hadn’t been for the dry conditions in place when the smoldering began. And as climate change continues to alter weather patterns across the Western United States, projected declines in precipitation and higher average temperatures will lead to more of the same conditions that give rise to hot destructive infernos.

Daniel Berlant, an information officer with Cal Fire, noted in a recent telephone interview that summers have been longer and hotter over the past decade, a trend that has coincided with a spike in wildfires.

According to Cal Fire statistics, there were 5,135 fires in California from January 1 through August 31 of this year. Over the same time span last year, there were 3,731 fires recorded. The five-year average is even lower, at 3,638.

Another troubling statistic: Seven out of the 10 largest wildfires in California history occurred in the last decade alone.

“What we’ve been seeing here in this past decade is longer summers – seven to eight days longer than normal,” Berlant explained. “There’s a correlation between a longer summer and more wildfires,” he continued, and when rainfall finally does arrive, it comes in at record lows, Berlant explained. Meanwhile, “The high temperatures evaporate more of the rain.”

Brush and vegetation that take in moisture from rainfall have a better chance at withstanding a fiery blaze, Berlant noted, but when things stay bone dry, the plants act as kindling that causes the blaze to burn hotter.

So as climate change continues to transform the natural landscapes of the West, costly raging wildfires might be what Californians have to look forward to. Find that depressing? Here’s a captivating YouTube time-lapse video to distract you.

Fizzling energy

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A plan for a municipal power program that would offer 100 percent green energy to San Francisco customers was stalled on Aug. 13, prompting Sup. John Avalos to explore what legal options might be available to bring the program to fruition without further delay.

Prior to that San Francisco Public Utilities Commission hearing, supporters of CleanPowerSF rallied on the steps of City Hall, urging Mayor Ed Lee and members of the commission to approve a not-to-exceed rate, a technical hurdle that must be cleared before the program can advance. SFPUC staff cannot formalize a contract for purchasing power on the open market until that maximum rate has been formally established, so as long as it goes unapproved, CleanPowerSF lingers in limbo.

“We call on the Mayor’s Office to stop impeding progress with heavy-handed politics,” said Shawn Marshall, executive director of Local Energy Aggregation Network (LEAN) — a group that assists with clean-energy municipal power programs. “And we ask the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to stay focused on its job of implementing a program that was approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors last September. That’s almost a year ago, folks.”

But after more than two hours of public comment in which dozens of advocates voiced support for moving ahead with the program, SFPUC commissioners voted down a motion to approve the rate, leaving CleanPowerSF in limbo with no clear path forward.

 

COMMISSIONER CONCERNS

Commissioners Francesca Vietor and Anson Moran were the only ones on the commission to favor the rate approval, while Ann Moller Caen, Vince Courtney, and President Art Torres shot it down.

“I feel like today is a historic moment for the SFPUC as well as the city of San Francisco,” Vietor said as she introduced the motion at the beginning of the meeting, “to become a leader in combating climate change.”

Rather than focus on the question of whether or not to establish a top rate of 11.5 cents per kilowatt-hour (a reduced price from an earlier proposal that sparked an outcry from critics because of the sticker shock), Torres and Caen criticized CleanPowerSF before casting “no” votes.

Caen said she’d “always had problems with the opt-out situation,” referring to a system that will automatically enroll utility customers into the program, while Torres criticized the project for changing shape since its inception, saying, “at the end of the day, this is not what San Franciscans had anticipated.”

But after straying well beyond the scope of a discussion about the not-to-exceed rate, commissioners who shot down CleanPowerSF didn’t provide SFPUC staff with any hints on how to allay their concerns. Some might interpret the hearing outcome as a death knell for CleanPowerSF, but Avalos has taken up the cause of pushing for implementation.

Unable to attend the hearing in person, Avalos sent legislative aide Jeremy Pollock to convey his concerns. “We all understand the politics of the situation,” his statement noted. “The Board of Supervisors and every major environmental group in the City support this program. The Mayor, PG&E, and its union oppose it. I know you are feeling a lot of pressure from both sides. But we cannot afford further political gamesmanship to cause additional delays in an attempt to kill this program.”

