Gavin Newsom on Current TV: silent on offshore drilling, oil severance tax, nuclear power, and war

June 16, 1:01 AMSF Energy Policy ExaminerAnn Garrison

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California gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom

I just watched San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's June 11, 2009 interview on Al Gore's internet Current TV, about what Current called his "Green Ticket," with a capital "G," gubernatorial campaign, even though the San Francisco Green Party ran Matt Gonzalez against Newsom in the 2003 mayor's race, and, has not endorsed him, to say the least.  

One of the Mayor's first claims was that he'd finally taken action, that day, to stop the "trash poachers" who pluck redeemable bottles and cans out of the big blue cans labeled "recycling," before the city's trucks can come to pick them up off the sidewalks on garbage pickup days.

No wonder he's trying so hard to hike police and sheriff's budgets while slashing human services to all the most vulnerable people in San Francisco, including the trash poachers, many of whom are homeless.

Did he mention:

1) The pressure on California's ban on nuclear power power plant construction?

2) The pressure on California's ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling?

3) Assembly Bill 656, the proposed oil and gas severance tax to fund higher education, with emphasis on the science and technology of renewable energy?

4) California's hypocritical, polllution exports to the native Southwest, in the form of contracts for coal-fired power, purchased on the Southwest Grid, and, to Baja California, in the form of LNG Terminals and pipelines bringing natural gas to Southern California, and, possibly, in the future, in the form of LNG Terminals and pipelines in Oregon, California's less wealthy, and, mostly rural, northern neighbor, bringing natural gas to Northern California?   Or, to Africa, Indonesia, aboriginal Australia, all of which host uranium mines, and natural gas wells which produce for export to California?

5)  The enormous quanitites of electricity, nuclear and hydroelectric power, most often in the Global South, required to smelt  aluminum used to manufacture the electric cars that Gavin Newsom and Arnold Schwarzenegger both promote as the solution to global warming? 

No, no, no, no, and no, though many environmentalists would say that pressure on the bans on nuclear power plant construction and offshore oil drilling, and, the oil and gas severance tax to fund renewables, are among the largest environmental issues in California.

Did he mention the environmentally destructive War on Terror, or the U.S. military, the world's largest consumer of fossil fuels, including coal-to-liquid (CTL) transportation fuel?  Not on Current TV.   And, if Gavin Newsom has ever said a word against the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, the Congo War, or any other front in the perpetual War on Terror, I haven't heard it and don't know anyone else who has. 

In 2005, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to fly the U.S. flag over City Hall at half mast, in honor of the Iraq War dead, of whatever nationality, but Mayor Newsom would not allow it.