California’s Suspend AB32, deceptively entitled “California Jobs Initiative,” is one of the stupidest ideas cooked up in a state not named Utah or Texas.  AB32 is California’s landmark climate law, requiring the state to reduce its greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020.  A Republican member of the state assembly, Dan Logue, has proposed that the law be suspended until unemployment drops below 5.5% for four consecutive quarters — effectively gutting the law entirely, as unemployment has rarely been that low for that long.  

The initiative ran into financial trouble last month, but it’s been resurrected from the grave.  The money behind this particular zombie looks like it’s coming from two large Texas-based refiners, Tesoro and Valero.  If so, the initiative may be in violation of California Fair Political Practices Committee regulations.

When last we heard from Suspend AB32 in mid-February, it was dying from lack of the mother’s milk of politics, a shortage of funds, along with a renaming (thanks to once-and-future governor Jerry Brown) from “California Jobs Initiative” to the far more accurate “Suspends air pollution control laws requiring major polluters to report and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.”  However, as any fan of George A. Romero knows, some creatures are hard to kill.

Greenwire, via New York Times, has the story: Texas refiners mum about funding push to halt California’s climate law.  “Several well-placed sources in Sacramento” report that two refiners based in San Antonio, Texas — Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp. — are the sole funders behind the new push.  (Spokespeople for Valero, Tesoro, and Logue have refused comment but are not denying the assertion.)  Signature gathering has moved from Logue to Goddard Claussen, which bills itself as an “issue advocacy” firm with clients like “Californians to Stop Unfair Rate Increases,” in actuality “several of the nation’s leading insurance companies” and “Floridians For Lower Insurance Costs,” in actuality State Farm.  (All information taken from the firm’s website.)

Valero and Tesoro both operate refineries in California: Valero in Benicia and Wilmington, and Tesoro in Martinez and Los Angeles (formerly Shell).  Valero has an astroturf Voices for Energy campaign, warning falsely that cap and trade is a hidden tax that will cost 77 cents per gallon.  Tesoro repeats the lie on its Tesoro Action Center page.  In reality, AB32 has virtually no economic impact on small businesses and has been praised as a clean energy jobs powerhouse.

The California Fair Political Practices Committee now requires that any ballot measure

must list the economic or other special interests of their $50,000 donors in descending order in its committee name. This list must precede and not be interspersed with constituencies such as “concerned citizens,” or “taxpayers.”

Suspend AB32’s website has lists of proponents and endorsers, all California-based, but no mention of Valero or Tesoro.  Logue fancies himself a Columbo, but as I recall, detectives work to enforce the law, not circumvent it.

Is someone running afoul of the FPPC?  I don’t know, but I do know that this zombie clean energy jobs killer initiative needs to die, once and for all.  And, as a Californian, I’m not too happy with out-of-state institutions spending millions on ballot initiatives telling me who I can marry and what kind of air I can breathe.

(x-posted at DailyKos)

Repair California, the group trying to put a constitutional convention on the November 2010 ballot, has just announced that it’s suspending its work.  Repair California was an offshoot of the Bay Area Council, a group of northern California businesspeople.  

Many progressives favored last summer’s original idea of a constitutional convention.  However, the details that emerged caused progressive enthusiasm to wither away.  Among them: Proposition 13 would remain the untouchable third rail of California politics.

It’s time to go to Plan B: a 58 County Strategy.

Officially, Repair California will revive its efforts to gather signatures if it can raise 3 million dollars by March 1.  There’s an interesting albeit rumored backstory, which (if true) only goes to prove the pervasive corruption of the initiative process: several (unnamed) signature gathering businesses refused to gather signatures, allegedly as part of an organized boycott of Repair California, out of the belief that the constitutional convention would outlaw or curtail initiatives altogether, with unspecified “special interests in Sacramento” opposing Repair California.  

Repair California may be spinning paranoid conspiracy delusions, or it may be right.  Only in California can Pacific Gas & Electric pay $6.5M to have an initiative with the innocuous name of “Californians Protect Our Right to Vote” placed on the ballot with the goal of strangling nonprofit renewable electricity co-op competition. (Consider this an early reminder to vote No on Prop 16, and read PG&E Political Power Grab if you’re not yet convinced that the initiative process has become hideously corrupted.)  In any case, Repair California is likely not going to save the state.

