OIL SPILLS, clean energy initiatives, fears of global warming and a painfully slow economic recovery make for a potent brew as we struggle to find solutions.

California is once again ground zero with its fragile coastal environment and polluted air, decaying highway and water infrastructures, an education system that gets failing grades, runaway deficits, more than 12 percent unemployment, and an economy ravaged by declining revenues, municipal insolvency and government paralysis.

Why either Jerry Brown or his likely opponent, Meg Whitman, would want to run this state is a good question.

Perhaps the best answer is that one of them thinks he knows how, having done so before, and the other is willing to spend any amount of money for the tutorial.

In a foreshadowing of things to come in Washington, where Sen. Barbara Boxer is having trouble rounding up support for a giant cap-and-trade bill opposed by coal-burning states, proponents of a cleaner and healthier environment are looking optimistically toward November’s election when Californians will vote on AB 32, which mandates a 25 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

The goal is ambitious and industry forces are mounting an all-out effort to defeat it.

Its passage would be the final hurrah for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger who has become perhaps the greenest governor in the nation, startling even the state’s powerful environmentalist lobby by announcing his reversal of support for expanded oil drilling off the California coast. But after the disastrous Gulf Coast oil spill, this is plain common sense coupled with smart politics.

Critics of the decision were quick to say it will cost jobs, drive up prices at the pump, and discourage investment in new energy technologies. We have heard that before.

In Marin, the high-decibel battle over the clean energy initiative has yet to play out, with grassroots advocates contending it is essential if we are to stave off the effects of global warming and opponents led by utility colossus Pacific Gas and Electric are equally adamant that it may not do much good at all.

PG&E has been so heavy handed in pushing the “opt out” choice, which permits cities and homeowners to vote against the Marin Energy Authority as their preferred energy provider, that it has been sanctioned by the state Public Utilities Commission for its overly-aggressive marketing.

Caught in the middle of this fractious dialogue are the consumers who must decide whether the financial and administrative risks of what is disarmingly labeled community choice aggregation (read as a municipal takeover of electric power) are preferable to an energy future dependent upon a company with proven methods of delivery and service and little interest in fostering competition.

The two opponents vying for the First District supervisorial seat, Kerry Mazzoni and incumbent Susan Adams, have been drawn into the debate with Adams staunchly in favor of the initiative and Mazzoni expressing skepticism.

Only people living on another planet would dispute the wisdom of wanting the benefits of cleaner and safer air and water, and investing in the necessary technologies to accomplish it. A majority of voters also favored sweeping health care reforms, although that majority was in bitter disagreement over the best approach.

One thing is certain. Earth is a shared living space and the damage to any one of us is damage to all.

STATE SEN. Mark Leno has represented the Marin/Sonoma 3rd District for only a short time, but might be interested in trading in that seat for the mayor’s job in San Francisco. There are many variables that could get in the way.

More over the flip…

Leno would be eligible to run for a second four-year term in 2012. However, he could be campaigning in different ZIP codes when the district lines are redrawn next year as a result of the decennial census-taking. These will be determined by a newly created nonpartisan commission that stripped the Legislature of this power with passage of Proposition 11.

When that work is done, Leno’s district, which presently includes a portion of San Francisco, could be moved entirely north of the Golden Gate or possibly reoriented south of the city to exclude Marin and Sonoma entirely.

It could also remain unchanged – a result which Leno would prefer – since he received 80 percent of the general election vote after a very contentious primary that ousted former Senator Carole Migden in what is a very safe Democratic district.

Apparently Leno’s interest in City Hall was bolstered by a recent San Francisco Chamber of Commerce survey of nine wannabe candidates which showed him coming in first. Until now fellow state Sen. Leland Yee had been leading in the early polls.

When asked how serious these ambitions are, Leno responded, “It is way off in the future and I love representing the people in Marin and Sonoma.”

Any plans he may have will be further complicated by several possible scenarios all of which involve Mayor Gavin Newsom’s decision to run for lieutenant governor.

Were Newsom to win in the primary, and then in November beat the sitting lieutenant governor, most likely Republican Sen. Abe Maldonado, assuming the Assembly confirms him, an interim mayor would have to be either appointed or elected to serve out the year remaining in Newsom’s term.

The guessing game is in full swing as to who that might be with the incumbent thereby getting a strong handle up in the next election.

Former Mayor Willie Brown is mentioned as the safest choice since he cannot run for another term. Another alternative might be the appointment of Board President David Chiu, as acting mayor providing he could muster six votes besides his own.

The principal beneficiary of a Leno Administration would be San Rafael Assemblyman Jared Huffman, who is termed out in 2012 and will no doubt be eying the state Senate.

But were Leno to lose his bid for mayor, since he does not have to surrender his seat to run, he could face Huffman who he would consider his strongest opponent in a re-election race.

The last piece of this musical chairs puzzle revolves around Rep. Lynn Woolsey’s plans. Were she to decide to retire, that seat would be an immediate prize with both Huffman and Leno potential contenders.

For now, Leno plans on becoming better known in his district. Although their future paths could tangle, he and Huffman enjoy a close working relationship and are providing North Bay voters with a double punch that is the strongest in years.

In my next column I take a closer look at Leno’s track record and his stances on controversial issues such as Marin Clean Energy (he is strongly in favor), and the state’s fiscal mess.

