San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. --Shawna Scott
On April 16th, the day of the Interior Department's final public hearing on extending oil and gas drilling leases into the Outer Continental Shelf, and, on oil & gas vs. wind & wave energy, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is now running for Governor of California, signed his name to an editorial advocating wave energy, on his Huffington Post blog.
At first I thought that Mayor Newsom was simply greenwashing, just as any California gubernatorial candidate, or California Governor, must, if not sincerely green.
However, I then spoke with KMEC-Ukiah Radio and earthcycles.net radio host Govinda Dalton, in Northern California's coastal Mendocino County, who told me that he and other Mendo and Humboldt County environmentalists adamantly oppose WaveConnect, Pacific Gas'n Electric (PG&E) mega wave energy plan because it will damage Mendocino and Humboldt's coastal marine ecology, including its fisheries, and, because it's grid-tied power, not local power,
WaveConnect would generate far more electricity than the 86,221 residents of Mendocino and 129,000 residents of Humboldt County could purchase or use. Most of the power would be purchased instead, by rate payers in power hungry, population dense, and, relatively rich, cities on the Southwest Regional Power Grid.
California's Mendocino and Humboldt Counties would thus become resource ransacked, environmentally assaulted, internal colonies, generating power for distant cities, and, profit for PG&E. Their role, within the domestic energy economy, would be similar to that of de facto colonies in Africa, which are, on a global and, far more devastating scale, resource ransacked and environmentally assaulted. Big energy most often colonizes Africa for fossil fuels and uranium, to generate power in the imperial nations, and profit for multinational energy corporations, including PG&E.
In 2003, PG&E generated a list of African nations as sources for new natural gas imports to the U.S., although, even two years, later, in 2005, only 20% of Angolans had electricity.
Similarly, now, the rural, relatively poor, State of Oregon, population 3,790,060, is putting up a fierce fight against big energy's internal colonization proposals to build hugely dangerous, and polluting LNG Terminals linked to natural gas pipeline that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) threatens to force on them, all to bring natural gas to the huge Northern California market---a.k.a., Pacific Gas'n Electric (PG&E)'s market. Where would all this liquified natural gas come from? Africa, Indonesia, and aboriginal Australia; where else?
Mendocino and Humboldt Counties, and the State of Oregon, are relatively fortunate targets, but, targets nevertheless, for big energy colonization, by PG&E.
Grid-tied, mega-wave energy is fraught with social, environmental, and, political peril, as are grid-tied mega-solar, mega-wind, and mega-hydroelectric---i.e., big dams, which may at first seem clean'n green.
Just like nuclear, coal, and natural gas power plants, big renewables create or replicate big wealth and power, both electrical and political, and, like all big power projects, do big environmental damage.
However, they are also very corporate, very PG&E, and thus very Gavin Newsom, with gubernatorial greenwashing points to boot.
Comments
Yea, Gavin is generally not regarded well, especially in SE SF.
Excellent article, Ann! I'm glad somebody is exposing Newsom's corporate agenda. I hope he doesn't support Schwarzenegger's peripheral canal and dams proposal next!
Here's an article I wrote for a number of publications on an investigation in Schwarzenegger's corporate greenwashing MLPA process. It is very clear that the oil drilling and wave energy proponents, in collaboration with Schwarzenegger and corporate "Big Green" groups, want to kick fishermen and seaweed harvesters off the water to pave the way to open the northern California coast to wave energy projects, oil drilling and corporate aquaculture.
Senate Majority Leader Calls for Oversight Hearing on MLPA Process
by Dan Bacher
Dean Florez (D-Shafter), the California Senate Majority Leader, said he will conduct a Senate Oversight Hearing this year about conflict of interest and “mission creep” in the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) process during his keynote address at the Coastside Fishing Club dinner in San Mateo on March 28.
Florez said that he and other Senators plan to ask some “very tough” questions of Resources Secretary Mike Chrisman and Mike Sutton, Fish and Game Commission member, about the MLPA process. These questions include why the MLPA has been expanded from a $250,000 process to a $35 million fiasco that is threatening the economy and fisheries on the North Central Coast.
“I’ve found that when you call a hearing, things get fixed really quickly,” said Florez. “For example, when we announced a hearing in response to complaints about EDD’s processing of unemployment claims, the department changed its operations, including opening on weekends. Imagine what will happen will happened when we hold a hearing on the MLPA process.”