The effort to implement CleanPowerSF is mired in politics. For Pacific Gas & Electric Co., Northern California’s largest utility, the enterprise represents an encroachment into prime service territory and a threat to the power company’s monopoly.

PG&E has long been highly influential at San Francisco City Hall. It has funded many political campaigns and curried favor with powerful figures (former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, known to be a frequent dining companion of the mayor, has been richly rewarded for his consulting services, for instance). Mayor Ed Lee opposes the program, and holds the authority to appoint commissioners to the SFPUC.

 

CLASH OF CITY BODIES

The City Charter gives the SFPUC the responsibility of establishing fair and sufficient rates for the city’s utility operations. But Avalos charged that “any further delay will essentially show that we are in a constitutional crisis caused by a city department failing to carry out a policy approved by a veto-proof supermajority of the Board of Supervisors.”

The supervisor added that if the rate failed to win approval at the hearing, he would call upon the City Attorney to explore legal options “to resolve this type of stalemate—including the possibility of drafting a Charter Amendment. CleanPowerSF is too important and the threat of climate change is too significant to allow this program to die on the vine. It is time for leadership.”

Pollock said on Aug. 15 that Avalos was still awaiting a response from City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s office.

Meanwhile, activists who’ve attended countless meetings with SFPUC staff to move the program forward expressed frustration in the aftermath of the vote. “Things are in this holding pattern, and the dissenting commissioners did not provide a way forward,” noted Jed Holtzman, an advocate with climate group 350 Bay Area. “They just kind of said, ‘no.'”

The weekend before the hearing, mailers paid for by International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1245, a union representing PG&E employees, blanketed Noe Valley residences with fliers. Depicting seashells besmirched with oil, the mailers seized on the involvement of Shell Energy North America, an oil giant with a contract pending with the SFPUC to administer power purchases for the first four and a half years of the program.

Shell’s involvement presents something of a challenge for advocates, who have long advocated for a program that would be run entirely by the SFPUC with a centerpiece of renewable power generation facilities that could double as a source of local job creation.

The initial program phase looked quite different: Shell would purchase green power on the open market, making CleanPowerSF significantly more expensive than PG&E. To address that concern and lower rates, SFPUC staff recently allowed the use of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs), more affordable units accounting for green power produced somewhere in California as opposed to electricity coming straight over the power lines.

Despite the drawbacks of a more watered down start to the program and the involvement of a notorious fossil fuel company, progressives and major environmental organizations strongly advocated for moving forward with the Shell contract to give the SFPUC a shot at positioning itself financially to float revenue bonds for build-outs of a local green energy infrastructure.

“The plan is to completely replace this with the build-out,” noted John Rizzo, who sits on the executive committee of the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club.

 

BUILDING LOCAL PROJECTS

A 134-page report prepared by Local Power Inc. described in careful detail how the city could use wind, solar, geothermal, energy efficiency, and other measures for a viable program. While SFPUC representatives have indicated that some of those recommendations will still be implemented, the agency is no longer working with Local Power.

“Our draft model was 1,500 jobs per year,” Paul Fenn, founder and president of Local Power, wrote in an email to the Guardian. “But earlier runs show as many as twice that many jobs, and we projected the higher end for the final model.” In the end, though, “SFPUC declined to continue with completion of this work, so we are in limbo — apparently an organization without allies,” Fenn added. Asked about this, Kim Malcom, the SFPUC’s director of CleanPowerSF, told the Guardian that Fenn’s analysis was based on the assumption that the agency would issue bonds totaling $1 billion. “We have no confidence that we could issue a billion dollars worth of bonds in the first few years of the program,” she said, noting that the highest the agency expected to go was closer to $200 million. And at this point, it remains to be seen whether CleanPowerSF will move ahead at all. “One of the difficulties we face is that we can’t move forward without a rate,” SFPUC spokesperson Charles Sheehan noted. “In terms of launching and implementing, we can’t do that until we have a rate structure,” and now that the utility board has blocked that from happening, there is no clear path forward. Still, activists who are serious about CleanPowerSF believe it’s key for positioning San Francisco as a leader in the fight against climate change. “CleanPowerSF is a crucial step for achieving California’s 2020 greenhouse gas goals,” Bill Reilly, chairman emeritus of the World Wildlife Fund and a former EPA administrator, wrote in a letter to Lee. “It’s also an essential model &ldots; as cities and communities are compelled to address the problems fueled by climate change.”

