tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59090070960579042312024-03-07T23:35:03.619-08:00CalpoliticoBruce H. Jennings - political commentary and analysis by a veteran insider to the California Legislature -- informed by an even more astute circle of friends, colleagues and political junkies.Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-59301943487801663882019-08-04T12:08:00.000-07:002019-08-04T12:08:45.008-07:00A missing component of most Green New Deals.....<header class="entry-header" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Optima, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><h1 class="entry-title single-post-title" style="color: #e86530; font-size: 22px; line-height: 27px; margin: 0px;">
<a class="nc-orange" href="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/08/michael-hudson-global-warming-and-u-s-national-security-diplomacy.html" style="background-color: transparent; color: #2485a5; text-decoration: inherit;">Michael Hudson: Global Warming and U.S. National Security Diplomacy</a></h1>
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<span class="sep">As Posted on</span> <a href="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/08/michael-hudson-global-warming-and-u-s-national-security-diplomacy.html" rel="bookmark" style="background-color: transparent; color: #2485a5; text-decoration: inherit;" title="Michael Hudson: Global Warming and U.S. National Security Diplomacy">August 4, 2019</a> <span class="sep">by </span><span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/author/lambert-strether" rel="author" style="background-color: transparent; color: #2485a5; text-decoration: inherit;" title="Lambert Strether">Lambert Strether</a> (see Naked Capitalism)</span></div>
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<em><span style="font-weight: 700;">By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Forgive-Them-Their-Debts-Foreclosure/dp/3981826027" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: transparent; color: #2485a5; text-decoration: inherit;" target="_blank">“and forgive them their debts”: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption from Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year</a>.</span></em></div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">Global Warming and U.S. National Security Diplomacy</span></div>
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Control of oil has long been a key aim of U.S. foreign policy. The Paris climate agreements and any other Green programs to reduce the pace of global warming are viewed as threatening the aim of dominating world energy markets by keeping economies dependent on oil under U.S. control. Also blocking U.S. willingness to help stem global warming is the oil industry’s economic and hence political power. Its product is not only energy but also global warming, along with plastic pollution.</div>
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This fatal combination of the national security state’s mentality and oil industry lobbying threatens to destroy the planet’s climate. The prospect of raising temperatures and sea levels along the coasts while inland regions suffer drought is viewed simply as collateral damage to the geopolitics of oil. The State Department is reported to have driven out individuals warning about global warming’s negative impact.<span style="font-size: 10.5px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/08/michael-hudson-global-warming-and-u-s-national-security-diplomacy.html#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc" style="background-color: transparent; color: #2485a5; text-decoration: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 7.875px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">1</span></a></span></div>
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The only attempts to restrict oil imports are the new Cold War trade sanctions to isolate Russia, Iran and Venezuela. The aim is to increase foreign dependence on U.S., British and French oil, giving American strategists the power to make other countries “freeze in the dark” if they follow a path diverging from U.S. diplomatic aims.</div>
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It was the drive to control the world’s oil trade – and to keep it dollarized – that led the United States to overthrow the Iranian government in 1953, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to invade Iraq in 2013, and most recently for Donald Trump to isolate Iran while backing Saudi Arabia and its Wahabi foreign legion in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Sixty years earlier, in 1953, the CIA and Britain joined to overthrow Iran’s elected President Mohammad Mosaddegh to prevent him from nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. A similar strategy explains U.S. attempts at regime change in Venezuela and Russia.</div>
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While seeking to make other countries dependent on U.S.-controlled oil, America itself has long aimed at energy self-sufficiency for itself. In the 1970s the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) developed the environmentally disastrous plan to promote North American energy independence by tapping Canada’s Athabasca tar sands. About ten gallons of water are needed to make each gallon of synthetic crude oil. This water is treated as a free good, not factored into the cost of extracting syncrude. (I was the lead Hudson Institute economist evaluating ERDA’s plans, and was removed from the study when I protested that this might cause downstream water problems.) A byproduct of American energy self-sufficiency may be to make water scarcer and more expensive, especially as fracking pollutes local water resources while diverting an immense flow of fresh water as part of the extraction-and-pollution symbiosis.</div>
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The short-sightedness of America’s aggressive oil diplomacy is causing opposition in Europe as it buckles under unprecedented summer heat waves, just as U.S. cities are being devastated by drought, forest fires, floods and other extreme weather. Yet this has not dented the basic thrust of U.S. foreign policy to control oil.</div>
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<i>Oil in the U.S. balance of payments</i></div>
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Control of oil has long been a major contributor to the U.S. trade and payments, and hence of the dollar’s ability to sustain the huge outflow of overseas military spending. In 1965 I conducted a study for the Chase Manhattan Bank and found that in balance-of-payments terms, every dollar of oil industry investment outflow is recovered in just 18 months. That is because hardly any of the reported import value of oil was paid to foreigners.</div>
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To the extent that the United States must import foreign oil, such trade has been limited to U.S. oil majors (on “national security” grounds), mainly from their own foreign branches. Only a small proportion of the price was paid in foreign currency. U.S. companies bought crude oil from their foreign branches at very low prices, and allocated all the price markup to their shipping affiliates in Panama or Liberia, along with shipping and freight costs, dividends and interest, managerial charges and charges for capital investment, depreciation and depletion. Most of what is counted as U.S. foreign investment in oil takes the form of machinery exports, U.S. materials and management, and so did not actually represent a dollar inflow. The effect has been to obtain oil imports at minimal balance-of-payments cost.</div>
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Since 1974, Saudi Arabia and neighboring Arab countries have been told that they can charge as high a price as they want for their oil. After all, the higher the price <i>they</i> charge, the higher the profits will be for domestic U.S. oil producers. The “conditionality” is that they must recycle their export earnings into the U.S. financial market. They have to keep their foreign reserves and most personal financial wealth in U.S. Treasury securities, stocks and bonds. A global move away from oil would impair this circular flow of oil-production gains into U.S. financial markets supporting domestic stock prices.</div>
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Solar energy technology and other alternatives to oil will not contribute nearly as much to the balance of payments as oil. Not only will environmentally friendly alternatives be outside the ability of U.S. diplomats to control or cut off energy supplies to other countries, but China is taking a leadership position in solar energy technology.</div>
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A major factor bolstering the oil industry’s economic power has been its tax-avoiding “flags of convenience” located in offshore banking centers. U.S. oil companies have long registered taken their profits from production, refining and distributing in Panama and Liberia. Over fifty years ago the treasurer of Standard Oil of New Jersey walked me through how the oil industry pretended to make all its profits in the tax havens that had no income tax – paying a low price to oil-producing countries, and charging a high price to downstream refiners and marketers.</div>
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One implication of this is that there is little political chance of any cleanup of tax avoidance via offshore banking centers, by Western investors and indeed the world’s criminal class and corrupt politicians, given the fact that oil and mining are the major beneficiaries. Weakening the lobbying power to prevent closing the tax loopholes that permit the fictitious cost-accounting of tax-avoidance centers would weakening the oil industry’s economic power.</div>
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<i>U.S. foreign policy is based on making other countries dependent on U.S. oil</i></div>
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U.S. diplomatic strategy is to make other countries dependent on vital materials that U.S. diplomats can use as an economic lever. An early example were the food sanctions imposed in the 1950s to spur resistance to Mao’s revolution in China. Canada broke the grain embargo.</div>
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If other countries produce their energy by solar power, wind power or nuclear power, they will be independent of U.S. oil diplomacy and its threats to cut off their energy supplies, grinding their economies to a halt if they don’t endorse U.S. neoliberal economic policies. This explains why the Trump Administration withdrew from the Paris climate agreement to slow global warming.</div>
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<i>U.S. Cold War 2.0 policy is aimed at isolating Russia</i></div>
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U.S. energy self-sufficiency finds its counterpart in the demand that Europe become dependent entirely on American “Freedom Gas,” at a much higher price than is available from Russia’s Gazprom and reject the Nordstream 2 pipeline, preventing it from obtaining lower-priced rival gas from Russia.<span style="font-size: 10.5px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/08/michael-hudson-global-warming-and-u-s-national-security-diplomacy.html#sdfootnote2sym" name="sdfootnote2anc" style="background-color: transparent; color: #2485a5; text-decoration: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 7.875px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">2</span></a></span> The Trump administration argues that to avoid dependency on Russia, Europe should buy its oil and gas at much higher prices from the United States – about 30% higher, in addition to the expense of building LNG ports to transport liquified natural gas by ocean tanker instead of by Russian pipeline. “We’re protecting Germany from Russia and Russia is getting billions and billions of dollars in money from Germany,” Trump complained to reporters at the White House during a meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda.<span style="font-size: 10.5px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/08/michael-hudson-global-warming-and-u-s-national-security-diplomacy.html#sdfootnote3sym" name="sdfootnote3anc" style="background-color: transparent; color: #2485a5; text-decoration: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 7.875px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">3</span></a></span></div>
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On July 31, 2019 the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 20 to 2 to back the “Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act” sponsored by right-wing Republican Ted Cruz and Blue Dog New Hampshire Democrat Jeanne Shaheen. Companies in Switzerland and Italy were first to be censored.</div>
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<i>Global warming and GDP accounting</i></div>
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Warmer air temperature means a higher rate of evaporation, and hence more rain, tornados and flooding, as we are seeing this year. A related result will be drought as glaciers melt and no longer feed the major rivers on which dams have been built to generate electric power. The seeming irony is that these effects of global warming and extreme weather have become bulwarks of the rise in U.S. GDP. The cleanup costs of air and water pollution, the expense of rebuilding flooded or damaged homes, crop destruction, the increased cost of air conditioning, of coping with the spread of injurious insects northward and the rise in medical and health costs may actually account for all its growth since 2008.</div>
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Neoliberals celebrated the End of History after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, promising an era of new growth as “the market” became the world’s planner. They did not spell out that much of this growth would take the form of coping with the short-termism of the oil industry and other rent extractors living in the present and taking their money and running.</div>
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<i>What factors should a Green Policy emphasize?</i></div>
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As Mark Twain quipped, “Everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” In today’s political world, doing something about global warming means taking on a set of goliaths that go beyond the oil and gas industry. It is one thing to say that global warming, climate change and the resulting extreme weather are existential threats to present-day civilization and economies. It is another to spell out the preconditions for solving the problem in the sphere of economic and tax reform, military and U.S. national security policy.</div>
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A Green program cannot succeed without confronting the National Security state’s mentality aiming at U.S. oil supremacy. U.S. national security has become a war threatening the security of the entire globe. Threatening to freeze countries in the dark if they do not follow U.S. policy and isolate Iran and Russia, the United States is burning itself up along with the rest of the planet.</div>
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Stopping global warming requires a tax policy to close down the special privileges promoting oil industry profits including the use of “flags of convenience” in offshore banking centers as a means of tax avoidance. A Green program logically would include a natural-resource rent tax (as classical economists advocated throughout the 19<span style="font-size: 10.5px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;">th</span>century), and charges for what economists call “external economies,” that is social costs that are “externalities” to corporate balance sheet. Companies should become liable to reimburse society for such costs.</div>
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Imposing a tax on oil usage would raise the price of gasoline, but would not deter consumption much in the short run because car drivers and public utilities already are locked in to oil-using capital investments. A more effective response would be to reduce the profitability of oil by closing the tax-avoidance loopholes and “flags of convenience” that the industry’s lobbyists have created. “Oil industry accounting” leaves “Hollywood accounting” and Donald-Trump style real-estate accounting in the dust.</div>
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The public relations problem with this solution is that this practice of pretending to “earn” all one’s income in small island enclaves with no income tax has become so widespread that it has created an enormous vested interest now including the leading IT giants, industry and real estate. Depriving tax accountants of recourse to such tax-avoidance centers also threatens America’s National Security state by challenging its perceived national interest in attracting the world’s criminal capital to these enclaves as a bulwark of the U.S. balance of payments. The world’s wealthiest corporations and tax evaders are aligned against an economic policy that would most help reduce the carbon footprint by moving beyond oil and gas.</div>
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To implement a successful Green policy program, it thus is necessary to move beyond the environmental problem to take on a broad and wealthy array of vested interests. They will cite free-market ideology as justification for taking their money in the short run, without care for the weather disaster they are causing. That makes the task much more daunting, and also may limit the ideological appeal of a real Green program.</div>
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In countries such as Iceland and Germany, neoliberal Green Parties tend to be centrist and conservative when it comes to supporting banks and the financial sector, and endorse a market-based bonanza of carbon trading rights to be bought and sold by Wall Street speculators. The problem is that such “market-based” solutions must fail, because markets are short-term and do not take account “externalities.” Are Greens willing to criticize this “market philosophy” and its tunnel vision? Without such a challenge, Green parties will appeal largely to “feel good” voters who want to register their politically correct concern without doing much to actually solve the underlying problem.</div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack" style="background-color: transparent; color: #e86530; text-decoration: inherit;"></a>We indeed seem to be entering the End Time. It is turning out to be the antithesis of the neoliberal End of History that was being celebrated in 1991 as free market victory after the Soviet Union collapsed. It is a crisis of Western civilization, not its apex.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: 700;">Notes</span></div>
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<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/08/michael-hudson-global-warming-and-u-s-national-security-diplomacy.html#sdfootnote1anc" name="sdfootnote1sym" style="background-color: transparent; color: #2485a5; text-decoration: inherit;">1</a><span style="font-size: 10.5px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span> Rod Schoonover, “My Climate Report Was Quashed,” <i>New York Times</i> op-ed, July 31, 2019, reported that the White House blocked his report on the adverse effects of climate change on the ground that “the scientific foundation of the analysis did not comport with the administration’s position on climate change.”</div>
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<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/08/michael-hudson-global-warming-and-u-s-national-security-diplomacy.html#sdfootnote2anc" name="sdfootnote2sym" style="background-color: transparent; color: #2485a5; text-decoration: inherit;">2</a><span style="font-size: 10.5px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> Regarding U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) of Energy Dominance, see Ben Aris, “Busting Nord Stream 2 myths,” Intellinews.com, August 27, 2018. U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry has likened U.S. gas to American soldiers liberating Europe from the Nazis. "The United States is again delivering a form of freedom to the European continent," he told reporters in Brussels earlier this month. "And rather than in the form of young American soldiers, it’s in the form of liquefied natural gas." See also and </span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">https://truthout.org/articles/freedom-gas-will-be-used-to-justify-oppression-at-home-and-abroad/.</span></div>
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<a class="sdfootnotesym" href="https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/08/michael-hudson-global-warming-and-u-s-national-security-diplomacy.html#sdfootnote3anc" name="sdfootnote3sym" style="background-color: transparent; color: #2485a5; text-decoration: inherit;">3</a><span style="font-size: 10.5px; line-height: 0; position: relative; top: -0.5em; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span> <span style="font-size: 10pt;">“Euro Slides After Trump Threatens Sanctions To Stop NordStream 2 (Again!),” </span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><i>Zero Hedge</i></span><span style="font-size: 10pt;">, June 12, 2019. </span></div>
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Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-16641156922146241182019-06-11T22:22:00.001-07:002019-06-11T22:22:47.255-07:00Will California's Deeply Flawed Cap-and-Trade Program Become Even Worse ?<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: 'Tiempos Text', serif; font-size: 1.125rem; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.65; padding: 0px 0px 1em; vertical-align: baseline;">