He emphasized that the Senators had a lot of questions for Mike Sutton including asking, “Who do you work for?”
Many recreational and commercial fishermen and grassroots environmentalists believe that it’s wrong for Sutton to make decisions about the MLPA when Julie Packard’s Monterey Bay Aquarium employs him. The Aquarium is funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, as is the MLPA process.
“We believe in transparency and the Legislature was told that science would guide the MPLA process,” said Florez. “I believe that plain, old fashioned oversight will turn this situation around.”
He said that the funding of the MLPA by a private entity, the Resource Legacy Foundation, “really has to be looked at.”
“We have to look at all of the relationships,” said Florez. “Nobody thought the MLPA would become a process where the coast is closed first and the science is done later. Politics, not policy, have led this issue. I believe that your cause is right.”
He urged anglers to write letters about their concerns and to attend the hearings when they are announced. “If one-quarter of the people in this room went to the hearing, we would have every Senator there,” Florez emphasized. “What changes policy are the people who show up. The people who show up win!”
He said that he would come to the dinner next year, get back on stage and inform Coastside membership how “far we got” in addressing the inequities in the MLPA. In the meantime, he urged anglers to send him letters about their concerns with the MLPA at dflorez [at] yahoo.com.
“MPAs can have a place,” said Gordon Robertson, vice-president of the American Sportfishing Association, who spoke after Florez, “but they must be steeped in science. The MLPA has to be a public process with no hidden agenda.”
During the dinner, Coastside founder Bob Franko presented a $14,000 check to the San Francisco Tyee Club, founded in 1938, for their years of work on behalf of restoring salmon. The group raises Chinook salmon in pens for release into San Francisco Bay.
“This is our best year ever, with 85,000 fish to be released,” said Brook Halsey of the San Francisco Tyee Foundation. “Up until now we have released 60,000 fish in grow-out pens every year.“
Note: Although Senator Florez' call for an investigation into the MLPA process is very good news, his recently introduced $15 billion water bond bill, SB 301, must be opposed because it would fund "conveyance" - a peripheral canal - and more dams.
Grassroots Enviros, Fishermen Protest MLPA Greenwashing at Fisheries Forum
The MLPA greenwashing process was the most contentious issue during the Joint Legislative Committee on Fisheries & Aquaculture, chaired by State Senator Patricia Wiggins (D – Santa Rosa) on March 26 at the State Capitol.
The forum took place while California's fish populations are in their greatest crisis ever. Central Valley Chinook salmon, delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish populations have declined to record low population levels, largely due to policies pursued by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who portrays himself as the “Green Governor" and has promoted the peripheral canal and no fishing zones as the "solutions" to collapsing fisheries. It is no coincidence that the same guy, Phil Isenberg, was the chair of both Schwarzenegger's MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force and the Delta Vision Task Force.
Ken Wiseman, executive director of the MLPA Initiative, Cindy Gustafson, Chair of the Fish and Game Commission, and Kaitlin Gaffney of the Ocean Conservancy all gushed about Schwarzenegger’s MLPA process as supposedly being “open and transparent.”
However, the real environmentalists in the room – as opposed to some corporate-funded "environmental" groups that support massive fishery closures – ripped the process for being an out-of control process that lacked any form of accountability to the public and the Legislature.
Jim Martin, West Coast Regional Director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, in blistering testimony, slammed the MLPA process for causing disproportionate economic impacts to Point Arena, proposing regulations far exceeding the funding available and for using private funding has biased the process and circumvents the Legislature’s oversight. He urged the Committee to restore the role of the Department of Fish and Game, abolish the Blue Ribbon Task Force and to amend the MLPA.
“The legislation you passed in 1999 was not supposed to be a financial disaster for coastal communities,” Martin said. “It was not supposed to close 40% of the best fishing grounds. It was not supposed to threaten the $1.3 billion dollar saltwater recreational fishery or the $130 million commercial fishery. It was not supposed to cost California thousands of jobs."
“It was not supposed to cost $400 million in the next ten years, and on into eternity,” he continued. “It was not supposed to cut off so much shore-based access that it threatens to destroy the $10 million abalone fishery. Finally, it was not supposed to be a biased process that ignores the social and financial losses to fishing communities, or assume that endless amounts of bag money will be available to fund this experiment.”