Plan Bay Area takes legal punches from the left and right

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Plan Bay Area, the regional strategy to funnel future population growth into San Francisco and other big cities in order to combat climate change, is now being slammed with legal challenges from both sides of the ideological spetrum.

Those left-right punches could knock out a plan that critics called a schizophrenic attempt to accomplish competing goals with inadequate resources and resolve. For example, it created incentives to increase housing density along transit lines, but it did little to limit private automobile use, make that housing affordable by people who do use transit, or address the displacement of existing urban populations.

Earthjustice, Communities for a Better Environment, and the Sierra Club today filed a lawsuit in Alameda Couty Superior Court challenging Plan Bay Area’s recent approval by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments.

That lawsuit follows one filed Friday with the same court by the Building Industry Association of the Bay Area. And those two suits follow another one filed Aug. 6 by the conservative Sacramento law firm Pacific Legal Foundation on behalf of a group calling itself Bay Area Citizens.

While that first lawsuit from the Tea Party crowd criticizes the very idea of regional planning and the validity of addressing global warming, these latest two lawsuits basically call out Plan Bay Area and its supporters for not going far enough to address the goals laid out in the plan.

Earthjustice and the community groups it works with criticize Plan Bay Area for disrupting Bay Area communities with an accelerated growth plan that doesn’t address environmental justice issues like those faced by West Oakland residents, whose air quality would be worsened by an influx of automobile traffic.   

 “The people of the Bay Area take pride in living in one of the most diverse, culturally and economically vibrant metropolitan areas in the world. We demand smart planning for growth—the kind that improves our quality of life, makes life easier and less expensive for residents all over the Bay Area, and allows our communities to thrive and grow,” Irene Gutierrez, Earthjustice associate attorney, said in a press release. “This requires responsible planning that reduces climate change pollution, plans for smart public transit growth, avoids toxic zones, and dirty and harmful air quality. Plan Bay Area does not achieve those goals. The people of the Bay Area deserve a much better plan.”

And Bay Area developers are focused on how the plan calls for more transit-oriented development without investing in the public infrastructure needed to serve it, criticizing the state legislation behind Plan Bay Area that relaxes the environmental studies of projects in transportation corridors.

“SB 375 calls on the Bay Area and other regions of California to integrate residential and transportation planning in ways that fully accommodate their housing need and in ways that allow for reduced reliance on and emissions from passenger vehicles,” said Bob Glover, executive officer of BIA | Bay Area. “Plan Bay Area is a cop out.  It neither plans for enough housing nor provides a reasonable path for developing it and therefore looks a lot more like a pulling up of the draw bridge than a sustainable communities strategy.”

To learn more about Plan Bay Area, you can read our May cover story, “Planning for Displacement,” or the coverage of a public forum that we and other groups sponsorerd.

Backward on climate

After a hearing lasting several hours on Tue/13, members of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission voted down a motion to approve electricity rates for CleanPowerSF, a municipal energy program designed to offer a 100 percent green energy mix to San Francisco customers.

The approval of that “not-to-exceed” rate, set at 11.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, would have cleared the path to set CleanPowerSF in motion after almost a decade of politically charged debates and setbacks.

“I feel like today is a historic moment for the SFPUC as well as the city of San Francisco,” commissioner Francesca Vietor said as she introduced her motion to approve the rate. “Even though I understand this is only a vote to approve the not-to-exceed rate,” she added, it was a critical first step toward a long-term vision in which “we will also be able to create a new generation of green collar workers and build our own renewable power system.”