Here is a well researched work by Lisa Song and associates at Pro Publica entitled, <a href="https://features.propublica.org/brazil-carbon-offsets/inconvenient-truth-carbon-credits-dont-work-deforestation-redd-acre-cambodia/">An Even More Inconvenient Truth:</a> Why Carbon Credits for Forest Preservation May be Worse than Nothing. The full work is worth your read and for California readers it is essential that you spread the word: the Air Board is on the verge of worsening an already deeply flawed pollution trading scheme (aka cap-and-trade).</div>
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Many thanks to Lisa Strong and the folks at ProPublica....</div>
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<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #111111; font-family: 'Tiempos Text', serif; font-size: 1.125rem; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.65; padding: 0px 0px 1em; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="lead-in" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "graphik" , sans-serif; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-transform: uppercase; vertical-align: baseline;">"RIO BRANCO, BRAZIL</span> — The state of Acre, on the western edge of Brazil, is so remote, there’s a national joke that it doesn’t exist. But for geochemist Foster Brown, it’s the center of the universe, a place that could help save the world.</div>
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“This is an example of hope,” he said, as we stood behind his office at the Federal University of Acre, a tropical campus carved into the Amazon rainforest. Brown placed his hand on a spindly trunk, ordering me to follow his lead. “There is a flow of water going up that stem, and there is a flow of sap coming down, and when it comes down it has carbon compounds,” he said. “Do you feel that?”</div>
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I couldn’t feel a thing. But that invisible process holds the key to a massive flow of cash into Brazil and an equally pivotal opportunity for countries trying to head off climate change without throwing their economies into turmoil. If the carbon in these trees could be quantified, then Acre could sell credits to polluters emitting clouds of CO₂. Whatever they release theoretically would be offset, or canceled out, by the rainforest.</div>
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Five thousand miles away in California, politicians, scientists, oil tycoons and tree huggers are bursting with excitement over the idea. The state is the second-largest carbon polluter in America, and its oil and gas industry emits about 50 million metric tons of CO₂ a year. What if Chevron or Shell or Phillips 66 could offset some of their damage by paying Brazil not to cut down trees?</div>
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The appetite is global. For the airline industry and industrialized nations in the Paris climate accord, offsets could be a cheap alternative to actually reducing fossil fuel use.</div>
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But the desperate hunger for these carbon credit plans appears to have blinded many of their advocates to the mounting pile of evidence that they haven’t — and won’t — deliver the climate benefit they promise."</div>
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To more fully appreciate the potential hole California is about to step into, read the closing paragraphs describing the Air Board's forthcoming action. And if you are further motivated to oppose these actions, energize your colleagues, friends, and organizations to contact your state legislator as well as Assembly Member Cristina Garcia, Chair of the Joint Legislative Committee on Climate Change Policies to oppose a proposed standard for allowing forest credits that the <span style="font-family: "tiempos text" , serif; line-height: 29.7px;">European Union hasn’t allowed in its cap-and-trade program “due to concerns about their environmental integrity.”</span>.</div>
Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-27054741842873461412019-05-30T11:30:00.000-07:002019-06-02T09:26:02.331-07:00Market-based solutions for defeating a Green New Deal <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "optima" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "optima" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Here is an update analyzing the subversive uses of </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "optima" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">market mechanisms by fossil fuel interests. As I wrote about in 2017, the petroleum majors have been exploring faux </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "optima" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">carbon taxes as a means of undercutting the most important part of California's suite of climate related laws, i.e., non-market mechanisms including restrictive regulatory laws. This tactic of using carbon taxes to dodge mounting litigation and laws fostering an expeditious transition away from fossil fuels is now evolving into a tactic to defeat similarly aggressive versions of a Green New Deal. This may well be a deal that D.C. moderates push to achieve in 2020.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "optima" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Below is an excerpt from a posting on Naked Capitalism:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "optima" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"> “Big Oil Pushes Corporate-Friendly Carbon Tax in Attempt to Stem Green New Deal Wave” [</span><a href="https://news.littlesis.org/2019/05/28/big-oil-pushes-corporate-friendly-carbon-tax-in-attempt-to-stem-green-new-deal-wave/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #2485a5; font-family: Optima, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: inherit;" target="_blank">LittleSis</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "optima" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">]. “With intensifying demands for bold climate action, the fossil fuel industry and its top allies are lining up behind a corporate-funded, market-centered carbon tax proposal, in an effort to stem the rising momentum around ideas like the Green New Deal and growing shareholder and investor concerns about the climate crisis. Oil and gas powerhouses BP and Shell recently announced that they were each contributing $1 million over the next two years to lobbying efforts for the Baker-Schultz Plan, which proposes an initial tax of $40-per-ton on carbon emissions…. Backed by top global corporate powerhouses, the plan is driven by an industry-friendly logic firmly within the bounds of the neoliberal imagination. For example, under the plan, revenue generated from the carbon tax would be returned back to “taxpayers,” rather than used by the government to oversee an accelerated transition to a system of renewable energy… </span><br />
<ins style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Optima, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Americans for Carbon Dividends<br />
<br /></ins><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "optima" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"> (AFCD) is the U.S. lobbying arm for the Baker-Schultz Plan. AFCD appears to be entirely run by the lobbying firm Squire Patton Bogg and several of its top revolving door lobbyists. In addition to the fossil fuel industry ramping up its efforts to promote the Baker-Schultz plan, over a dozen major corporations and corporate-aligned environmental groups just announced a new group, the CEO Climate Dialogue, to promote ‘a market-based solution’ to the climate crisis.” </span>Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-34108281966447912322019-05-28T08:34:00.000-07:002019-05-28T08:34:12.444-07:00The introduction to a paper we recently presented at the Western Political Science Association<br />
meetings in San Diego....<br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Cheri Lucas Jennings, Ph.D.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Bruce H. Jennings, Ph.D.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Abstract</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Scientists around the world cite an accumulating body of evidence to urge the </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">adoption of dramatic changes in policy to address a worsening climate crisis.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Identifying the precise policies to be pursued, however, is especially </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">contentious. </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">California environmental law, often used as a guide by others, is</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">once again serving </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">as a model for shaping climate policies, including</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">discussions of a Green New Deal.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Many states are now seeking to implement one or another version of a </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">specific </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">California market-based approach to climate change: </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">cap-and-trade.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">A closer </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">examination of this emissions trading law raises serious questions </span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">regarding both </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">this policy approach as well as the use of market mechanisms </span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">more generally. Many</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">of the state’s older, </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">non-market </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">policies for prohibiting </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">inherently hazardous activities </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">may provide a more compelling approach for </span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">addressing the principal sources of </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">climate change; a threat perhaps better </span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">understood by a different appellation: </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">fossil-fueled crises.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The choice of laws and policies adopted over the next decade may prove </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">pivotal for </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">addressing the existential threat posed by fossil fuels. California </span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">presents an </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">instructive guide regarding the promise as well as treachery </span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">embedded in the </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">distinctive approaches for addressing rapidly worsening </span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre;">global crises.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The Conflicts over Climate Solutions</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">On February 21, 2019 a youthful group of students made their way to U.S. Senator Dianne</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> Feinstein’s San Francisco office. Speaking in nervous and tentative tones, they presented</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> a simple, singular demand: “We want you to support the Green New Deal.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">For many of us familiar with world of politics, this scene is very much the bread and butter </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">of office holders everywhere. Such meetings typically afford office holders the opportunity to</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">demonstrate their political acumen. Carefully listen, ask questions, nod appreciatively, and</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">thank guests for visiting. It is often a vital opportunity to measure what is going on in the </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre;">world. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Instead, Senator Feinstein informed the students she had just been re-elected as their U.S. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">senator and they would do better listening to her. Among the many hundreds of thousands </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">who subsequently viewed the video clip, her message appeared arrogantly stark: the public, </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">not unlike these children, needs to think more carefully about their naive notion of a Green</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">New Deal and leave the serious decisions to experienced elected officials. As if to </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">double-down on this public relations disaster, Senator Feinstein’s staff the very next day </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">released a draft version of their more properly considered Green New Deal. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Senator Feinstein’s draft proposal is striking in terms of its simplicity. Whereas the Green New</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Deal presented by Congress Member Alexandria Ocasio Cortez et al. identifies broad swaths</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">of policies ranging from public health and welfare, worker transitions and much more, </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Feinstein’s proposal draws on a mere handful of largely existing laws. And whereas the Green</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">New Deal demands dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, Feinstein calls</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> for reducing net greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2050.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Many of Ocasio Cortez’ detractors immediately seized upon the seemingly unwieldy</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">implications of her Green New Deal: vast expenditures creating yet another layer of</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">burdensome and intrusive regulatory programs. Feinstein’s proposal, by contrast, reflects </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">a plan cast by a seasoned legislator: a pragmatic plan merging a handful of new initiatives </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">matched with restoring a small group of existing law policies. A closer reading of each </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">approach, however, reveals a much deeper divide between the two proposals with respect to</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">the primary mechanisms for transitioning the national economy away from fossil fuels.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Senator Feinstein’s proposal displays a very different framework for what measures should </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">serve as solutions to a crisis threatening the survival of human civilization. Topping the </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Senator’s list of new initiatives is a program largely describing what many regard as</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> California’s most celebrated climate law: the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The United States shall reduce net greenhouse gas emissions to zero as soon as </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">possible and by no later than 2050, including by:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"> Instituting a price on carbon that increases over time</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">, impels the cooperation</span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre;"> of</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre;"> foreign nations, and uses revenues to defray household costs and spur new</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; line-height: 1.8; white-space: pre;"> zero-emission investments;</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Dianne Feinstein’s proposal signals a much deeper conflict with the Green New Deal offered</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">by Ocasio Cortez and colleagues. Indeed, only a few short weeks before rebuffing her</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">young constituents, Senator Feinstein and her congressional colleagues received a lette</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">r</span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">signed by over 600 groups demanding support for a Green New Deal. In addition to</span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">endorsing specific provisions, the groups representing many millions of voters also rejected</span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">failed policy instruments, including “...market-based mechanisms and technology options </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">such as carbon and emissions trading and offsets, carbon capture and storage, nuclear </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">power, waste-to-energy and biomass energy. Fossil fuel companies should pay their fair </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">share for damages caused by climate change, rather than shifting those costs to taxpayers.”</span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Senator Feinstein’s seemingly innocuous provision for setting a price on carbon based on a</span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">cooperative plan with foreign nations portends a much more contentious debate regarding</span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 1.8; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">the role of citizens, the state, and markets.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The scene vividly displaying a group of young people challenging a powerful political figure</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">in her office calls forth many different interpretations. Youthful passions versus the sagacity</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">of the aged; the demand for immediate change versus a patience for incrementalism; casting</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">out the old and worn versus embracing items of enduring value. In the emerging </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Anthropocene new questions arise about our choices: Are the familiar tools and time-tested</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">policy approaches simply insufficient to address the fossil-fueled crises of the 21st century ?</span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Without giving away the lede to this story, </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">young protesters around the globe may be on to something….</span></div>
Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-82012280949352514742017-11-10T10:37:00.001-08:002017-11-10T10:39:14.983-08:00Supporting a New Voice at CalPERS: Margaret Brown<span class="im"></span><br />
<div>
<div>
<div>
Dear CalPERS members and others:<br />
<br /></div>
I am calling on you to cast your vote for Margaret Brown in the runoff election at CalPERS. I am hoping the many thousands of members who recently supported my candidacy will
join with an even larger number of CalPERS members to elect a voice for
political change.<br />
<br /></div>
There are at least four compelling reasons for you to vote for Margaret.<br />
<br /></div>
First is the diversity she will add to the CalPERS board. In these
times, adding a woman to any board, but especially one involving the
world of finance is vital. The exclusive gathering of males as the
dominant voices at the table is as archaic as the internal combustion engine.<br />
<br />
Second, Margaret Brown offers a willingness
to listen to dissenting voices. The allegations of procedural
wrong-doing at CalPERS have grown in recent years to include efforts
to block meaningful public participation while muzzling
dissent. Worse still, CalPERS executives have advanced measures to
essentially privatize decision-making over public investments.
<br />
<br />
Third, Margaret Brown has demonstrated ability to act on behalf of CalPERS members. Too many board members, especially in the world of
finance, are seduced into getting along with those occupying the
executive suites. Margaret Brown possesses a willingness
to take on those in power. In the context of a financial world run
amuck, Margaret Brownʻs voice is a welcomed change.<br />
<br />
Fourth - and perhaps most important to all Californians - Margaret Brown
has expressed a willingness to step up and act on what may be the
largest threat of the 21st century: a world of fossil-fueled crises. At a
time when too many of CalPERS board members
reside in a world of denial, a narrow notion of advancing financial
returns alone will provide cold comfort to a public
increasingly threatened by fires, drought, rising tides, and super
storms.