What can save the state?  California needs a 58 County Strategy (a name paying homage to Howard Dean’s 50 State Strategy).  We’re tantalizingly close to a 2/3 veto-proof supermajority in both the Assembly and Senate, and might be even closer if Abel Maldonado is confirmed as Lt. Governor.  We have a good shot at installing Jerry Brown as Governor.  We can flip a few Congressional districts.  It’ll take some time to turn counties like Fresno and Modoc blue, but it can be done — si, se puede.  With supermajorities over 2/3 in each house of the legislature, we can begin to repair California the right way, beginning with exempting commercial property from Proposition 13.

California is broken, but it can be repaired.

(x-posted from DailyKos)

(x-posted from DailyKos)

The skies are finally clearing above Los Angeles.  For days, they’ve been that peculiar yellowish color.  The Station fire, largest in county history, is 42% contained.  So far, the official cause is arson.  

Meanwhile, the city of Los Angeles has imposed water rationing, and hundreds of miles to the north, the California state legislature prepares to tackle the water issue.  Governor Schwarzenegger claims that the cause of the drought is the Delta smelt, a two inch long fish.

Everything has a cause, but some causes are more important than others.  

My day job includes arguing about “efficient proximate causation,” or predominant causation, of potentially covered insurance losses.  For a true example, if a building’s foundation settles, an insurance carrier will deny a property damage claim, because earth movement is not covered…unless the foundation settles because of a sudden and accidental pipe burst under the building, because a sudden and accidental pipe burst is covered…unless the pipe burst because it was made from  low quality Korean steel, because an original construction defect is not covered…unless your eyes have glazed over reading this, in which case you’re like most judges.  We bicker about causation in flavors of immediate, concurrent, superseding, and intervening.  Ultimately, a judge sifts through the facts and arguments and decides that one of the various proffered causes is the predominant one, one lawyer wins the case and one lawyer loses, and an insurance carrier pays or doesn’t pay accordingly.

 (Photo: LA Times)

Investigators have found the starting point of the huge Station fire that devastated mountains near Los Angeles, and the cause might be arson — although they’re not ruling out an accidental spark from a negligent person.  A fire in Los Angeles in August seems unnatural to this native Angeleno, because hot dry Santa Ana winds of October are usually required to bring out arsonists and fan sparks, but I don’t doubt the investigators’ work.

The Station fire ranks 12th (so far) on a list of California’s largest wildfires.  As this chart of California’s 20 largest fires shows, 9 fires occurred from 1932 to 2000, while 11 have occurred since 2000.  Six of those fires were lightning-caused, three (including the Station fire) are listed as unknown/under investigation, and the remainder are attributed to humans and their creations.  Yet are humans and lightning the predominant cause of all these horrific fires?

Meanwhile, the Delta smelt is giving California legislators conniption fits.  



There’s widespread agreement that the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is collapsing.  This tiny fish was once common in the brackish waters of the Delta, but is now endangered.  In 2007, a federal judge ordered water managers to cut back drastically on pumping water from Northern to Southern California, causing water rationing across California.  Yesterday, the Governator complained to the federal Departments of Interior and Commerce that the fish have caused the catastrophic impact of the drought.  The federal officials responded: “a three-year drought is responsible for most of the state’s water shortages, not agency scientists.”  Pwned!  No, Arnold, the fish is not the predominant cause of Southern California’s water shortage.

On a thermometer, climate change in the Southwest so far looks like this:

In other words, temperatures already increased an average of 1.5 degree F from the 1960s-70s baseline to 2000, and they’re likely to increase another 2 to 3 degrees by 2020.

What does that 1.5 degree (or more) temperature rise mean for wildfires?  Economists studying wildfires (22 pg pdf) in Montana concluded:

We find that a one degree increase in average spring and summer temperature is associated with a 305 percent increase in area burned, and a 107 percent increase in home protection costs. These results suggest that climate change and development in wildfire-prone areas will likely lead to a dramatic increase in wildfire suppression costs in the near future.

Got that?  The immediate cause of a particular wildfire may be an arsonist, a lit cigarette butt, or a lightning strike; but the predominant cause of the dramatic increase in wildfires is the climate.

Droughts have come and gone, but California and the Southwest appear to be beginning a megadrought.  The general consensus of state and federal reports is this: Rising air temperatures cause the shrinking Sierra snowpack and thus cause more drought.  The causal connection between global warming and drought is more intuitively easy to grasp than the causal connection between global warming and wildfires.  However, in case there’s any doubt, the future of the Southwest ain’t pretty.

(this is an edited & updated version of a diary published on DailyKos)

As a California native with a hillside, I know the rules of fire.  