John Lewallen, longtime North Coast environmentalist and sustainable seaweed harvester, and others testified how the proposed fishing closures would devastate a coastal economy already ripped apart by salmon and rockfish season closures. He also urged the Committee to investigate conflict of interest in the MLPA process. Lewallen described the whole MLPA process as a “divide and drill” strategy where the only winners are oil companies who want to drill for oil off Point Arena.
"Why is Catherine Reheis-Boyd, CEO and Chief of Staff for the Western States Petroleum Association, a key member of the five-member MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force that has decreed new zones where people can take no food from state waters?," asked Lewallen. "Is it coincidence that the Point Arena Basin offshore from Point Arena is the area of highest oil industry interest in Northern California, and the only tract here now open to Minerals Management Service offshore oil leasing process?"
Assemblyman Wes Chesbro agreed with the concerns posed by Martin, Lewallen and others. “I’m skeptical of this process,” he said. “I’ve spent my whole time defending the North Coast and the people who are most impacted by the marine protected areas do more to restore the environment than anybody. I worry what will happen when the people who do the most to protect our fisheries and environment are gone.”
Chesbro said he had been part of earlier efforts directed by the Fish and Game Commission to set up the no-take zones required by the 1999 Marine Life Protection Act. Chesbro also stated that the marine science required to back the need for no-take zones was questionable or absent, so the process had been abandoned.
“Now you propose to close areas to seaweed harvest, affecting the livelihood of a seaweed harvesting couple,” Assemblyman Chesbro told the advocates of the "Integrated Preferred Alternative." “All I’m saying is, show me the science.”
People wishing to contact the Legislative Fisheries Committee with relevant information or your opinion can send your comments to:
Senator Patricia Wiggins, State Capitol, Room 4081 Sacramento, CA 95814 916-323-6958
Assemblyman Wes Chesbro, State Capitol P.O. Box 942849, Sacramento, CA 94249-0001 916-319-2001
The whole point of "renewable energy" is that it is not supposed to work. After "renewable energy" fails miserably, the paranoid communists wind and Kim Jung IL, or someone like him, is King of The World. No more evil corporations. The bitter truth is that phosphate production capability, and its byproduct 20,000 tonnes/year uranium is in the hands of evil capitalists. Trashing capitalism requires everyone starve in the dark. Witniss what the greenies did to GM "goldern rice." Somehow malnutrition is worth keeping someone from making a buck.
Nice article, but I think a cut and paste error ate the last 3 zeros in Oregon's population. I doubt that Oregon's population is only 3,790,
Good work Annie.
The more 'exposure' this sycophant gets the better. If anyone out there is interested in knowing more about what this green gremlin is supporting and proposing, I refer you to one of many articles by Sarah Phelan, SF Bay Guardian.(sfbg.com) titled "Size (of sea level rise) matters". Newsom is just one of the many corporate lackeys in San Francisco who is pushing the Urban Renewal plans of Lennar Inc, a notorious bad actor, which would gentrify and disrupt one of the last remaining 'communities of color' in this supposedly diverse city. If you follow her link you will find the latest report from the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission. Check out the map that shows, "Central Bay, Shoreline areas vulnerable to Sea Level Rise", compare that with the pretty computer generated plans that Newsom and Lennar have offered to "redevelop" the South East Sector of SF. I understand from a reliable, albeit 'progessive' source, that one of the geniuses on the Lennar team suggested that a sea wall could be built. What are these idiots smoking, gotta be stems 'n seeds laced with something. We have been subjected to the incompetent, self serving "leadership" of this puppet appointed by Willie Brown, for too many years. Please dont inflict him on the rrest of the state. The last thing we need is another self aggrandising, shallow, political opportunist.
Thanks, Dan, for the article, info, and support. And, thanks to antfaber for the proofreading, re Oregon's rural, colonially exploited population: 3,790,060, compared to California's 36,757,666.
This is a question to people who oppose big wave energy: If you were president, governor, or chief decision maker of some kind, what would you do? I think the environmental movement is so discredited partially because -- all they know how to do is say what they oppose. They dont seem to have any ideas. So, maybe for your next article you can write what we SHOULD be doing, rather than emphasizing the costs of what our leaders consider our best option.
I am not being scathing or purely rhetorical, I really wonder how you (or others tho think like you) would respond.
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