<br />
<br />
CalPERS executives, as captives of private sector interests, represent
an especially formidable opponent to the rule of law and the publicʻs
interest; which makes it all the more important for each of us to elect
leaders willing to challenge the status quo. For more background on CalPERS see my earlier posts at <b>Calpolitico</b> or read my recent book on California politics: <b><i>The War on California: Defeating Oil, Oligarchs and the New Tyranny (Amazon.com).</i></b><br />
<br />
<span class="im">
I hope you will join me in supporting Margaret Brown.<br />
</span><br />
<br />
Bruce H. Jennings, Ph.D.<br />
<br />Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-10376250184505826862017-11-08T14:26:00.000-08:002017-11-08T14:26:35.776-08:00The CalPERS Runoff Election: Margaret Brown & Michael Bilbreyʻs Responses<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Todayʻs post includes responses from the two candidates - Margaret Brown & Michael Bilbrey - competing in CalPERS runoff election, which begins on November 11 and concludes in early December.</b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>The purpose of this post is to provide fuller information from each of the candidates for the many thousands of CalPERS members who voted for me in the recent election and must now decide between the two remaining candidates in the runoff election. For more background on the questions I have posed to each of the candidates, please see my previously posted message: Who Will You Endorse ? </b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>From Margaret Brown</b>:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">As a
so-called “permanent investor” that owns virtually all publicly-traded stocks,
CalPERS cannot ignore the foreseeable consequences of business decisions that
companies within the portfolia make, even if those consequences will not occur
for many years. This reality is at odds with the timeframe of the vast majority
of investors, where the average holding time of U.S. stocks is measured in
seconds, and even a mutual fund with relatively low turnover trades out of
almost all of its positions within a couple of years. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">This
prevailing short-term mindset among investors gives rise to a false impression
that long-term economic issues are somehow inappropriate as a proper investment
consideration, when logic dictates that they clearly are relevant. This
reasoning clearly applies to situations where CalPERS portfolio companies have
under-recognized, long-term liabilities that threaten the well-being and even
survival of the companies. This situation has occurred numerous times
during CalPERS’ history.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">For
example, companies involved in the manufacture or use of asbestos products
virtually all went bankrupt when the negative health impact of asbestos
exposure became well-understood. Similarly, many other companies over the
years have experienced bankruptcy due to other types of environmental
liabilities. More recently, tobacco companies avoided bankruptcy only because
the federal government stepped in to impose a master settlement that capped
liabilities resulting from the health impact of smoking.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">With
hindsight, it is easy to see that it would have been not only contrary to the
interests of justice but unwise from the perspective of a properly functioning
economy, upon which the welfare of CalPERS depends, for CalPERS to have sought
to shield asbestos companies, polluters, or tobacco companies from the
financial consequences of the business decisions they made. This is true even
though at the time, the companies’ business decisions may have been made in
good faith (for example, asbestos was perceived as a life-saving fire retardant
for decades before its pulmonary dangers were understood).</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Further,
it is clear that economic efficiency and the interests of justice are aligned
in wanting to see companies’ under-recognized, long-term liabilities
appropriately recognized. As such, CalPERS should continuously seek a
constructive role across its portfolio in identifying and calling out publicly
for the recognition of such liabilities. If CalPERS' activities contribute at
the margin to the earlier bankruptcy of CalPERS portfolio companies, then so be
it. Presumably, the truth would come out eventually in any event, and it is
better from the perspective of efficiency and justice that the truth be
recognized sooner than later.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">The
statement I am making is purposely general because I am trying to demonstrate
that the principles that I would apply to fossil fuel companies are defensible,
to a large degree, because they are general and not motivated by sentiment
against companies involved in extracting or burning fossil fuels. Moreover,
these principles I am offering are fundamentally economic and are, at their
core, simply a statement of the accounting identity that companies and
investors must recognize reasonably foreseeable liabilities. As such, there is
absolutely no conflict between fiduciary duty and working in ways that might,
at the margin, hasten the bankruptcy of fossil fuel companies. CalPERS didn’t
create the fossil fuel liabilities that stand to swamp the value of myriad
hydrocarbon extraction companies—those liabilities already exist. </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Even
though these principles are stated in a general way, I do want to acknowledge
the special urgency of the climate change liabilities borne by various
companies in the CalPERS portfolio. These liabilities are a threat to human
civilization, which places them in a category that is distinct from any other
financial liabilities ever experienced by investors. As such, CalPERS must not
be silent and cannot afford to let an atmosphere of silence prevail.
CalPERS needs to support and participate in the relevant scientific, policy and
investor forums searching for answers. In particular it needs to strongly
support those who are fighting to minimize sea level rises, since CalPERS owns
billions of dollars of property along coastlines worldwide (and in California)
that stands to be under water within a century.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Please
feel free to contact me if you have any additional questions. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white none repeat scroll 0% 0%; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;">Margaret</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>From Mi<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">chael Bilbrey:</span></b> </span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<div style="clear: both;">
<br />
<div dir="ltr">
<span class="im" style="font-size: small;"><span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im">1.
Many Americans have learned in legal filings submitted by cities and
states that various petroleum corporations have engaged in an
organized campaign to deceive the public about the dangers associated
with fossil fuels. As a prospective member of the CalPERS Board, what do
you believe you can do to address the issue of climate change with
respect to the negative consequences identified in authoritative
scientific statements (e.g., The 5th Assessment of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change)? </span></span></div>
<span class="im" style="font-size: small;">
<div dir="ltr">
</div>
</span><div dir="ltr">
<span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im" style="font-size: small;">As
a CalPERS board member I have access to academic research on the topic
of climate change and this is an area where I have keenly focused. I
have been able to bring this research and data to the creation of the 5
year strategic plan and specifically the Climate 100 proje</span><span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im" style="font-size: small;">ct
where we are focusing our engagement activities on the top 100 carbon
emitters in our portfolio. We have 1. Many Americans have learned in
legal filings submitted by cities and states that various petroleum
corporations have engaged in an organized campaign to deceive the public
about the dangers associated with fossil fuels. As a prospective member
of the CalPERS Board, what do you believe you can do to address the
issue of climate change with respect to the negative consequences
identified in authoritative scientific statements (e.g., The 5th
Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)?
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr">
</div>
<span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im" style="font-size: small;">
<div dir="ltr">
<span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im">As
a CalPERS board member I have access to academic research on the topic
of climate change and this is an area where I have keenly focused. I
have been able to bring this research and date to the creation of the 5
year strategic plan and specifically the Climate 100 proje</span><span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im">ct
where we are focusing our engagement activities on the top 100 carbon
emitters in our portfolio. We have asked other institutional investors
to join us in this engagement and released our findings at the recent
PRI (Principles for Responsible Investing). I have also worked to
successfully place a climate scientist on the Exxon board through our
successful engagement efforts and our ability to have a database of
corporate directors, also known as 3-D. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr">
</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im"><span class="im"><br /><br />
</span></span><br />
<div>
<span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im"><span class="im">2. Some have argued that there is a conflict between meeting your
fiduciary duty as a CalPERS Board member and your responsibility to
protect CalPERS members and the broader public from the burning of
fossil fuels. As a prospective member of the Board, what do you believe
is the best course of action to reconcile such conflicts?</span></span></div>
<span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im"><span class="im">
<div>
</div>
</span><div>
I have a fiduciary responsibility to provide benefits to the
members of CalPERS. In fulfilling this important responsibility, I
consider a number of factors, including climate risk. Our investment
decisions consider the risks related to fossil fuels and </div>
<div>
<span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im">we
have invested in a number of climate-friendly deals such as wind and
solar farms to transition to clean energy. These are deals that both
meet our fiduciary responsibility to meet our return target and our ESG
priorities. I don't believe these priorities are mutually exclusive. I
can meet my fiduciary responsibilities as a trustee while also
considering the risks of climate change. </span></div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
<span class="im">As you may be aware, there are a growing
number of California cities filing law suits against major fossil fuel
corporations seeking to address the damages already affecting numerous
Californians as well as even greater future harms, including negative
impacts affecting many, if not all CalPERS members. What course of
action do you recommend CalPERS adopt in order to address the
potentially massive liabilities facing fossil fuel corporations?</span><br />
<div>
<span class="im"><br /></span>
</div>
<span class="im">
</span><div>
<span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im">CalPERS
has an important voice and one we use to engage with companies where we
invest. We believe that engagement is the most important strategy
considering CalPERS size, 3</span>40 billion in AUM. Not all
institutional investors have the size and magnitude of the CalPERS fund
so we are uniquely positioned to use our voice and influence to change
corporate behavior. We have had numerous successes and are committed to
more as we implement our 5 year ESG plan. You'll notice that I ask
several questions during our board meetings on the progress our
investment staff are making in implementing the plan and more
importantly the changes in corporate behavior that are necessary to
fully mitigate the risks associate with climate change. I am personally
motivated to create the right balance of maximizing our investment
returns with a prudent level of risk.</div>
<span class="im">
</span>
<div>
</div>
<span class="im">
<div>
</div>
<div>
In the event of opposition or delays from other CalPERS Board
members and/or staff to act decisively to prevent the damaging
consequences of fossil fuels, how might you support the urgent calls by
scientists, public health experts and university faculty from around the
world for expedited actions to dramatically reduce fossil fuel
emissions while expanding investments in alternative energy? </div>
<div>
</div>
</span><div>
<span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im">CalPERS
is a leader in its investments in alternative energy, including wind
and solar farms. I am committed to ensuring we have a world where
future generations can thrive and that starts with this generation. I
have pushed to have more focus on ESG strategies and for the staff to
report out on a regular basis our progress in implementing those</span></div>
</div>
</span></div>
strategies. I'm proud of the work that has happened
to date but will not settle as well as continue to push for more
attention and focus. I am proud to have attended the PRI in the past to
learn firsthand the work they are doing as well as our colleagues in
many other funds globally. I have also worked to successfully place a
climate scientist on the Exxon board through our successful engagement
efforts and our ability to have a database of corporate directors, also
known as 3-D. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr">
</div>
<div dir="ltr">
<span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im" style="font-size: small;"><span class="im"><br /><br />
</span></span><br />
<div>
<span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im" style="font-size: small;"><span class="im">2. Some have argued that there is a conflict between meeting your
fiduciary duty as a CalPERS Board member and your responsibility to
protect CalPERS members and the broader public from the burning of
fossil fuels. As a prospective member of the Board, what do you believe
is the best course of action to reconcile such conflicts?</span></span></div>
<span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im" style="font-size: small;"><span class="im">
<div>
</div>
</span><div>
I have a fiduciary responsibility to provide the promised
benefits to the members of CalPERS. In fulfilling this important
responsibility, I consider a number of factors, including climate risk.
Our investment decisions consider the risks related to fossil fuels and
we have invested in a number of climate-friendly deals such as wind and
solar farms to transition to clean energy. These are deals that both
meet our fiduciary responsibility to meet our return target and our ESG
priorities. I don't believe these priorities are mutually exclusive. I
can meet my fiduciary responsibilities as a trustee while also
considering the risks of climate change. </div>
<div>
<span class="im"><br />3. As you may be aware, there are a growing
number of California cities filing law suits against major fossil fuel
corporations seeking to address the damages already affecting numerous
Californians as well as even greater future harms, including negative
impacts affecting many, if not all CalPERS members. What course of
action do you recommend CalPERS adopt in order to address the
potentially massive liabilities facing fossil fuel corporations?
</span><br />
<div>
<span class="im"><br /></span>
</div>
<span class="im">
</span><div>
<span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im">CalPERS
has an important voice and one we use to engage with companies where we
invest. We believe that engagement is the most important strategy
considering CalPERS size, 3</span>40 billion in AUM. Not all
institutional investors have the size and magnitude of the CalPERS fund
so we are uniquely positioned to use our voice and influence to change
corporate behavior. We have had numerous successes and are committed to
more as we implement our 5 year ESG plan. You'll notice that I have
asked several questions during our board meetings on the progress our
investment staff are making in implementing the plan and more
importantly the changes in corporate behavior that are necessary to
fully mitigate the risks associate with climate change. I am personally
motivated to create the right balance of maximizing our investment
returns with a prudent level of risk.</div>
<span class="im">
</span>
<div>
</div>
<span class="im">
<div>
</div>
<div>
In the event of opposition or delays from other CalPERS Board
members and/or staff to act decisively to prevent the damaging
consequences of fossil fuels, how might you support the urgent calls by
scientists, public health experts and university faculty from around the
world for expedited actions to dramatically reduce fossil fuel
emissions while expanding investments in alternative energy? </div>
<div>
</div>
</span><div>
<span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im">CalPERS
is a leader in its investments in alternative energy, including wind
and solar farms. I am committed to ensuring we have a world where
future generations can thrive and that starts with this generation. I
have pushed to have more focus on ESG strategies and for the staff to
report out on a regular basis our progress in implementing those</span></div>
<div>
<span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im">strategies.
I'm proud of the work that has happened to date but will not settle and
continue to push for more attention and focus. I am happy to say that I
have an excellent relationship with my fellow board members and know I
can express my views, opinions and concerns and they listen. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im">Michael Bilbrey </span></div>
<div>
<span class="m_-450343749339948055gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im"><br /></span></div>
<div>
</div>
</div>
</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-29195968052903024822017-11-06T22:03:00.001-08:002017-11-06T22:03:29.557-08:00The CalPERS Board Election Continues - Who Will You Endorse ?<div class="m_5189836729214518598aolmail_m_-2059191048407886388gmail-ajy">
The first round of elections for one of the seats on the Board of Administration at CalPERS (Position B on the previous ballot) resulted in no candidate achieving a majority of votes. CalPERS members have another opportunity to decide who will represent them in one of the worldʻs largest public pension funds. The previous election was sufficiently close that the runoff election may be decided by a relatively small number of voters. It is not surprising that the finalists - Margaret Brown and Michael Bilbrey - each contacted me, requesting my endorsement.</div>
<div class="m_5189836729214518598aolmail_m_-2059191048407886388gmail-ajy">
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The relationship between private returns on investments and damaging public consequences has become a hot topic for public pension funds. Californiaʻs Controller Betty Yee and state Treasurer John Chiang, both board members at CalPERS and CalSTRS, have questioned pension holdings of coal companies or gun manufacturers. Still others have challenged investments in tobacco, pesticides, and so on.</div>
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For many of us who have served in Californiaʻs Legislature, the issue of fossil fuels reflects a long-standing conflict between private and public interests. While historically occupying an economic centerpiece, fossil fuels are increasingly viewed as an archaic and inherently hazardous industry actively engaged in delaying its replacement by a newer generation of cleaner and safer industries. Even more profoundly, thousands of scientists from around the world have documented fossil fuels as posing a threat to the survival of civilization beyond the 21st century. </div>
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On October 18, 2017 I asked the two CalPERS candidates to respond to a series of questions relating to the mounting evidence of damaging consequences resulting from fossil fuels and their role as prospective board members at CalPERS, as follows: </div>
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<span class="m_5189836729214518598aolmail_m_-2059191048407886388gmail-m_3768389060030681921gmail-im"><span><br />
Dear Margaret Brown and Michael Bilbrey: <br />
<br />
My
congratulations to each of you as finalists for the CalPERS Board of
Administration runoff election. I intended to write you earlier but my
work has been interrupted by the fires surrounding my neighborhood in
Santa Rosa.<br />
<br />
Since receiving your request for my endorsement in the runoff
election, I have developed a set of
questions to help me make that decision as well as providing some
guidance for the many thousands of voters who cast a vote for me during the CalPERS general election.<br />
<br />
During
my campaign I emphasized the importance of
the CalPERS investment decisions as a means of affecting corporate
behaviors more broadly. Following
conversations with numerous CalPERS members, I have good reason to
believe a clear statement of your position on one particular issue - the
role of CalPERS investment decisions with respect to the damaging
consequences of fossil fuels - may be
pivotal for gaining the favor of many
voters who supported my candidacy. Having served for many years as a
senior environmental policy adviser to the California Legislature as
well as writing a book on this topic (The War on California: Defeating
Oil, Oligarchs and the New Tyranny), your position is clearly important
to me as well.<br />
<br />
Here are my questions for you:<br />
<br />
</span>1.