* Clear your brush by June 1.

* Watch other states burn in July and August.  California firefighters will help them — it’s great experience for October.

* Don’t worry until the Santa Ana winds blow in mid October…and then, worry a lot.  Make lists in your head: family photos, computer hard drive, pet food, handmade quilts, important papers, medicines, kids’ comfort items.  Pace around your house and realize that all else is just stuff.  Plan your route.

* Cheer the burly young men with charred faces and heavy gear.  When they stagger into the Jack in the Box fresh from the latest Malibu fire, don’t just bring them water, buy their meals.  Drop off home-baked cookies at the fire station.  Hang a banner to thank them for saving your community.

I’ve seen the glow of fires 10 miles away from my hillside, and I’ve watched burning embers dance above a firefighters’ command post and settle on that same hill.  I’ve packed the essentials at 3 AM while the kids race their bikes past the Halloween-decorated lawns.  I know that October is fire season.

This year, Los Angeles is burning in August, and it’s unnatural.

Our fires are different from those in other Western states.  The fires of Wyoming, Colorado, and Arizona start with lightning strikes in semi-arid mountains.  Ours start with the winds of October and November. I call it “Chapstick and nosebleed weather,” but Raymond Chandler described it better:

There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen.

Today, 35,000 42,500 acres have burned in an out of control fire 19 miles long known as the Station fire, burning northeast of Los Angeles.  So far, three to five homes have burned, while 10,000 12,000 more are threatened.  Separately, fires burn in Riverside and San Diego Counties, Yosemite National Park, near Pinnacles National Monument in inland Monterey County, and in Auburn near Sacramento.

All this with no wind.  We’ve had high temperatures, but without Santa Anas these fires should not exist.  The winds start many wildfires — they down power lines, causing electrical sparks to arc out of control.  At a bare minimum, the winds take sparks from innocuous sources — a welder, a weed-whacker, a cigarette butt — and blow them up.  To analogize this for East Coast folks, fires without wind are like snowstorms without clouds.

Record-setting wildfires are resulting from the rising temperatures and related reductions in spring snowpack and soil moisture, according to the US Global Change Research Project:

How climate change will affect fire in the Southwest varies according to location. In general, total area burned is projected to increase. How this plays out at individual locations, however, depends on regional changes in temperature and precipitation, as well as on whether fire in the area is currently limited by fuel availability or by rainfall.  For example, fires in wetter, forested areas are expected to increase in frequency, while areas where fire is limited by the availability of fine fuels experience decreases. Climate changes could also create subtle shifts in fire behavior, allowing more “runaway fires” – fires that are thought to have been brought under control, but then rekindle. The magnitude of fire damages, in terms of economic impacts as well as direct endangerment, also increases as urban development increasingly impinges on forested areas.

Shorter (pdf): climate change is already here, and increasing temperature, drought, and wildfire will accelerate transformation of the landscape.

Angelenos already joke that fire season now runs from July 1 to June 30.  In the last two years, we’ve had brushfires in February, during what’s supposed to be the rainy season, and in May, at the end of what’s supposed to be the rainy season when the plants are supposed to be plump with stored water.

To make matters worse, California budget cuts are reducing firefighters’ ability to do their job.  In Los Angeles, the mayor of the city is decimating city fire stations, and has ordered city firefighters not to intervene in fires outside the city.  Vendors refuse to do business with CalFire during state budget crises.  State politics only exacerbate the larger issues of megadrought combined with climate change.

California’s vulnerability to fires is not going to get any better.  Before Steven Chu became Secretary of Energy, he predicted that even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. “There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster,” Chu said, “and that’s in the best scenario.”  The Southwest region is prone to mega-droughts lasting decades, and California is generally considered to have entered one beginning 1999.

For up to date news of today’s fires, Firefighter Blog runs both a blog and a Twitter account.  

In the short term, the “we’ve got ours” selfishness is best exemplified by the La Canada Country Club.  A lifeguard reports:  

Water-dropping helicopters had been taking water from the pond on the golf course at the corner of Angeles Crest Highway and Country Club Drive since the fire started. The club management opposed, even going so far as telling sheriff’s department and police officials they couldn’t take any water unless the club was paid for it.  One of the other guards on duty heard a conversation between club management in which they said they wanted the guards to remain on duty to prevent the helicopters from taking water from the pool.