In the end, Vietor and Commissioner Anson Moran were the only ones to favor the rate approval, while Ann Moller Caen, Vince Courtney and President Art Torres shot it down. So once again, CleanPowerSF has been kicked back in limbo.

“This is not just about rates today,” Torres said. “If we approve these rates, that would authorize the General Manager [of the SFPUC] to authorize a contract with Shell.”  

Oil giant Shell Energy North America was tapped by the SFPUC to purchase green energy on the open market during the first phase of the program. Although Shell is a fossil fuel company with a disgraceful human rights track record, progressives and environmentalists stand behind a speedy approval of that contract, because they say it is a crucial first step toward realizing the ultimate project vision of constructing city-owned and operated renewable energy facilities while creating local green jobs.

“The deal is that you cannot do that until you move forward, and launch the program,” said Shawn Marshall, executive director of LEAN – a group that assists with clean-energy municipal power programs – speaking at a rally just before the hearing. “You have to live to go local. We call on the mayor’s office to stop impeding progress with heavy-handed politics and we ask the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to stay focused on its job of implementing a program that was approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors last September.”

Rather than focusing on the question of whether or not to approve the rate, Torres and Caen voiced generally negative sentiments about the CleanPowerSF endeavor before casting “no” votes on the rate approval. Caen said she’d “always had problems with the opt-out situation,” referring to a system of automatic enrollment in the program, and Torres criticized the project for having changed shape, saying, “at the end of the day, this is not what San Franciscans had anticipated.”

The bid to establish CleanPowerSF is mired in charged politics. Because the program threatens Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s monopoly in San Francisco, the utility giant is prepared to shell out whatever it takes to stop the forward momentum. PG&E is deeply influential in San Francisco City Hall, having richly rewarded former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, known to be a frequent dining companion of Mayor Ed Lee, for his consulting services, for instance. Lee opposes the program, and the mayor appoints the SFPUC commissioners.

Torres, the commission president, bristled at suggestions from the public that he was merely carrying the mayor’s water, saying, “I do my own homework, and I make up my own mind.”

But Sup. John Avalos has made up his own mind too, and he sent legislative aide Jeremy Pollock to convey the message to the SFPUC that enough is enough. Avalos plans to go to the City Attorney to find out what can be done about the relentless foot-dragging of a commission that just won’t approve a fair rate for a program that was approved by the Board of Supervisors last fall.

During the public comment session of the hearing, Pollock read Avalos’ statement, which characterized the commission’s refusal to approve the rate as a “constitutional crisis” with regard to the body’s responsibilities.

“Any further delay will essentially show that we are in a constitutional crisis caused by a city department failing to carry out a policy approved by a veto-proof supermajority of the Board of Supervisors,” Avalos’ statement noted. “The Board stands ready to approve these rates, but nothing more can happen until you take action. The City Charter is silent on the possibility of the Public Utilities Commission failing to act on a proposed utility rate. Therefore if there is further delay, I feel I have no choice but to request that the City Attorney explore our options to resolve this type of stalemate—including the possibility of drafting a Charter Amendment. CleanPowerSF is too important and the threat of climate change is too significant to allow this program to die on the vine. It is time for leadership. And this vote will be long remembered for the action you take today.”

But instead of just approving that rate – which is lower, by the way, than originally proposed – the commissioners just seized the opportunity to halt the program from moving forward, since CleanPowerSF cannot advance without a contract, and the contract cannot be signed until a rate has been formally approved.

“It seems as if they are essentially refusing to establish a fair rate, so we’re going to ask the city attorney, you know, what’s the recourse if the PUC is failing to carry out their duties?” Pollock noted.

Just before the votes were cast, Vietor, who had urged her colleagues to go forward and approve the rate at the outset of the meeting, was asked to re-state her motion. She returned to the bright and optimistic prepared statement she’d read at the beginning, only this time with a note of frustration because it was clear that the votes weren’t there. “Today is a historic moment for the San Francisco public utility commission,” she read out loud, “to become a leader in combating climate change.”

Note: This post has been updated from an earlier version.