Many Americans have learned in legal filings submitted by cities and
states that various petroleum corporations have engaged in an organized
campaign to deceive the public about the dangers associated with fossil
fuels. As a prospective member of the CalPERS Board, what do you believe
you can do to
address the issue of climate change with respect to the
negative consequences identified in authoritative scientific statements
(e.g., The 5th Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change)? <br />
<span><br />
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2.
Some have argued that there is a conflict between meeting your
fiduciary duty as a CalPERS Board member and your responsibility to
protect CalPERS members and the broader public from the burning of
fossil fuels. As a prospective member of the Board,
what do you believe is the best course of action to reconcile such
conflicts?<br />
<br />
3. As you may be aware, there are a growing number of
California cities filing law suits against major fossil fuel
corporations seeking to address the damages already affecting numerous
Californians as well as even greater future harms,
including negative impacts affecting many, if not all CalPERS members. What
course of action do you recommend CalPERS adopt in order to address the
potentially massive liabilities facing fossil fuel corporations?<br />
<br />
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4.
In the event of opposition or delays from other CalPERS Board members and/or
staff to act decisively to prevent the damaging consequences of fossil
fuels, how might you support the urgent calls by scientists, public health experts and university faculty from around
the world for expedited actions to dramatically reduce fossil fuel emissions
while expanding investments in alternative energy? <br />
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For
additional information, you are welcome to follow me on Facebook, visit my blog at Calpolitico (<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://Calpolitico.blogger.com&source=gmail&ust=1510113230680000&usg=AFQjCNGq_T4glbhWZKsc0sSh9QvS40zrhA" href="http://calpolitico.blogger.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Calpolitico.blogspot.com</a>), or read my book.<br />
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To
provide transparency I am seeking a concise response that
can be distributed publicly. I ask that you respond
no later than November 3, 2017 so that voters have time to
read and carefully consider your position on the issues. In the absence of any response, I will
only be able to report that outcome to my many supporters.<br />
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<span>Congratulations once again on your campaign thus far. I look forward to your thoughtful and timely response.<br />
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All my best,<br />
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</span></span></div>
Bruce H. Jennings, Ph.D.</div>
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<b>Next up: the responses......... </b></div>
Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-46705715943355440772017-10-12T15:31:00.000-07:002017-10-12T15:31:20.168-07:00The Winds of Political Change On the evening before the now infamous and furious fire broke out across my community in Santa Rosa, I was drafting a letter of thanks to the many thousands of voters who supported my recent candidacy to help direct one of the worldʻs largest public pension funds. By 3 am my partner and I would take thirty minutes to select a few cherished items before fleeing the fires appearing on the ridge lines.<br />
<br />
As the LA Times Editorial Board would write about the fires that began that evening, "It may well be the stateʻs worst catastrophe in recorded history by any measure...The superstorms that scientists warned would result from climate change? They are here. The day of reckoning isnʻt in the future. It is now." ("The Climate Change Fire Alarm from Northern California," LA Times, 10/12/17).<br />
<br />
The connection between my writing on the politics of climate change is one that I have made for many years in the California Legislature as well as in public life: the various disasters we are witnessing often share a common linkage to the rise of fossil-fueled crises around the globe. For those who think of our changing climates as a remote threat, the events in Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico and California are a wake-up call. <br />
<br />
The cause of harrowing fossil-fueled disasters will continue to be debated as well they should. One cannot immediately conclude that the specific fire still enveloping my community can be easily assigned to the burning of fossil fuels. As we recognize, the construction of scientific proofs donʻt move as swiftly as the fires continuing to threaten my neighbors. What climate scientists and others have made clear is that we will increasingly be subjected to these kinds of destructive events by ignoring the over-sized role of specific sources, including the burning of fossil fuels. Yet, this parsing of causal factors overlooks the larger destructive role of fossil fuels in the national economy.<br />
<br />
A central theme in my candidacy to become a board member with the California Public Employeesʻ Retirement System was designed to call attention to the linkage between how this pension fund manages public investments, especially those investments supporting the fossil fuel industries. As a participant in many political struggles, I have argued for many years that treating a variety of large-scale threats as isolated events - from pesticide poisonings of farmworkers and consumers to the pollution of rivers, lakes and oceans to the contamination of entire air basins to the proliferation of a multitude of toxic products - disguises the common trait for so many of these damaging events to an economy based on fossil fuels.<br />
<br />
Despite the efforts of powerful industries seeking to reinforce a climate of denial and delayed actions, millions of Californians comprehend that the converging evidence gathered by scientists across the globe means that we must expeditiously exit fossil fuels. Not according to a time table designed to convenience corporations, but to foster a robust economy built on achieving a healthy economy for workers, communities, and those who too often are subjected to the damaging effects of a poisoned economy. It is at this juncture that public investments must engage in more decisive actions. <br />
<br />
To date, the efforts to draw on public investments as a vehicle for supporting a healthy economy have been feeble. Efforts to divest, impose strict controls on damaging corporate decisions, redirect investments toward alternative energy, jobs and communities have been dismal. Worse still, CalPERS decision-making has been characterized by secrecy, curtailing public participation, and quieting the voices of those calling for actions to place California on a stronger path to an economy where the benefits are shared by all, not simply the stratospheric interests of the most wealthy.<br />
<br />
The purpose of public investment decisions must surely include an assessment of whether certain industries now pose too great a risk to society at large. The evidence of risk associated with fossil fueled industries is becoming increasingly evident; whatever the short-term dividends that might accrue to CalPERS beneficiaries, the damaging effects are already far too expensive for the larger society. The disasters of 2017 undermine the arguments of so-called financial benefits to pension funds which pale in comparison to the astronomical costs required to address the negative consequences of rising seas, worsening fires, and super storms.<br />
<br />
Indeed, the arguments advanced by environmentalists decades ago are now being supplemented by the energy and financial analysts arguing that fossil fuels have outlived their usefulness. The alternatives to coal, the internal combustion engine, toxic products and associated industries are largely at hand. When joined with the consensus statements by scientists calling for an immediate economic transition as essential to avoid worsening disasters, the table has been set for everyone to join in the herculean effort to transform our economy. <br />
<br />
While CalPERS represents a tiny cog in this effort, like other elements for one of the worldʻs largest economies, its potential influence is considerable. In order to hasten our economic transition, the members of CalPERS Board of Administration need to devise a much more aggressive agenda....<br />
<br />
(stay tuned for more on this story)<br />
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<br />Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-88384600920352198492017-09-07T08:25:00.001-07:002017-09-11T14:56:33.715-07:00Los Angeles Presentation on September 21st !<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><b>COME JOIN BRUCE JENNINGS AT OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE </b></i><br />
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<br />
For those readers in the Los Angeles area, I am hoping you
will join me at noon on Thursday,<br />
<br />
September 21st at Occidental College where I will make a presentation on my book -<br />
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The War on California: Defeating Oil, Oligarchs and the New Tyranny. I will join several of<br />
<br />
Los Angelesʻ most notable public interest advocates in a not-to-be-missed discussion.<br />
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I hope you can join us at this free event !Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-85920426024968779262017-09-06T09:20:00.002-07:002017-09-06T09:20:45.800-07:00The Lessons of HarveyTodayʻs post is relatively short in an effort to respond to a question posed to me by a group of CalPERS members; in fact, they are quite angry. <br />
<br />
Whatʻs the source of their anger? They are convinced I am covertly engaged in what several of them refer to as "social engineering" - a reference that is a bit vague, but seems to imply that they simply want the CalPERS Board to grow their investments. They appear agitated that considerations beyond making money are nonsense and have no place in the management of their retirement monies.<br />
<br />
To be fair, their argument has traditionally received the support among many conventional financial managers in previous times. But as I noted in a recent post, such thinking is becoming very quickly challenged by not just critics of ʻold schoolʻ financial management, but large numbers of informed citizens. The shortcomings of the older simply "growing our money" is perhaps best illustrated by the most recent <i>natural</i> disaster - Hurricane Harvey.<br />
<br />
I question the notion that Harvey is<i> natural</i> because of the mountain of scientific evidence offered by climate and other scientists around the world. For most of the scientists, Harveyʻs severity and damage is linked to a variety of human activities, but especially specific industries including the fossil fuel industries; it is why many of us have taken to calling such events <i>fossil-fueled storms</i>.<br />
<br />
It is precisely the link between the burning of fossil fuels and the threats to civilization that causes an increasing number of people to raise questions about the consequences of their investments. Indeed, investment managers across the globe now wonder whether investments in fossil fuels are not simply too risky. The economic destruction in Houston, now estimated close to $200 billion is ironically linked to the complex of petrochemical plants that have fostered these fossil-fueled storms. For many residents in the region, monthly pension checks do not begin to compensate them for the destruction of their homes, neighborhoods, and livelihood.<br />
<br />
The question for CalPERS members should not be limited to simply how fast their investments can grow, but whether the negative consequences of certain kinds of investments will overwhelm whatever financial benefit they believe they are going to receive in the future. For those who think that even asking the question is non-sense, I suggest you take the time to consider what just happened to Houston. Or what appears about to happen to Florida. Or what may be on the horizon for many communities across California. Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-56886680499803510562017-08-13T16:12:00.001-07:002017-08-13T16:12:15.458-07:00The Broader Social Consequences of Investment DecisionsIn an essay appearing last month in Institutional Investor ("Avenue of Giants,"July 1, 2017), Ashby Monk argued for a broader definition of fiduciary duty. In polling more than 40 large "pensions and sovereigns," Mr. Monk noted that more than half of those surveyed rejected the notion that their decisions would be guided by the consequences for the community they inhabit. The rationale, it appears, is such considerations are quite simply beyond their fiduciary duties.<br />
<br />
Mr. Monk went on to note that narrowly defined notions of fiduciary duty, however rational for individual investors or pension managers fosters damaging consequences for the larger investment community. Monks went on to raise a series of questions:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Where will the breakout innovations in our industry come from if investors are bound by a prudent-person rule?</li>
<li>If some investors hide fees paid to external managers, doesnʻt such secrecy prevent boards from understanding the true cost of producing these returns?</li>
<li>If the price of ʻaccessʻ to a given fund is conditioned by outrageous terms or side letters, doesnʻt this further empower private managers to extract higher fees over time? </li>
</ul>
Each of these questions illustrated practices by institutional investors posing a larger problem for pension fund managers. A too narrowly defined notion of fiduciary duty overlooks the negative consequences for not just beneficiaries, but also the larger society. As mentioned in my earlier postings, these are problems requiring, among other remedies, a radical transparency.<br />
<br />
Yet even a much greater transparency is not enough to address what is perhaps the most damaging disconnect between a narrowly defined notion of fiduciary duty and the most threatening of consequences in our time. As Monks notes, many institutional investorsʻ strict definition of fiduciary duty discourages them from considering climate change as a legitimate issue.<br />
<br />
It is clearly evident that among the pivotal issues confronting all Californians, is the urgent need to more fully comprehend the true costs of a fossil-fueled economy. Whatever the short-term calculus of satisfying a narrowly defined fiduciary duty at CalPERS, perpetuating fossil fuels and associated industries poses an existential threat to the survival of human civilization beyond the 21st century. As Governor Jerry Brown has noted, for those doubting the magnitude of climate threats, one only has to peruse the consensus statements by climate scientists (e.g. IPCC) to understand the especially damaging role of fossil fuels. <br />
<br />
For these reasons, it is important for all voters to understand that the election of public-at-large board members of CalPERS in September is not merely a narrow choice regarding some abstract discussions about fiduciary duties and investment returns; elections of all sorts - from city councils to state treasurers to board members for one of the worldʻs largest pension funds will play an increasingly crucial role in making the urgently needed changes for transitioning to a new economy.<br />
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I look forward to posting more on this topic in future posts....and thanks for your readership and commentary. Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-77162861475134551102017-08-09T10:38:00.000-07:002017-08-09T10:38:33.767-07:00Radical TransparencyAs noted by Bloomberg News some days ago, "a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, hardly a left-wing Donald Trump
critic, called on the president to adopt a new strategy on the Russia
probe: "radical transparency." The recommended course of action is perhaps also fitting for the members of the Board of Administration at the California Public Employeesʻ Retirement System (CalPERS).<br />
<br />
Among the harshest criticisms leveled at CalPERS is the lack of transparency surrounding varied decisions combined with a steadfast refusal to engage in open discussions regarding its policies. Indeed, another candidate as a board member at CalPERS has detailed sustained efforts by staff and current board members to prevent the necessary deliberations regarding specific policies.<br />
<br />
The red-flag rising from such episodes at CalPERS is familiar terrain for anyone who has conducted reviews of state agency practices. In various over-sight investigations/hearings I conducted over my years with Californiaʻs Legislature, similar efforts to prevent more fulsome discussions often signaled practices that directors of agencies wanted to remove from public view. Some observers of CalPERS have referred to such issues as a problem of "CalPERS culture." Framing the issue as one of CalPERSʻ <i>culture</i>, however, is unnecessarily vague in addition to obscuring what needs to be done to turn things around at CalPERS.<br />
<br />
Others in Sacramento have analyzed the so-called cultural problem at CalPERS more succinctly: "Look," as stated by one of my experts from the world of finance described the problem to me some years ago, "if you walk into CalPERS and talk to one or another of their financial consultants, you readily comprehend that too many of these folks view their jobs as preparing their vita for the next available position at Carlyle, Goldman, or some other outfit." The CalPERS problem, from this perspective, is not an abstract, fuzzy cultural attribute - it more closely resembles a more traditional problem of agency capture by a private interest. Too many in top management positions perceive their job as meshing their responsibilities with large financial interests, including private equity firms, instead of a career defined by serving the beneficiaries and people of California.<br />
<br />
As still other critics have written, CalPERS management has become wedded with a system of rewards promoting risky behaviors when it comes to investments. Paralleling the kind of analysis provided by Michael Lewis (The Big Short), the CalPERS organization shares a potentially dangerous trait marked by many other "masters of the universe" from the world of finance - they have no skin in the game. Losing beneficiariesʻ money is simply an abstract risk having little bearing on various other rewards.<br />
<br />
This system of rewards and compensation, revolving doors with clients, and critical reviews of management practices requires a much higher level of scrutiny. And these are only the initial steps necessary to ensure that the primary objectives of serving both beneficiaries and the public is on firm foundation requires a transformation from management practices obscuring decision-making at CalPERS. It is a policy premised on what we might term a "radical transparency."<br />
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<br />Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-32228550681252319042017-08-04T05:06:00.000-07:002017-08-04T05:06:04.454-07:00Public versus Private Comparisons<br />
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A few weeks ago, while visiting friends at Californiaʻs capitol, a former colleague mentioned the horrible gap that CalPERS faces with respect to unfunded obligations. If you have followed the discussion of public pension funds over recent years, it is a common basis for beginning discussions about the troubling state of finances facing future generations. Not unlike the discussions surrounding social security, the topic typically moves to a linked discussion: why we must turn to ʻless generousʻ retirement benefits. The fact that the less generous alternatives (401ks) have their own disastrous performance for a generation of retirees relying on such programs never seems to enter the discussion.<br />
<br />
Part and parcel of the agenda for ʻdown-sizingʻ pension obligations is the message that public sector pensions quite simply donʻt measure up to private sector performance. The underlying theme is if CalPERS were run more like those plans managed by private corporations, things would be much better. All of which might sound compelling, unless one happens to have come across recent reports published by that hot-bed of radical financial reporting, Bloomberg News.<br />
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<u>S&P 500’s Biggest Pension Plans Face $382 Billion Funding Gap</u><br />
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<time class="published-at time-based" datetime="2017-07-20T05:00:00-04:00" itemprop="datePublished">On July 20, 2017 </time>Brandon Kochkodin and Laurie Meisler provided the following on Bloomberg News: </div>
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"People who rely on their company pension plans to fund their
retirement may be in for a shock: Of the 200 biggest defined-benefit
plans in the S&P 500 based on assets, 186 aren’t fully funded.