The Real La Canada blog  UPDATED from The Real La Canada Blog:

There appears to have been a misunderstanding. Helicopters were using a water hazard at the country club to gather water to fight the blaze. This resulted in the water depleting rather quickly from the water hazard. A hose had been hooked up to a nearby fire hydrant was being used to replenish the water that had been taken. This rapid use of water became a concern for city water officials. Aware of the magnitude of the blaze, city water officials cautioned the use of such a large amount of water. This is very understandable, La Canada can only store so much water and once its gone, its gone.

In the medium-to-long term, it’s time to rewrite the rules of fire.  We can’t control the megadrought, but we can use water wisely.  We can’t do much to reverse the climate change that has already occurred, but we can keep it from getting worse.  We can’t reverse years of bad Republican decisions, but we can take back the state.  And in the long term, if we don’t do any of those, I fear that we will have to make some ugly choices about attempting to sustain both a very large, thirsty population and a thirsty agricultural way of life.

(Rather scary stuff… – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

First, the glimmer of good news: after wasting $3B because they couldn’t come to an agreement by June 30…giving a secret $2B tax credit to Cal’s largest corporations in the middle of a budget crisis…issuing IOUs and seeing the state’s credit rating plummet…after banks stopped accepting IOUs because California’s money is no good…finally, the Governator and legislators met again yesterday to express optimism.

The bad news: it’s fire season, and vendors for the state Department of Forestry & Fires (CalFire) are refusing to do business with the state.  On an economic blog:

I work in the aircraft repair/parts industry in California and thought I’d let you onto something. Many vendors to the CDF (California division of forestry) air operations have outstanding bills going back to last year. My company just put all California agencies on cash or credit card only. Many others are refusing to sell to the CDF because of huge amount of unpaid and late bills. We don’t even get Registered Warrants!

Mish, this is scary. I know of one company that is doing repairs knowing they won’t get paid just because they do not want to see fire fighting aircraft grounded

This week in California, where the southern part of the state has been sunny, hot, and dry, the northern part is the same but with dry lightning strikes in foothills, and fire season runs from July 1 to June 30:

7/11/09, a 30 acre brush fire in Antelope Valley threatened homes before being contained.

7/11, a a 200 acre brush fire in Los Padres National Forest heads toward the wilderness boundary, as all air tankers in Southern California are committed to incidents at this time (boldface in original).

7/8/09, an 80 acre brush fire near the Getty Museum caused the museum and Mt. St. Mary’s college to be evacuated.

7/7/09, the Backbone Fire broke out in a rugged part of Siskiyou County.  As of 10 AM on 7/11, it’s 25% contained after burning over 5500 acres.

Also on 7/7/09, the Elm Fire burned 270 acres in Riverside County before being fully contained.

And, of course, lots of tiny fires have been lit in one smoking tent near the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento, where smoking is not allowed indoors.  The tent is “about 15 feet square, carpeted with artificial turf and outfitted with stylish furniture, an iPod, a video-conferencing terminal, trays of almonds, a chess table, a refrigerator and a large photo of the governor.” In it, the Governator himself declares to a NYTimes interviewer that he’s

“perfectly fine,” despite the fiscal debacle and personal heartsickness all around him. “Someone else might walk out of here every day depressed, but I don’t walk out of here depressed,” Schwarzenegger said. Whatever happens, “I will sit down in my Jacuzzi tonight,” he said. “I’m going to lay back with a stogie.”

The state has asked its contractors and suppliers to cut back 15%.  Food service contractors, who typically claim a 2-3% profit margin, are being asked to cut 15%, reports the WSJ.  And you wonder why no one wants to work with the state fire department?

This weekend, California leaders report that they’re making progress:

Bass, who walked out of negotiations earlier in the week, said Saturday that her concerns have been addressed and that there did not appear to be any insurmountable obstacles to reaching a deal. She described the talks as complicated.

“I think what has happened over the last 48 hours has been the most productive in the last several weeks,” the Los Angeles Democrat said. “We are just not finished.”

Of course, Bass doesn’t tell reporters that they’re making progress at the expense of suspending Proposition 98, which guarantees that 40% of all general education revenue go to education.  The Sacramento Bee reports that Arnold’s hostile suspension has rocked the state Capitol.  The California Teachers Association and SEIU are both gearing up for fights.

Yet, if a cruel budget is not passed, October will be crueler still.  The IOUs are only going to some creditors — generally, the have-nots, while the haves get paid in cash.  By October, the state will run completely out of cash, the IOUs will (allegedly) be redeemable, and the Santa Ana winds will blow.  

Note: I originally posted this at DailyKos, where I know how to use links.