Human beings are by nature territorial. That especially applies in politics where domains are carved out by groups of entrenched interests claiming to be sacrosanct and will broach no intrusion.

The California Legislature wants to run its own house even if in the minds of many it is doing so very badly.

Despite the internecine warfare taking place – witness the inability to muster even a simple majority to support the nomination of one of their own to fill the vacant lieutenant governor slot – there is little evidence of coming together around reforms that might ultimately save the present institution from extinction.

This might account for the lack of interest in a holding a constitutional convention – an idea sprung by a few inventive Bay Area thinkers who have no confidence Sacramento will ever mend its ways unless threatened with public rebellion.

But this sudden populist insurgency to cleanse government of its impurities has apparently come to a complete halt for the usual reasons: Lack of funds, public indifference and legislative resistance.

The mere notion of discussing any constitutional changes is apparently more daunting than Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and their supporters found it to be when they pulled off an arguably more difficult task 224 years ago.

That’s partly because democracy then did not require petition drives, hordes of lobbyists and giant bankrolls. Nor did interesting ideas have to spring from the populace; there were plenty of brilliant leaders just itching to launch a nation.

Bipartisanship was rampant. Innovation was taken for granted.

Today, the glaring absence of any of out-of-the-box thinking, orderly process and solidarity for the mutual good is thwarting adoption of even modest remedies as the political machinery grinds to a halt.

Such inertia, lack of real leadership and outright fear of change from within the legislative chambers has helped turn what seemed only months ago like a promising idea into just another quaint topic for dinner conversation.

Meanwhile, we have settled into government by public initiatives (59 at last count were being readied for the November ballot), minority dictation of budgets, insurmountable hurdles to reining in the deficits, and term limits that has turned Sacramento into a giant job placement mill and made public service a badly devalued commodity.

Repair California, a group led by Marin resident John Grubb set out to remedy this by staging a constitutional convention. It has officially closed shop, according to Jim Wunderman, CEO of the Bay Area Council, who was the original promoter of the idea.

A petition to qualify it for the November ballot by April required 1.2 million signatures and $5 million to hire a management firm. To date, $1 million was raised and 100,000 signatures collected.

“There is little discretionary cash in today’s climate,” says Wunderman, “Also, though it was nonpartisan, both left and right saw hidden political agendas being pushed by the other.”

“We were trying to invent something for which there was no previous model,” says Wunderman.

That didn’t stop the founding fathers.

In September 1789, Jefferson wrote to a fellow Founder James Madison, “No society can make a perpetual constitution or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation.”

He may have been on to something.

California enters 2010 facing a $20 billion hole in its budget. Does this sound like a familiar story? By all evidence not much has changed since last year when the governor and legislature took 144 days to solve this problem—and then apparently did not.

The Governor has floated creative ideas for saving and raising money to get the state out of its terminal financial doldrums from shipping undocumented immigrants off to Mexican prisons to mounting overhead electronic billboard displays on freeway bridges.

They received only the most tepid response from legislators in both parties who are in the grips of a political paralysis which many think unprecedented as they struggle to find any common ground. Democrats want to raise taxes which Republicans, including the Governor, fiercely resist preferring cuts in services.

Even some of the cuts previously approved for prisons and Medi-Cal rates were never enacted while $1 billion more than planned must be spent on public schools because of Proposition 98 guarantees.

These are just some of the balancing act choices, none of them popular, in a bitterly divided legislature.

With the job market still sluggish even after the infusion of millions in federal stimulus funds and with the state’s jobless rate holding at12.4%, the vague hopes for recovery that accompanied the cheery pronouncements from Sacramento after last year’s budget crisis have only solidified voter cynicism that anything can ever get done.

These sentiments are echoed across the nation where voter revolt has already cost the Democrats a Senate seat in Massachusetts, governorships in New Jersey and Virginia, and the likelihood with the announced retirement of Senator Evan Bayh, a popular Indiana Democrat, that the contagion is spreading and could engulf the Administration by the time of the November mid-term elections. Loss of their Senate majority is already a foregone conclusion.

In California, this is posing problems for Barbara Boxer, the former Marin resident now in her third term whose credentials as one of the most liberal members of the Senate has not hurt her in past campaigns but could be wearing thin as anti-incumbent fever stoked by Tea Party advocates and reinvigorated conservatives sweeps the country.  

While Boxer is still seen as the narrow favorite, the entry into the race of political moderate and former Peninsula Congressman, Tom Campbell, muddies the picture which showed Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett Packard chief, with the early lead and a vast fortune to back it up.

This creates an opening for Irvine Assemblyman, Chuck DeVore, who as the most conservative of the three may be positioned best to wrest the nomination. That would be welcome news for Boxer in a state which still leans heavily Democratic and who held off a charge by an ardent conservative to gain her seat in 1992.

But if California’s economy and the nation’s have not significantly rebounded before November which is still a good bet, no incumbents are safe.

Millions will be poured into the race to defeat Boxer, aided by the Supreme Court’s recent ruling allowing corporations to spend unlimited sums in federal elections. If this happens, California may become the bell weather state for the majority party’s fortunes in November and beyond.

But Republican incumbents in California and everywhere must also worry if they cannot deliver.