Simply put, they don’t have enough money to fund current and future
retirees. The situation worsened for more than half of these funds from
fiscal 2015 to 2016. A big part of the reason is the poor returns they
got from their assets in the superlow interest-rate environment that
followed the financial crisis. It’s left a hole of $382 billion for the
top 200 plans."<br />
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This morning in an updated version of the July article, Bloomberg repeated a similar magnitude of problem facing the retirees for many of the nationʻs largest firms. While many of these same corporations have used revenues to pay dividends to investors, payments to workersʻ pensions are an unmet and growing obligation. As described in Bloomberg: "Companies are eager to get out of the pension business. Most prefer
401(k) plans, where the employee alone bears the risk of falling short
at retirement. More are also offloading their pension plans, paying
insurance companies to take them on instead."(see "How America Dug a $375 Billion Pension Hole." Bloomberg, August 4, 2017).<br />
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The Bloomberg report does nothing to relieve the deeper inquiry into troubling practices at CalPERS; it does, however, cast doubt on those who would advance the privatization of pensions as some kind of solution.<br />
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The record of private sector managed pension funds is not an inspired one for public sector workers. Indeed, the record of corporate managed pension funds underscores the importance of an open and democratic process in the management of pension funds -- a discussion that should be at the center of the upcoming election for Board members at CalPERS.<br />
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<br />Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-49998339062979464552017-07-20T10:35:00.001-07:002017-07-20T10:35:39.537-07:00Honoring Labor....at CalPERSHonoring Labor....at CalPERS<br />
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<br />
It is not uncommon for legitimate criticisms of a larger policy or organization to morph into a narrative that unfairly characterizes entire groups of workers. Before launching my summary of various problems at CalPERS, I want to distinguish those occupying the upper reaches of management from the many thousands of other workers employed at the pension fund. Why ?<br />
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One of my early lessons in the California Legislature emerged with what for me was a novel political agenda: down-sizing government. While criticisms were readily available to attack the performance of any group of public workers, various partisans were always prepared to use such reviews as the basis for dismantling entire programs, departments, or agencies. Part of what the general public so often missed in the rough and tumble of politics is that those seeking to prove the virtues of running government like a business often engaged covert actions to discredit the work of public agencies. A casualty of these attacks often included not-so-subtle attacks on public workers including their inability to perform their jobs as well as their counter-parts in the private sector.<br />
<br />
Arnold Schwarzeneggerʻs original campaign promise for "blowing up the boxes" - ridding the public of the waste and fraud in Sacramento represented a classic example of such baseless attacks on public workers. After months of internal reviews, audits, and task force meetings, many citizens recognized that the actor-governorʻs campaign posture, while perhaps a compelling sound-bite, reflected considerable ignorance regarding the millions of public employees who keep things running across the state.<br />
<br />
Teaching our children, maintaining transportation, protecting our environment, and taking care of the elderly represent the daily accomplishments of public workers performing the essential tasks of a modern society. More crucially, public workers perform virtually all of these tasks in accordance to an agenda to enrich the lives of citizens, not to line the pockets of the wealthy. Indeed, it is the conflict between private and public interests that so often represents the heart of so many political battles - a dynamic that certainly appears evident in the conflicts at CalPERS.<br />
<br />
At the heart of many critical reviews surrounding CalPERS has been the issue of public participation and inquiry into the management of the pension fund. To many, such arguments sound like a boring transcript containing an abundance of procedural minutia. Yet, beneath the mind-numbing back and forth is a deeper conflict, one involving a tussle between public and private interests. Indeed, it is a classic confrontation where the exclusion of public discussion and transparency reflects the anti-democratic character that so often accompanies private-sector decision-making.<br />
<br />
As I explore the criticisms that have been leveled against CalPERS in the coming days, I hope readers will appreciate the important difference that so often exists between the responsibilities and duties of those holding positions of authority versus the much larger group of individuals performing the daily task to ensure for the retirement and well-being for millions of Californians. <br />
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<br />Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-32102672049173245882017-06-26T10:30:00.001-07:002017-09-11T14:47:29.823-07:00Bruce H. Jennings - Your CalPERS Candidate !** <b><i>Bruce H. Jennings will be speaking in Los Angeles at Occidental College at noon on </i></b><br />
<b><i>September 21st - check this space for updates</i></b> **<br />
<br />
This post begins a discussion series focusing on the California Public Employee Retirement System. You may already recognize CalPERS as one of the worldʻs largest public pension funds. It is also a place where more than 250 members have nominated me as a candidate to serve on CalPERS Board of Administration - and I owe a considerable debt of gratitude to the hundreds of individuals who have supported me in this endeavor. During the month of September, the 1.8 million members of CalPERS will cast votes electing two individuals to serve as Member-at-Large to the Board. <br />
<br />
One of my objectives as a CalPERS candidate has been inspired by an array of public interest mentors who have guided my work in the Legislature to pursue a common goal: promoting citizensʻ rights to govern the nature and direction of Californiaʻs economy. Promoting citizen participation in managing one of the worldʻs largest economies is also an essential element to address the fossil-fueled crises of our time, a central argument in my book, The War on California. In each of these regards, there is much that needs to change concerning the management of CalPERS.<br />
<br />
There are many junctures for Californians to influence the stateʻs economic and political future, including the more than $300 billion dollars managed by CalPERS on behalf of many of Californiaʻs public workers. While up-coming Board election is limited to members of the pension fund, many elected officials figure prominently in the governance of CalPERS (the Governor, Treasurer, Controller and others). While there is much to criticize at CalPERS, there is also a need to recognize the vital importance of public workers and their invaluable contributions over many years.<br />
<br />
The politics surrounding CalPERS has been contentious for many years. Starting as a sleepy bureaucracy for receiving and disbursing retirement funds, CalPERS gradually became a more pivotal force with the expanding political might of public employees and their collective financial resources. By the 1960s, CalPERS became a potent tool for influencing corporate boards across the nation and around the world. CalPERS also became a target for private sector groups eager to exploit economic opportunities for ʻhelpingʻ to manage public employeesʻ portfolios. <br />
<br />
The political role of CalPERS is a topic I will explore in greater depth in the coming weeks along with additional excerpts from my book on related topics. I do not pretend to possess vast knowledge about CalPERS; I am, therefore, especially interested in learning from the readers. Many of us who work politically have often benefited from the collective work of many minds working together, yielding not only important information, but often insights into paths for achieving political change.<br />
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As a belated apology, my absence for the past several weeks has been largely unavoidable owing to the launching my book as well as my bid to join
the CalPERS Board. Thanks to family, friends and colleagues and the many readers who I hope will join the unfolding discussions. While my previous writing schedule allowed for postings on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the next series will be a bit more episodic.<br />
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In addition to reviewing some of the larger controversies enveloping CalPERS, I will also punctuate my postings with observations on the continuing controversies surrounding cap-and-trade.<br />
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Thank you in advance for your attention and commentary.Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-71711257402064702522017-04-16T21:26:00.002-07:002017-04-16T21:26:47.087-07:00Establishing Cap-and-Trade: The Climate of Subversion<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-ffbd5165-6b82-d4a7-2581-1736bfbbb04c" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[<i>Todayʻs post recalls some of the earliest history of AB 32 - The Global Warming Solutions Act - and the conflicts surrounding both its passage as well as its implementation. More than simply a historic footnote, this history would eventually connect to the early policy discussions inside the Trump regime, including Congress, and the direction of ʻcontrolsʻ established on major industrial sources</i>]</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">On September 27, 2006 Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the California Global Warming Solutions Act into law, to impose a graduated cap on emissions of specific greenhouse gases; and, to allow those facilities responsible for such emissions to utilize market mechanisms to achieve the required reductions. Despite the Legislatureʻs extensive, time-honored tradition of crafting laws where words had specific meanings, the Solutions Act left considerable uncertainty as to the degree to which Californiaʻs climate change policy would be governed by regulatory controls that typically spelled-out who was responsible for reducing toxic emissions, in what amounts, the penalties for failures, and enforcement actions to including citizen ability to file legal actions against corporations… all versus market mechanisms.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At a time when climate scientists increasingly insisted that everyone needed to move decisively to quell the fossil-fueled storms of the 21st century, California was embarking on an uncertain path. Amidst celebrations by the stateʻs actor-governor, Hollywood stars and politicians proclaiming Californiaʻs new law, many public interest advocates wondered how many of the same corporations that had for so long been responsible for the largest market failure in history, were now going to be a part of a market “solution” to global climate change? Community activists in Los Angeles described the recent history of emissions trading as a disaster where public health was sacrificed amidst supposed benefits, far outside their neighborhoods. In places such as Wilmington, California, with its prominent oil refinery, activists wondered about the consequences for their community when Shell began trading emissions credits. In addition to concerns about greenhouse gases, They asked, how could emissions trading curb the use of other pollutants affecting the health of nearby communities?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Assessing the ‘trading’ provision of cap-and-trade in the Solutions Act struck many as theater of the absurd. Regulators, business owners, community activists, environmental lawyers, and private sector financial analysts were openly skeptical about the state’s entry into the world of emissions trading. Even though traditional command-and-control regulatory laws had many flaws, as businesses often complained about regulatory paperwork, many noted that AB 32 now required them to be savvy traders in a new commodity market. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The relationship between the Solutions Act and other California law was by no means a trivial matter. The Golden State had already enacted a multiplicity of laws and regulations severely restricting the release of toxic chemicals into the air, and a larger array of laws placed California on a path toward eliminating fossil fuels as a source of energy in the 21st century. To all outward appearances the authors of the Solutions Act, breezed</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> through the requisite policy committee. Behind the scenes, however, were serious misgivings about an ill-conceived approach whereby many of the same corporations responsible for emitting hazardous substances into the air should then benefit by credits for reducing emissions elsewhere. Over the previous two decades many activists had played a central role in advancing a series of laws placing California, not simply at the forefront of clean air legislation, but more important, placing significant restrictions on the use of fossil fuels in the state energy supply. Were these hard-earned gains to be undone?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As later reported by an high-ranking administrator in one of Cal EPAʻs agencies, Governor Schwarzeneggerʻs political leanings were clear before AB 32 was even signed into law:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Governor Schwarzenegger and his staff were intent on delaying substantive work on climate mitigation [in order to protect] California industry - major Republican party donors - from any competitive disadvantage. Schwarzenegger wanted it both ways: to be a climate hero and to avoid alienating the business community. Likewise, the Administration made strenuous efforts to steer the draft legislation away from regulation and toward market trading. That put Schwarzenegger in direct conflict with Democratic leaders who insisted on ʻearly action measuresʻ and who strongly preferred direct emission controls. The latter is precisely why the Air Board was given the lead implementation role: it was world renown for adopting ambitious, technology forcing rules. The Administrationʻs counter proposal for a squishy, non-accountable, multi-agency implementation body was soundly rebuffed. The conflict boiled over once the bill was enacted.”</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The early ʻtraitsʻ of Californiaʻs Global Warming Solutions Act would reverberate for years to come. </span></div>
Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-3911107700241216582017-04-12T08:37:00.001-07:002017-04-12T08:37:24.607-07:00Market Mechanisms for Market Failures: Part I<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-190756e4-60f4-c857-a101-58679bf3cbc8" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[<i>In todayʻs posting, we return again to the historic roots of Californiaʻs pollution trading scheme (aka AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act) and the many hard-won regulatory laws that preceded it. This history becomes important as a lens for understanding the contemporary politics of fossil-fuel induced crises, including the current push for deregulation by the Trump regime.</i>]</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The rising alarm surrounding air pollution during the 1960s lead to the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970. The essential mechanism of the Act was to establish limits on the release of harmful air pollutants, which principally affected auto manufacturers, refineries, and heavy industries.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> The regulatory requirements of the Clean Air Act were largely aimed at technological changes, including filters to remove recognized pollutants and meet air quality standards. “By 1991, however, the Environmental Protection Agency had succumbed to the pressure of lobbyists demanding lax enforcement of the Actʻs rules or regulations associated with expensive emissions equipment. EPA targeted Southern California to test a plan that would potentially increase healthy air while reducing emissions by offsetting the cost of pollution controls ….The pilot project, called Regional Clean Air Incentives Market (RECLAIM) established a system for trading ʻpollution creditsʻ among polluters.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">While the authors of AB 32 pointed to an East Coast emissions trading program to limit CO2 emissions (RGGI) as an illustration of how cap-and-trade might operate, RECLAIM was a much closer approximation to the broad contours of the Solution Act.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> It is likely that the sponsors of AB 32 did not want to point to RECLAIM for one simple reason: it was “widely regarded as a failure due to the issuance of too many emission credits, resulting in weak prices.”</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Initiated as one of the earliest programs for emissions trading, RECLAIM faced challenges from the start. “Companies had an incentive to achieve escape routes (e.g., variances granted by local air districts) from caps placed on emissions.” </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">From its inception, the Los Angeles Incentives Market (RECLAIM) confronted intensive scrutiny from community-based organizations. Communities were already suspect of the basic premise that pollution trading from oil refineries, rail traffic, and other industrial facilities would not impose an even greater threat to their well-being. Various community groups viewed the entire premise of providing regulatory flexibility to the private sector with a blunt skepticism, particularly regarding the benefits of a pollution-trading scheme designed by those working from office towers in New York, Washington, D.C., or San Francisco. The suggestion that they should join with national environmental groups who had designed AB 32 yielded open hostility among a large number of community-based groups in Los Angeles, “This wouldn’t be the first time that they threw us under the bus!”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Another controversy enveloping the proposed trading scheme related to </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">what many public health officials referred to as ʻold scienceʻ versus ʻnew science.ʻ Early trading schemes such as RECLAIM emerged during an era when trading was founded on an already dated characterization of ʻpollutantsʻ as chemical hazards posing principally short-term harms. By the beginning of the 21st century, newly emerging scientific findings included a much broader array of harms, reflected in an expanded set of statutory terms (e.g., neurotoxins, microparticulates, endocrine disruption). Because the harms recognized latent effects impacting multiple generations, sometimes at exceedingly small exposures or other times based only the timing of exposures (i.e., first trimester for reproductive effects) legislative discussions moved from how to manage chemical exposures to a more pointed effort simply to eliminate the commercial production or release of substances posing inherent hazards. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Whereas various federal laws were firmly planted in an older model allowing private sector firms to release uncharacterized chemicals into the environment, public health officials and others conversant with these new scientific findings advanced precautionary approaches in law. By the early 2000s precautionary legislation became especially popular in California, with many calling for the rapid phase-out of various products containing bio-accumulative, biologically disruptive, and other such substances (e.g., mercury, lead, PBDEs). The operating premise for a variety of these laws was to prohibit the production, use and sale of substances posing inherent hazards. Lacking this preventative premise, the framing of the Global Warming Solutions Act, therefore, was instantly contentious.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A fundamental question confronting the Legislature turned on how to construct AB 32 within the framework of existing laws, and pointed to very divergent paths. Inside the Legislature, the question pivoted on whether to incrementally manage the release in a calculus of what was most efficient for business. The new research emerging was predicated on the urgency to eliminate these substances posing known and dramatic threats to human life and civilization extending for centuries into the future.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In the years following the enactment of Californiaʻs Global Warming Solutions Act, the question of whether the State should utilize market mechanisms to address a crisis precipitated by what many economists labeled ʻthe greatest market failureʻ would become a pivotal question. In 2017, the question would become dramatically more significant in the context of President Trumpʻs swiftly adopted agenda to dismantle strict regulatory controls, particularly with respect to any restrictions over fossil fuels.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">And for readers who are forgiven for not following the minutia of market mechanisms, one additional event in 2017 yielded one more over-looked commentary on the failure of market mechanisms: the decision by the South Coast Air Quality Management Districtʻs Board to terminate the decades-old regional pollution-trading program: RECLAIM. Sparing readers the interesting details, it is enough to note that one of the Board members, the Honorable Sheila Kuehl, noted that Los Angeles was bringing an end to being gamed by fossil fuel interests; LA would revert to the reliable and certain results achieved by strict regulatory controls over emissions by petroleum refineries and other large emission sources.</span></div>