PG&E union spreads lies about CleanPowerSF

San Francisco’s municipal power agency is gearing up to launch one of the most climate-friendly alternative energy programs in the country, but the forces behind a misleading opposition campaign seek to torpedo that effort.

This past weekend, glossy ads depicting seashells and spilled oil blanketed the doorknobs of Noe Valley residences. Paid for by IBEW 1245, the union that represents employees of Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the door hangers conveyed the fear-mongering message that CleanPowerSF “isn’t clean. It’s dirtier than our current power.”

To put it bluntly, that’s bullshit.

Taking them at face value, you might conclude that Shell was about to begin drilling offshore in the San Francisco Bay and that city officials were planning to meet the city’s energy needs with a polluting power plant run solely off tar sands oil. They might even club some baby seals while they were at it.

What’s really happening is that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is gearing up for a hearing on Tue/13 to discuss rate setting for CleanPowerSF, a municipal green energy program that’s been in the works for years. As the power agency inches closer to a full program launch, PG&E and its employees are worried they’ll lose business when San Francisco customers are automatically enrolled in the CleanPowerSF program.

The new power program will continue to use PG&E infrastructure and its existing billing system, but customers’ homes will be powered with a greener electricity mix procured through the city-run program, which is contracting with Shell Energy North America to purchase electricity on the open market from a variety of green power sources.

Naturally, San Francisco is teeming with savvy environmentalists who aren’t buying the slick oppositional blitzkrieg. On Aug. 13, some will band together to set the record straight when a host of representatives from the Sierra Club and others rally at City Hall at noon to express support for immediate implementation of CleanPowerSF.

“Clean energy aggregation is on the rise across the country, making an immediate and direct impact on climate emissions,” said Shawn Marshall, Director of LEAN Energy US. LEAN works with organizations that use the municipal power-purchasing model that CleanPower SF is based on. “The only thing blocking progress in San Francisco is corporate politics, and we encourage the city to deliver on its environmental promises by pressing ahead with CleanPowerSF.”

In a letter to San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, former EPA administrator and World Wildlife Fund Chairman Emeritus William K. Reilly emphasized that CleanPowerSF “is a crucial step for achieving California’s 2020 greenhouse gas goals. It’s also an essential model for California and the rest of the country as cities and communities are compelled to address the problems fueled by climate change.”

Back to those misleading ads. While it is true that Shell is an oil company with a shoddy track record of human rights abuses, it is not true that the energy supplied by CleanPowerSF will be dirtier than electricity provided by PG&E.

To the contrary, only 20 percent of PG&E’s energy mix is derived from green power sources, while the majority of its electricity is generated by nuclear facilities or natural gas power plants. PG&E is also the company responsible for the hexavalent chromium groundwater contamination in the California town of Hinkley, in the Mojave Desert, which provided the basis for the movie Erin Brockovich.

And more recently, PG&E was responsible for the deadly pipeline explosion in San Bruno, which leveled an entire neighborhood. In comparison, CleanPower SF will offer a 100 percent renewable energy mix out of the starting gate.

Some of that mix will initially be derived from renewable energy credits. Called RECs, they’re cheaper because they are “credits” accounting for green power generated somewhere, as opposed to actual green power coming straight over the power lines.

But it’s important to note that the initial use of RECs is a pricing strategy designed to put the agency in a financial position to support green power projects here in San Francisco a little further down the road.

The long-term plan of constructing green power facilities locally would create permanent, decent-paying jobs. It would also supply San Franciscans with electricity generated with technology that can harness the unlimited power potential of the California sun, or the wind that blows in off the Pacific Ocean. This is the outcome that PG&E affiliates seek to thwart, because they fear profit loss.

A few months ago, in an interview with the Guardian, SFPUC spokesperson Charles Sheehan emphasized that it had taken many conversations to get to the point that the agency has finally reached.

“We’ve lowered the rate, we’re now more competitive with PG&E’s baseline offering, and we’re on parity with their potential green tariff program,” he explained. Speaking of a dedicated revenue stream that would go toward funding local clean-power projects, he said, “That line item is really critical to get us to the build-out that we’ve all collectively envisioned as a staff, and as a community.”