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I promise to provide a less wonky posting next time! Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-30396614748331532142017-04-10T04:24:00.001-07:002017-04-10T04:24:26.769-07:00A Tyranny Larger than Trump<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-1757ca1c-5797-a2b3-a2c5-ee0265655375" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">If you have had the opportunity to read even </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">one</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> of the recent editorials by the LA Times, you have likely found yourself re-enchanted with their thoughtful critique of Donald Trump. And if you are like many others around </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">this</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> state, you are even more thrilled with their tone. Without mincing words, the Times calls our newly elected President narcissistic, impulsive, untruthful, and both ignorant about political power and how to wield it effectively.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Los Angeles Timesʻ attack is unrelenting, reflecting what the editorial writers sense is a surge of popular outrage and opposition by a vast number of Californians. Refreshingly, the Times is unequivocal not simply as a venting of frustrations, but noting that it is time to challenge the new President before things get even worse. The Editorial Board argues that rather than awaiting more 'alternative facts' and the further erosion of democratic institutions, their responsibility is to "lay out our concerns." These are expansive, ranging from the draconian use of federal police forces to deport and worsened livelihoods for millions of our fellow Californians, to the dismantling of health care policies, and an array of policies opposed to many of our most celebrated laws.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As noted by the Timesʻ editors, many Californians feel "uniquely threatened" and harbor a widespread sense of dread for being complicit in creating a place that is now targeted by the Trump regime, his partisans in Congress, and powerful private sector allies. But this is the juncture at which the marvelous editorial series gives too little attention to a much deeper and longer conflict. It may be fair to call Trump a tyrant, but the sources of his tyranny are more than merely his weird persona.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In recent decades many of the same themes of racist, xenophobic, elitist, sexist, and similarly egregious traits have been displayed by other presidents. Even if we can all readily agree that Donald Trump personifies the worst of these qualities, the threats posed by the current regime are much broader. Trump does bring new meaning to the rise of an authoritarian, if not fascistic, state. It is no small matter that his use of power in such a personal way threatens democratic practice in a fashion perhaps unprecedented in our nationʻs history.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I find it difficult to argue with any of the Timesʻ courageous editorials....save one, not-so-minor point: the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">origins </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">of problems we confront are much larger than the man now occupying the Oval Office. The case can be made most persuasively by examining what is arguably one of the greatest existential threats to humankind: the distinct prospect that civilization and global ecology will severely damaged by the end of this century. Yet, the approaching cataclysm has a complex history predating 2016 and the current President. Which is not to say that Donald Trump will not make things spectacularly worse. But a more careful scrutiny of our predicament points out that focusing exclusively on Trumpʻs failures as a leader is largely a distraction.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Trumpʻs distractions move our collective scrutiny away from an enduring coalition of private interests, including some of the nationʻs wealthiest families and largest corporations. For one over-arching problem - fossil-fueled damages - the activities of the oil industry, its lobbyists and corporate allies have been documented for pursuing policies that have undermined clean alternative fuels while discounting the threats to surrounding communities, workers, and the environment. As if these negative features were not enough, the record of destruction extends to the systematic erosion of democratic institutions and practices as evinced by their out-sized role in the political process.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As reflected in the stories of public interest advocates contained in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The War on California</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, the abhorrent and disastrous policies personified by President Trump have many linkages to earlier regimes and powerful political forces. We may discover, too late, that ʻsolvingʻ for the Donald does too little to address the other threats to democracy, society, and the environment. California, in this regard, holds an especially vital, some might say pivotal, role in preparing a political campaign aimed not simply at the small man seeking a balcony, but the many sympathetic officials who have been hard at work for many decades to defeat the works of public interest activists across the nation.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The record of these conflicts are recorded in dozens of legislative measures stretching across decades. While covering a range of topics, there is one especially intriguing common theme bridging many of these struggles: the battle between private and public interests to control both politics and the economy in the Golden State. These are themes I will continue to explore in the coming weeks.</span></div>
Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-89027068175276184792017-04-07T03:15:00.000-07:002017-04-07T03:17:07.172-07:00The Politics of Trading<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-74e6475a-47e6-ab4a-6f53-1d79cf37b8ed" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Todayʻs post follows from the last posted conversation with my brother, an expert on financial matters and our discussion in 2006 regarding a legislative proposal that would become Californiaʻs export model for addressing climate change: cap-and-trade</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">]</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">"Casey, I've got a question." It was another of what were becoming more frequent calls to sound-out a private sector perspective on my political crisis du jour. ”Go ahead” Casey answered, “What's the latest from the temple of doom?" </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I explained the outlines of the global warming bill, ending with a question about market mechanisms: "What do you make of the use of such an approach, especially emissions trading, since this seems to be where the bill is headed?"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">"Bruce, Bruce, Bruce.....what's the matter? Why haven't you given yourself over to the market? It is a wonderful faith-based system and it makes it easier for you to sleep at night." Casey then walked through how various of his financial wizardry conducted on behalf of major corporations typically relied on a contract to specify the obligations and responsibilities for both parties. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">"So let me get this straight; you're saying this is a perfectly acceptable way to construct a program for reducing greenhouse gases, yet...?" Before I completed the question Casey interrupted, "No, I said that in corporate-land I have helped to define the financial terms for contracts. But in many instances the contract has followed a prime directive: if things turn sour, make certain that the other party is screwed to the wall. One of the wonderful parts of financial engineering is that virtually no one understands how any of this works. So my question to you is a simple one: who in the Legislature understands trading? Or better yet, ask the legislators and their supporters if they can explain it to you in more than a couple of sound bites." Casey, not quite done, was saving the best for last.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">"...Oh, and there is the second part of working with contracts. For all of the contracts that I have been party to, we would typically write up something about 1,000 pages long, just to make certain that we have a very thorough understanding of where this agreement will take us and, most especially, a very clear statement about when the contract has not been fulfilled, how it will be enforced and, most especially, what we get when the contract doesn't have the outcome that we have agreed on.” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“...So, you’ve got to ask some additional questions” continued Casey. ”First, what does trading mean in this bill? Second, what happens when greenhouse gases aren't reduced over some period of time? And third, how extensive is the contract language?” "Well,” I responded, “the bill does not have any specific contract language as such. It is simply a vague statement regarding the use of market mechanisms to achieve a reduction in greenhouse gases."</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">"Well, whoopee! is all I can say," Casey laughed. "I know which side of that deal I want to be on....and it certainly isn't backing the people of California! ...By the way, let me know when this bill is going to the Governor so I can start shorting the state. Remember when Enronʻs traders giggled as California's bureaucrats came to the floor to make energy contract purchases? This will be even better!"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I ended the phone conversation wondering if some of the materials I had used years earlier with groups of students at UC Berkeley might have prompted a better basis for considering the value of emissions trading among legislators and staff. A particularly thoughtful author, Tom Athanasiou, prominent in my syllabus, argued that solving global warming involved more than simply a re-jiggering of technologies to capture fugitive gases. Instead, the task required more fundamental changes.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“If greenhouse theory is correct, and the preponderance of evidence indicates that it is correct, humanity must drastically reduce its use not only of methane and CFCs (greenhouse gases), but of coal and oil as well, even though such a reduction means that the entire planetary economy must be re-structured -- to a degree that implies a fundamental break with the energy economy that has underlain capitalism from its earliest days. This is not a matter of a few technical fixes, of isolated reforms to an economy that can remain essentially unaltered.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sitting at my desk inside the capitol, I wondered if the architects of cap-and-trade really thought that cap-and-trade was an answer to the fossil-fueled threats of the 21st century. Or was this merely subterfuge; a political device for obscuring the urgent necessity to restructure one of the worldʻs major economies?</span></div>
<br />Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-80824901202088114802017-04-05T04:19:00.001-07:002017-04-05T04:19:56.376-07:00Californiaʻs Pollution Trading Scheme: Chapt 1<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-190756e4-3bcd-16db-1a74-402fc714cfbd" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">[<i>to discover the exciting outcome of this weekʻs earlier post, you will have to await the publication of The War on California in the next few weeks; in the meantime, todayʻs post introduces the story about what will become the stateʻs most infamous ʻSolutionʻ to fossil-fueled climate crises</i>.] </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Whatʻs that?” I queried of my fellow all-female consultants as we emerged from yet another meeting, as a van adjacent to the capitol’s south entrance deposited a bulky item on the well-manicured grounds.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Itʻs the governorʻs podium,” my colleague responded. “See the govʻs seal on the front?”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Yes, I see the podium, but whatʻs he carrying in his other hand?” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Approaching the curb, we looked more closely. “Itʻs his platform!” She responded to my puzzled expression. “You know, the wooden box he stands on to appear larger than life when towering behind the podium.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“You have got to be kidding me!”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Come on Bruce, itʻs a Hollywood thing. For Schwarzenegger, this is all political theater.” As we entered the marbled halls, we were laughing. “Oh itʻs theater alright, theater of the absurd.” </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Within days my attention turned to the first in a series of broadly outlined discussions about what might appear in the proposal being finalized for hearing before my committee. The bill, eventually celebrated as one of California’s premiere environmental laws -- the Global Warming Solutions Act, popularly known as AB 32 advanced a program supporters referred to as “cap-and-trade;” something that its detractors would later refer to with as Californiaʻs pollution trading scheme.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> The basic architecture required regulatory agencies, including the California Air Resources Board to set limits on the largest emitters of greenhouse gases combined with a vaguely stated trading program.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This bill would contain an essential flexibility for these large emitters that made AB 32 very different from Californiaʻs classic regulatory approach. Beginning with a benchmark of total greenhouse gas emissions, a declining cap for these emissions would be imposed on the largest emission sources - designed to decrease total emissions to an earlier baseline - in this case, the earlier and lower 1990 measurement of total statewide emissions. Large emission sources, facilities such as refineries or energy plants owned by very large corporations, would be allowed to trade emission credits in an auction with other facilities not utilizing </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">all</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> their own credits. The concept held that as the cap on emissions decreased over time, credits would become more expensive, driving up the price of greenhouse gas pollutants. Companies would have various avenues to figure out how to deal with pollution, but eventually all emitters would be compelled to utilize less costly and less polluting alternatives. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">From the start I found the billʻs title misleading, given that an array of California laws already addressed various facets of global warming.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> With the availability of plentiful regulatory mechanisms, why was these members of the Assembly so enchanted with trading mechanisms as a means for addressing the climate crisis? I would slowly awaken as to why the billʻs emphasis on a trading mechanism continually nagged at me. soon learn about a central feature that made this approach so distinctive.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">During an early meeting with supporters, tentative language circulated for a bill being drafted by the Legislatureʻs attorneys that appeared to be suspiciously like the work of the larger environmental groups in Washington, D.C. (and quite unlike the product of Californiaʻs environmental advocates).</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> One telltale characteristic was that language crafted by many of Californiaʻs environmental attorneys typically reflected an obsession with fine details, whereas proposals from inside the Beltway as well in Congress often proceeded with broad provisions. For many of us inside Californiaʻs capitol, the Congressional model of drafting overly broad provisions in law only invited challenges and delays by powerful opposing interests. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Before launching legislation in D.C., one could first road test it in a state legislature. The main advocates in D.C. were laying the groundwork in California for a piece to follow as the national model, based on what they hoped would be the California law. A centerpiece of the bill used "market mechanisms" to define how global warming would be addressed, with the use of a trading scheme. Although trading had been used at that time in a program in Southern California, AB 32 advocates argued that theirs was a distinctive architecture. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At this point, as typical when working in the arena of concepts without benefit of actual language or empirical data, I resorted to a sophisticated technology honed by staff over many years. I picked up the phone to survey my ever-expanding universe of informal advisors stretching from journalists and physicians to regulatory scientists and activists in Los Angeles to gain from their deep knowledge. I was especially interested in the perspective of one who, over many years, was among the elite wizards responsible for pumping up the quarterly statements of major global firms through use of financial instruments. The source, of course, was my brother.</span></div>
Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-11893392875145453982017-04-03T07:43:00.000-07:002017-04-03T07:43:29.522-07:00Slippery Slopes and the War on California<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-190756e4-304c-90cc-0b4d-781e722366a2" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202022; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">If you missed yesterdayʻs editorial in the Los Angeles Times, you will learn that the War on California also contains a corresponding theme: Californiaʻs War on Trump. The editorial is striking not simply because it vigorously takes the newly elected President to task in a devastating personal attack, but also because it is a call to arms. While the Times stops short of calling on citizens to engage in mass mobilization and protest, perhaps only because we are still in the first 100 days of his regime. For the tens of millions of Californians assaulted by Trumpians, the Times brings the welcome relief of a counter-attack on this ʻdishonest presidentʻ.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202022; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The weakness with the Timesʻ editorial, however, is its emphasis on a single individual in the White House. The paperʻs essay acknowledges that had Cruz or Rubio prevailed over Trump, we might be facing largely similar problems with regard to the treatment of women, immigrants, workers, and the poor. The difference between Trump and other potential leaders, according to the Times, is one of degree. Donald Trump, the argument goes, is dangerously crazy, whereas his colleagues are merely crazy. The point may be well taken with respect to the next war and the potential for nuclear disasters; but what about other global conflicts, including fossil-fueled crises threatening the planetʻs survival?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #202022; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Are the actions of those who might replace Trump an acceptable alternative?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202022; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In the world of environmental protection, news stories often offer clear divisions: those working to protect and save fragile habitat and vanishing critters and those bent on their destruction. Such narratives have an immediate attractiveness, especially in the era of Trump & Co. One problem with such descriptions, however, appears in the arena of over-lapping circles - areas where the two approaches overlap. This grey colored section between the black and white of opposed interests is sometimes defined as the ʻwin-winʻ territory, a place where compromises can be reached and policies advanced benefiting otherwise opposed interests. It is also a terrain known for slippery slopes; a place where the public awaken one day, saying "How in the world did we arrive at this disastrous spot!"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202022; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At a moment in history when the fate of the planet and human civilization seems precariously balanced on the edge of global cataclysms, the political terrain has grown exceedingly more slippery. At first glance the choice between Californiaʻs climate policies or those of an unstable fellow in the White House seem obvious. There are, however, grey areas between the two that are ripe for exploiting what will surely be presented as ʻwin-win solutionsʻ - but which others will just as surely awaken one day, saying ʻHow did we find ourselves hurdling toward the abyss?ʻ To appreciate the potential dangers, we might begin with some recent political history. And what better place to start than Californiaʻs own actor/leader and the Golden Stateʻs ʻSolutionʻ to global warming.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202022; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">"</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">T</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202022; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">oday, California will be a leader in the fight against global warming... I say the debate is over. We know the science, we see the threat and we know the time for action is now."</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202022; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> The statement, issued by one of Californiaʻs governors, suggested a bold plan to address a steadily advancing crisis - climate change. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202022; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Serving as a primary leader for the stateʻs Republicans, this popular governor immediately placed himself at odds with President George Bush, who steadfastly avoided the issue, including his refusal to join 150-plus nations from around the globe in the most recent effort to devise an international accord -- the Kyoto Protocols. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was delivering his plan for addressing global warming to open a United Nations World Environment Day Conference in San Francisco. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #202022; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In making his announcement, Schwarzenegger issued an executive order directing the secretary of California's Environmental Protection Agency to reduce the state's emissions of greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010; 1990 levels by 2020; and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> as the outline of a long-term program. Despite a mountain of scientific studies documenting a disrupted climate, the main directive from President Bush sought to undermine Californiaʻs recently enacted law to lessen engine emissions. The question of whether such a program would require too little escaped notice because it would be progress, seemingly, to launch </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">any</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> plan. However, in a setting where words and details mattered, the Governorʻs plan was about to hit a speed bump.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Within weeks of Governor Schwarzenegger’s announcement launching a project to address global warming, an attempt was made to introduce a legislative proposal mirroring the broad strokes of the Governorʻs executive order. A member of the Assembly came to the Senate with a reputed agreement that the Governor would sign global warming legislation into law. The catch, typical to agreements reached late in the session, necessitated the Legislature to agree to a kind of blank check, largely circumventing reviews by policy committees...and the public. Last minute agreements of this sort often employed a technique known as ʻgut and amend,ʻ taking legislation introduced earlier in the legislative session on one topic, later inserting entirely new language.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Few involved, if anyone, had the opportunity to analyze and reflect on the consequences of a proposed ‘gut’ or change. In certain instances, such as after a natural disaster, gut and amend served a valuable purpose: to act with the utmost urgency in the event of a crisis. Unfortunately, gut and amends too often were invented crises employed by powerful lobbyists as a device for circumventing more intensive public scrutiny. Whereas Congress and even many states passed measures without the benefit of even allowing sufficient time for representatives to read measures requiring their vote, Californiaʻs Legislature exercised a very strong tradition based on an extensive review by professional staff as well as allowing for public review and comment.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Behind the Governorʻs directive to urgently address global warming lurked a more devilish question: who was responsible for setting the earth on fire in the first place? On this point, the Governor seemed to suggest that we all shared a responsibility for fixing the problem. The tension for many veterans of the Legislature involved their belief that a key ingredient in crafting ʻgoodʻ law required everyone -- especially the general public -- time to digest what a legal proposal meant. Leaving vital details solely in the hands any governor was an approach many professional staff referred to by a simple and pejorative shorthand: faith-based governing.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Nearing the close of the 2005 legislative session, I was asked to join a meeting of the chair of my committee along with two other legislators to discuss a possible gut-and-amend. In the absence of any written draft, the proposal was presented as a broadly conceptual one: allowing a bill broadly encapsulating Governor Schwarzeneggerʻs executive order on global warming to advance through the Senateʻs Environmental Quality Committee. The assembly member was emphatic in her presentation; here was a golden and urgent opportunity for the Legislature to act, we should not pass up this matter of crucial importance to the public. Almost as an afterthought, the anxious legislator mentioned a minor caveat: since the specific language was still being finalized by the Governorʻs people, the Committee would only be able to vote on the broad generalities of the bill.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In the closed-door meeting with the three legislators, the chair then turned to me, asking for my perspective on the proposed hearing for what was the Governorʻs bill on climate change....</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">please return on Wednesday to read the next installment.......and thank you! </span></div>
Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-6418523003040950552017-03-31T08:25:00.002-07:002017-03-31T08:58:51.906-07:00The Trump Regime and the War on California<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-90521093-22d9-1540-34a3-2649b4663e5a" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It was heartening for millions of Californians to hear Gov. Jerry Brown warn President Trump that he had just made a “colossal mistake” in gutting the federal government’s effort to combat climate change. On Tuesday of this week, the Los Angeles Times provided readers with the fuller story: “It defies science itself,” Brown said in a call to The Times shortly after Trump signed an executive order that aims to bring an abrupt halt to the United States’ leadership on global warming. Brown vowed, predicting Trump’s actions will mobilize environmentalists in a way President Obama never could. “I have met with many heads of state, ambassadors. This is a growing movement. President Trump’s outrageous move will galvanize the contrary force. Things have been a bit tepid [in climate activism]. But this conflict, this sharpening of the contradiction, will energize those who believe climate change is an existential threat.”</span><br />
</div>
<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-90521093-22d9-1540-34a3-2649b4663e5a" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At this juncture I paused and re-read the passage once more about climate activists, "Things have been a bit tepid?" Perhaps Governor Brown was glossing over the not-so-small issue that U.S. climate policy have presented little to celebrate. For numerous of Californiaʻs activists and advocates, both U.S. climate policies and the Paris accords (COP 21) have been largely underwhelming. Letʻs review where U.S. policy stood in 2016. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In his final state of the Union, President Obama noted that the country was already pursuing a more constructive project, based on the largest federal support in the nationʻs history: to combine wind and solar power with a transition away from ʻdirty energy.ʻ While he was able to pinpoint specific clean energy projects already deployed across the nation, <i>dismantling of dirty energy was more aspirational than real</i>. “I’m going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources, so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet.” But when were such costs imposed on energy companies and where did these appear in federal law or policy?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It may be that the President Obama considered his partisan opponents the least of his problems. Obama hinted that the nub of difficulty was located among corporate lobbyists who held sway in both houses of Congress; “None of this will happen overnight, and yes, there are plenty of entrenched interests who want to protect the status quo. But the jobs we’ll create, the money we’ll save, and the planet we’ll preserve — that’s the kind of future our kids and grand kids deserve.” If the President expected Congress to embrace a program based on the needs of grand kids over immediate profits, we were indeed facing a world of trouble. For a public that had placed much trust in a presidential candidate promising “hope,” many citizens re-kindled a much older political adage: hope is not a strategy.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">To be sure, the Republican Congress represents a major obstacle to achieving anything resembling evidence-based policies. Only weeks prior to Obamaʻs speech before Congress, emphasizing the urgency of climate change measures, the House voted to block provisions of the Clean Power Plan set to curb greenhouse gas emissions, via two actions; the first would bar the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing rules aimed at cutting emissions from new power plants; the second would prevent the agency from enforcing rules targeted at existing power plants. The Congressional action included an action blocking the Presidentʻs Green Climate Fund, a $3 billion commitment to assist developing countries with adopting green energy systems. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The actions of the 2016 Republican Congress to defeat even the most modest steps to address a deteriorating climate reflected more than a partisan difference of opinion. It was, rather, the product of yet another concerted effort led by a host of fossil fuel companies, to forge a business-friendly political climate. What citizens and their leader had expressed, time and time again as “hope,” remained far from reality. Moreover, various of Obama’s actions were fraught with contradictions in achieving these ends - particularly with respect to trade negotiations and provisions for undermining the strict regulatory programs that had made California a leader in environmental policies. As one observer noted, “The conservative revolution transformed our countries into authoritarian pro-business states, which are not just undemocratic but inherently anti-democratic. The last thing these people want is to give democratic power to a state that they cannot control, manipulate, make irrelevant or buy.” By the 21st century, the promotion of states dominated by corporations and their markets moved well beyond the realm of democratic institutions and toward an ascendant market state. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Returning to this past week, we find Californiaʻs Governor rallying citizens to counter the proposals of a President and Congress enthralled with the world of unleashed corporate power. “I see Washington declining in influence, but the momentum being maintained by California and other states aligned with China and those who are willing to do something,” said Brown, who will be traveling to China soon for meetings on climate. “There is a growing activism on the part of millions of people who will not stand by and let Donald Trump effectively tear up the Paris agreement and destroy America’s climate leadership and jeopardize the health and well-being of so many people.” But there is a slippery slope in this message; the principal policy linkage between California, China and the Paris agreement (COP 21) is what has been touted as the Golden Stateʻs celebrated solution to the climate crisis: emissions trading (aka cap-and-trade or AB 32). While California possesses a large portfolio of climate change related laws, emission trading scheme has served in recent years as its export model. And what do we make of this solution, especially in the context of the Trump regime and his Congressional enablers? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Let me take you back to December 2015 and the conference hall in Paris where Governor Brown was in the midst of discussing Californiaʻs virtuous leadership in the fight against climate change. On this same evening at the same conference, a group of California activists raised their voices challenging Governor Brownʻs ʻsolutionʻ to a worsening climate. Among those rising in protest was a young organizer from Los Angeles, Rossmery Zayas, who attending on behalf of Communities for a Better Environment, stated: "Weʻre from California and let us tell you the truth about whatʻs happening in our communities." The essence of the message delivered by various activists including Rossmery was that Californiaʻs so-called solution represented a failure, particularly from the perspective of those living in the midst of refineries, cement plants, and other large emission sources. What was going on? Why had activists from the Golden State traveled all of the way to Paris to publicly challenge Governor Brown? </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The problem confronting Governor Brown is very similar to that which faced President Obama: how to navigate the fossil-fueled conflicts orchestrated by corporate interests? The ʻsolutionʻ to this tension written into law more than a decade ago in California was to provide fossil fuel interests a flexibility to circumvent more restrictive regulatory laws. It is precisely this regulatory flexibility that protestors voiced opposition to in Paris and others would characterize as the essential failure of a vaguely concluded COP 21. The path of regulatory flexibility forged by moderate Democrats in California now poses a threat undermining precisely the decisive measures urgently necessary to address what Governor Brown and many Californians recognize as the massively worsening destruction brought about by fossil fuel interests. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Please visit again on Monday as the story unfolds.</span></div>
Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-66029394251760676482017-03-29T08:11:00.002-07:002017-03-29T08:11:45.264-07:00Fossil Fuels, Farmworkers and Environmental Justice<br />
<br />
In the 1960s Nicholas C. Petris identified the plight of California’s<br />
<br />
farm workers as a matter of injustice, and for much of his career regularly pursued<br />
<br />
legislation surrounding the mistreatment of workers who were essential to<br />
<br />
producing food for California and the nation. He fought for decades to eliminate<br />
<br />
pesticides posing known health hazards to workplaces affecting hundreds of<br />
<br />
thousands of farm workers became a decades-long battle. Like many of his<br />
<br />
colleagues, my new found mentor felt that democratic practice meant to bring as<br />
<br />
many different kinds of people to the table to participate in the making of laws as<br />
<br />
possible, vesting them with broad latitude to guide the course of legislation. In<br />
<br />
my own case, this involved “carrying bills” - meaning his staff would be<br />
<br />
personally responsible, not simply following him around from committee to<br />
<br />
committee, but actively participating in the legislative process.<br />
<br />
<br />
As someone who had fought for farmworker rights for so long, the University’s<br />
<br />
role of simply fostering agricultural production struck the Senator as wholly<br />
<br />
inadequate. With so many pesticides with unknown effects being readily applied<br />
<br />
to such vast acreage, what responsibility did the University leaders have for an<br />
<br />
agricultural research system so apparently disinterested in the routine poisoning<br />
<br />
of many thousands of farmworkers? While some university leaders suggested<br />
<br />
that a solution would eventually emerge from the marketplace or agricultural<br />
<br />
innovations, as many in the public demanded immediate legislative action to<br />
<br />
address this social injustice, even if this meant venturing into the arenas of<br />
<br />
private property or the proprietary claims of multinational corporations.<br />
<br />
<br />
Returning to the arid Central Valley and the capitol from the misty, coastal<br />
<br />
congestion of Berkeley, I was amazed by the temerity of university leaders who,<br />
<br />
after receiving enormous public resources for so many years, now responded to a<br />
<br />
legislative proposal to create a program on sustainable agricultural research with<br />
<br />
a “fuck you very much” reply. If this was the response of a public university to<br />
<br />
such a mild request from one of the most powerful legislative members: how in<br />
<br />
the world did genuinely adversarial parties manage negotiations, especially<br />
<br />
those lacking the manifest power, the hallowed-hall presence and public office?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
In many important respects my academic training as a political scientist and my<br />
<br />
tutelage in California’s capitol represented entirely different worlds of politics.<br />
<br />
Whereas the former was conducted largely in isolation for many years, the<br />
<br />
capitol environment demanded working in teams. Little did I know that,<br />
<br />
venturing into the seemingly innocuous world of sustainable agriculture, I had<br />
<br />
chosen to take on some of the largest forces in California politics. Agriculture<br />
<br />
represented much more than simple production of food, if indeed that could be<br />
<br />
regarded as simple. It rerouted water, with a byzantine politics much more<br />
<br />
complex than even the film China Town could convey, with layers of competing<br />
<br />
interests seeping into every facet.<br />
<br />
<br />
Other corporate interests in agriculture included vast land holdings, machinery<br />
<br />
and equipment manufacturers, as well as shipping, rail transport, and trucking.<br />
<br />
Perhaps most important in all of this was an agrichemical complex, with<br />
<br />
relationships ranging from petroleum refiners and specialty chemicals,<br />
<br />
formulators of fertilizers, seed producers to the vast complex of finance. The<br />
<br />
“simple” notion of asking the University of California to provide a program on<br />
<br />
sustainable agriculture sparked the perfect opportunity to unite many of the<br />
<br />
state’s most powerful forces against those least powerful.<br />
<br />
<br />
Despite the asymmetry of power, public interest advocates pursued legislation to<br />
<br />
restructure California’s agriculture for the simple reason that agribusiness no<br />
<br />
longer appeared invincible. The sustainable agriculture bill followed from a 1984<br />
<br />
victory of what seemed revolutionary at the time: a state law - the Birth Defects<br />
<br />
Prevention Act - requiring the testing of pesticide ingredients to determine the<br />
<br />
hazards to farmworkers and others. The Act represented the crowning achievement<br />
<br />
by a group of physicians, consumer groups, environmentalists and labor unions who,<br />
<br />
in one step, placed California in an equivalent role to federal government and its<br />
<br />
agencies ostensibly responsible for regulating pesticides. The Birth Defects Prevention<br />
<br />
Act would become celebrated for eliminating many thousands of pesticide products<br />
<br />
posing long-term health hazards. <br />
<br />
<br />
At the heart of the California campaign to aggressively identify and regulate<br />
<br />
pesticides were multiple groups working as teams. While representatives of the<br />
<br />
agribusiness lobby strolled the corridors of power self-assured in controlling the<br />
<br />
production of law, its hegemony was crumbling. Public interest advocates, in<br />
<br />
contrast, expanded their coalition of supporters on a seemingly daily basis. By the<br />
<br />
mid-1980s, farmworker activists became part of a broadening coalition of groups<br />
<br />
challenging the stateʻs toxic economy.<br />
<br />
<br />
The confrontations were telling. In hearing after hearing, the visuals juxtaposed<br />
<br />
very different constituencies. Growers and agribusinesses were typically<br />
<br />
represented by a group of too-well- fed, older white men defending their right to<br />
<br />
conduct farming however they saw fit, even if this resulted in exposing hundreds<br />
<br />
of thousands of workers annually to hazardous chemicals. Supporters of<br />
<br />
farmworkers’ right to safe workplaces included organizations representing a<br />
<br />
broad sweep of faces every legislator recognized as a reflection of their district.<br />
<br />
As one public interest advocate of the time commented to me while observing a<br />
<br />
hearing, nodding in the direction of a well-known agribusiness lobbyist across<br />
<br />
the room, “The Dinosaurs don’t get it, but their hold over the Legislature is<br />
<br />
disappearing.”<br />
<br />
<br />
Behind the various bills paving the way for a changed treatment of farmworkers<br />
<br />
was a young pediatrician, Dr. Richard Jackson, one of the central figures in the<br />
<br />
launch environmental health policies over many decades. While Dr. Jackson<br />
<br />
would later serve as California’s first Public Health Officer and direct environmental<br />
<br />
health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the 1980s Dick<br />
<br />
moved largely unrecognized among the world of political movers and shakers.<br />
<br />
<br />
Dr. Jackson actively orchestrated the work of fellow advocates spanning a wide<br />
<br />
scope of public health issues. In the arena of toxic substances, he readily briefed<br />
<br />
newspaper reporters and journalists, foundation boards and officers, members of<br />
<br />
congress, state legislators, attorneys and legal activists, not to mention numerous<br />
<br />
community, state, and international groups. In addition to these extracurricular<br />
<br />
activities, Dr. Jackson and his colleagues gradually transformed an obscure post<br />
<br />
at the foot of the University of California’s Berkeley campus into a internationally<br />
<br />
recognized office that assessed environmental health hazards.<br />
<br />
<br />
Despite efforts to remain anonymous, Dr. Jackson soon earned unending wrath<br />
<br />
from a variety of corporate entities. Beginning in the late 1980s the corporate<br />
<br />
lobby regularly advanced proposals for curtailing the budget, personnel, and<br />
<br />
work of Dr. Jackson and colleagues. Eventually Dickʻs work, along with many<br />
<br />
others, prompted the creation of the California Environmental Protection Agency.<br />
<br />
The price of his success resulted in a corporate demand: under no circumstances<br />
<br />
would Dr. Jackson be allowed to assume any position of authority in the new agency.<br />
<br />
<br />
In the meantime, Californiaʻs public interest advocates would expand their work<br />
<br />
challenging the stateʻs reliance on fossil fuels and the growing number of studies<br />
<br />
documenting an increasing array of hazards. Following a period of deregulation and<br />
<br />
down-sized government, California would be presented with a new ʻsolutionʻ to the<br />
<br />
most recognized dimension of fossil-fuel induced hazards: a disrupted global climate<br />
<br />
posing catastrophic threats to the survival of civilization.Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-71874804798450901712017-03-27T03:48:00.001-07:002017-03-27T04:27:40.896-07:00Outlawing the Internal Combustion Engine<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Weʻre not going to do any fucking hobby farming bill!” </span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I had just joined the California Legislature after being selected as a ʻsenate fellowʻ to work for a year with a state senator.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> My real passion was teaching. Without any job prospects and our resources being largely nonexistent, my partner and I figured that a short stint working with the California Legislature wouldnʻt necessarily hurt my academic resume. I wondered again about my choice.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Fucking hobby farming?” I repeated to myself. Born and raised in Oakland and having worked my early years in college as a Teamster, I was not easily shocked. Still, I found the statement somewhat stunning, particularly given the source.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Just across the street from my cubicle in Californiaʻs state capitol, stood a suite of offices maintained by the University of California. As we both took a seat at an intimate conference table, and I opened my file to discuss proposed legislation, the vice president for one of the nationʻs largest agricultural research programs leaned across the table, displaying undisguised contempt; “Weʻre not going to do any fucking hobby farming bill!” The meeting ended as abruptly as his remarks. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">One of the worldʻs most recognized names in academia refused to even discuss the bill.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Crossing the street toward the major pedestrian walkway leading back to the capitol, I wondered again, “Is this how they make laws? Is this how laws </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">should</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> be made?” I found myself wrestling with this dilemma only because in late 1984 I landed an unusual temporary gig -- working for one of the more powerful members in the California Legislature, Senator Nicholas C. Petris, who represented a distinctive district ofttimes known as the Peopleʻs Republic of Berkeley. Though I had recently completed my doctorate in political science, I knew next to nothing about state politics. In truth, I regarded anything connected to American politics as a pursuit for the brain dead. My partner found it a constant source of amusement to now witness me deep in the belly of the beast.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Senator Petris, the elder statesman, with a mane of prematurely greying hair, was known for his oratorical flourishes. In the Senate chambers he would hold forth on many topics of the day, seeking to influence his colleagues about the right thing that must be done to protect poor communities and farm workers, to end the death penalty, and a myriad of other causes - including lavishly providing for the stateʻs premier institution of higher education, the University of California.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In a political career spanning four decades Senator Petris established a reputation for designing laws based on a dialogue about justice. During the 1960s, many of his peers characterized the Senatorʻs skill for problem-solving as predicated on a deep and abiding respect for social justice; and on frequently honoring otherwise unheralded voices at the legislative table. While based on a complex exchange, the Senator’s notion of justice contained two dominant strains: one a place, the other a principle. The first could be found when he was asked how he could author such an array of outrageous laws. He would quip: “the people of Berkeley made me do it!” Strangers might find such explanation off-putting, but staffers lauded his earnest belief in the virtues of democratic institutions and in decisions led by citizens.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This basic notion -- that citizens and their government exercised control over private sector activities -- characterized many of Californiaʻs representatives, especially among those who experienced World War II; government taking control of basic industries was simply a part of how things got done. It also explained a moment in the 1960s when the public was poised to turn a key fossil-fueled crisis in a wholly different direction. With Californiaʻs major metropolitan areas increasingly shrouded in smog, millions of constituents demanded to hear what elected leaders intended to do. A group of Southern California legislators responded by requiring Detroit to produce cleaner cars.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> For a legislator representing the so-called Peopleʻs Republic, the answer was clear, as Senator Petris proposed a measure to outlaw the internal combustion engine. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The proposal immediately outraged car manufacturers, the business community and the oil industry. The oil industry reaction, according to Petris, argued that no viable alternatives were readily available or affordable. Despite the aggressive push-back, Petrisʻ suggestion to ban the internal combustion engine mobilized others to prompt Congress to consider federal funding for research into electric vehicles. The oil industry actively opposed the entire concept on the grounds that needed research into alternatives was already underway.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The push by Californians and their legislators set in motion a series of laws placing the state at odds with letting the market decide. “In 1961, the first automotive-control-technology in the United States was mandated by California to target hydrocarbon crankcase emissions. It went into effect in 1963 on all domestic passenger vehicles sold in California, which eventually meant everywhere, since California was, and remains, the biggest market for all new and used vehicle sales in the country. That was followed by tailpipe emission standards, established in 1966 -- also the first in the nation….The Federal Air Quality Act of 1967 included a waiver for California to set and enforce its own more stringent emissions standards for new vehicles sold in the state.”</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Years later fuller exploration would reveal that even as industry dismissed Petrisʻ proposed ban, various oil companies gathered patents on technologies for reducing engine emissions. By 2016 a group of states’ attorneys general filed a massive lawsuit against the oil industry for having perpetrated what might be considered the most massive fraud against humanity. Petroleum interests began mounting a decades-long campaign to perpetuate continued use of their lucrative product, despite their own recognition of the growing hazards associated with the burning of fossil fuels.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">By 1970, the state senator from Berkeley would be lauded as among a group of influential leaders who played a catalytic role in the passage of the Clean Air Act by Congress as well as the California Clean Air Act of 1988. Nicholas C. Petris, however, would dismiss the praise, citing his usual attribution that he was merely following the guidance provided by his constituents. His glib response did reflect a shared perspective among many of his colleagues; they too were not shy about placing citizensʻ demands above that of corporate lobbyists.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Oh, and the farming bill? Please return again on Wednesday..... </span></div>
Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5909007096057904231.post-69592112207529936762017-03-24T08:37:00.001-07:002017-03-24T08:37:21.056-07:00Get the Lead Out !<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Following the last post on a hearing in Californiaʻs capitol to ʻget the leadʻ out of faucets, a member of the public interest team, Marlaigne Dumaine, recalled the drama and tension surrounding Randy Kanouseʻs role in that dayʻs committee hearing:</span> "<i>I will never forget that day. I was sitting in the front row of the
committee room. The chair of the committee was relentless and tried
every which way to get you to say that the parts of the bill taken on
their own were not an issue and therefore the sum must surely be benign.
But you were clear, no matter how the bill was parsed it was bad and no
matter how you were asked, your message was clear. I felt extremely
proud to be on your team as you hung in there for what turned out to be a
very long and tense hearing. And you won. You won the battle that made
the ultimate victory possible. The lead standard is now a landmark
achievement for the entire nation.</i>"<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A fuller history surrounding this particular victory of the public over a group of multinational corporations would reflect the multiple generations of advocates who battled with lead. This additive was a kind of poster-child for its inherent hazards to human health. Over many years, public interest advocates had made the California Legislature increasingly hostile to the proposition that lead was a useful ingredient in anything. The reality that lead needed to be immediately removed from faucets had many helping hands. Among its chief opponents was Randy Kanouse, whose early career with the State Water Resources Control Board shifted with his being named as the lead lobbyist for the East Bay Municipal Utility District, one of the stateʻs major metropolitan water districts.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Early actions focused on the use of lead pipes and lead solders with a consensus among medical researchers that even infinitesimal exposures were a cause for concern. Attention grew to include water faucets that were previously regarded as a negligible source. With no hint of his usual element of whimsy, guided by his group of utility engineers, Randy Kanouse and his team emphatically pressed this opportunity to eliminate a dangerous and unnecessary threat to public health. The political dynamic was similar to other poisons, be they pesticides, plastics or petroleum as pursued by Martha </span><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Argüello</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, Bill Magavern, and a supporting cast of thousands responsible for advancing dozens of laws over many decades. Anchored in the assurance that citizens had the right to place limits on corporate activities (whether involving hazardous products or money in politics) and reflecting the work of numerous public health professionals, legislators gradually learned to recognize the inherent peril of lead exposures; especially for children. The upshot was the enactment of a law protecting many millions in California and beyond.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For other advocates lacking the financial wherewithal, the engineering expertise, and the wide array of political connections, and such a skilled coalition of talented advocates, a similar effort might take years to reach even a muddled compromise. Randy’s approach to lobbying was always impeccably professional. Outside of committee hearings, it was no surprise that among Randy’s favorite venues was the middle of Market Street in San Francisco, marching at an annual gay pride parade - another team effort involving hundreds of thousands. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Randy gained the support of metal workers and smaller metal manufacturers to demonstrate that practical technologies were already in place to eliminate lead in faucets. The story surrounding the passage of the new California lead standard for faucets could fill a separate book. A group of faucet manufacturers operating globally with revenues in the billions of dollars, who naively underestimated their opponents, were furious with the new California standard. Its pivotal role in international commerce compelled a retool of their operations around the world. As was always the case in the Legislature, the art of the possible fueled corporate lobbyists with new energies to fight another day, even when public advocates had delivered their client</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "droid serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> such a resounding defeat.</span><br />
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Bruce H. Jenningshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17254432554998056104noreply@blogger.com0