Jerry Brown: Oil lobby gutted climate bill – San Francisco Chronicle
Gov. Jerry Brown and legislative leaders said a well-financed oil industry won a fight over the state’s efforts to pass legislation that would drastically reduce California’s gas consumption. But the feisty governor pledged to keep pushing for climate change policies that reduce the state’s dependence on oil..more..
Legislature needs to pass California’s climate bills now
San Francisco Chronicle Editorial, September 8, 2015 4:54pm
Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León visits the Chronicle in San Francisco, Calif., on Friday, June 26, 2015 Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle
This was never going to be easy.
When California passed AB32 in 2006, state leaders were feted all over the world for their strong leadership and their willingness to do the hard work in the fight against climate change.
But now the party’s over. The state Legislature is embroiled in a tough fight around SB350 and SB32, two critical bills that represent California’s next steps toward achieving our climate change goals.
This year’s legislative deadline is Friday, so legislators must act now.
The most controversial bill is SB350, by state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles.
The petroleum industry has its guns aimed on the bill, which would require the state Air Resources Board to decide how the state should reduce petroleum use by 50 percent over the next 15 years and require utilities to increase their renewable energy portfolios to 50 percent by 2030. It would also require improved energy efficiency in buildings.
Those are tough goals, but they’re achievable. California can get there without resorting to the scare tactics that the oil industry is suggesting in its disingenuous ad campaigns (a ban on minivans and SUVs, Soviet-style gas rationing, and other over-the-top threats).
The state Assembly’s own analysis points out that California’s existing regulations have already set the stage for a decline in statewide petroleum consumption by 31 to 41 percent by 2030.
SB350 represents one more push, not a paradigm shift.
Still, there are a few waverers among the moderate Democrats in the state Assembly. (SB350 has already passed the state Senate.)
De León is still seeking to compromise with them (he’s offered amendments to beef up oversight of the state Air Resources Board and is open to giving the state Legislature a chance to modify whatever regulations the board winds up proposing), which is positive. Increasing oversight of the board would be an especially good idea.
But there should be no compromise on the centerpiece guidelines of the bill. After all, the climate isn’t willing to compromise with California.
SB32, authored by state Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills (Los Angeles County), has gotten less attention — but it doesn’t deserve to get lost in the end-of-the-year fray.
SB32 requires California to further slash greenhouse gas emissions, first to 40 percent below 1990 levels (by 2030), and eventually to 80 percent below 1990 levels (by 2050).
These are ambitious goals, and the state Legislature will have to refine them as technology and conditions change. But there’s no reason to believe that California can’t adapt to high standards.
Since we passed AB32, California’s economy has grown — not cratered. We’ve added jobs all over the economy, from manufacturing to clean technology.
Have there been financial costs? Yes. But Californians also value public health and the future of the planet, and that’s why the state Legislature needs to stop dithering and pass SB32 and SB350.
Fired regulator: Governor pushed to waive oil safeguards
By Ellen Knickmeyer, Sep 4, 3:32 PM EDT
FILE – In this Wednesday May 27, 2015 file photo, California Gov. Jerry Brown addresses the California State Association of Counties Legislative Conference in Sacramento, Calif. California’s top oil and gas regulators repeatedly warned Gov. Jerry Brown’s senior aides in 2011 that the governor’s orders to override key safeguards in granting oil industry permits would violate state and federal laws protecting the state’s groundwater from contamination, one of the former officials has testified. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California’s top oil and gas regulators repeatedly warned Gov. Jerry Brown’s senior aides in 2011 that the governor’s orders to override key environmental safeguards in granting oil industry permits would violate state and federal laws protecting groundwater from contamination, one of the former officials has testified.
Brown fired the regulators on Nov. 3, 2011, one day after what the official says was a final order from the governor to bypass provisions of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act and grant permits for oilfield injection wells. Brown later boasted publicly that the dismissals led to a speed up of oilfield permitting.
In a newly filed court declaration, Derek Chernow, Brown’s former acting director of the state Department of Conservation, also alleged that former Gov. Gray Davis urged fellow Democrat Brown in a phone call to fire Chernow and Elena Miller, the state’s oil and gas supervisor.
Brown’s spokesman, Evan Westrup, labeled the allegations “baseless.”
“The expectation – clearly communicated – was and always has been full compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act,” Westrup said Thursday.
This year, however, the state acknowledged that hundreds of the oilfield operations approved after the firings are now polluting the state’s federally protected underground supplies of water for drinking and irrigation.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has given the state until 2017 to resolve what state officials conceded were more than 2,000 permits improperly given to oil companies to inject oilfield production fluid and waste into protected water aquifers. An earlier AP analysis of the permits found state records showed more than 40 percent of those were granted in the four years since Brown took office.
Chernow’s declaration, obtained by The Associated Press, was contained in an Aug. 21 court filing in a lawsuit brought by a group of Central Valley farmers who allege that oil production approved by Brown’s administration has contaminated their water wells. The lawsuit also cites at least $750,000 in contributions that oil companies made within months of the firings to Brown’s campaign for a state income tax increase.
Westrup denied the oil companies’ support for Brown’s tax-increase campaign was related to the firings, saying, “the governor’s focus is doing what’s best for California, and that’s what informs his decisions.”
Robert Stern, former general counsel of the state’s ethics agency and the architect of a 1970s state political reform act, said there was nothing illegal about Brown receiving the oil industry contributions for his tax campaign unless they were explicitly in return for firing the oil regulators.
Chernow’s statement describes for the first time the alleged back story of the controversial permit approvals. He declined to comment to the AP and Miller did not respond to interview requests.
Brown’s boasting about the firings to speed up permitting is at odds with his image as a leading proponent of renewable energy and reduced fossil fuel consumption. That reputation led to a recent meeting with Pope Francis to discuss climate change.
Westrup said an ongoing effort by Brown to reduce consumption of fossil fuels in the state by up to 50 percent and the oil industry’s fight against elements of Brown’s climate-change campaign shows “where the administration stands and what it’s fighting for.”
The firings occurred as the governor was scrambling to drum up energy sources, jobs and business and to win support for the ultimately successful statewide vote on tax increases to tackle state budget woes.
Today, with the state in the fourth year of drought and a state of emergency declared by Brown, protecting the adequacy and purity of water supplies for farms and cities is a paramount priority.
In the declaration in the farmers’ case, Chernow said he and Miller were under intense pressure from the oil industry as well as the Brown administration to relax permitting standards for injection wells that oil companies use to pump production fluid and waste underground.
Chernow testified he was in the office of John Laird, Brown’s secretary of Natural Resources, in early October 2011 when Laird took a call from Brown. Laird told Chernow that Brown said he had just received a call from Davis, then acting as legal counsel for Occidental Petroleum, the country’s fourth-biggest oil Company.
Brown said Davis and Occidental had demanded Brown fire Chernow and Miller over what Occidental complained was the slow pace of issuing drilling permits, according to Chernow.
Davis declined to comment Thursday.
A few weeks later, on Nov. 2, 2011, Chernow and Miller received a call from Brown’s energy adviser, Cliff Rechtschaffen, who urged the regulators to “immediately fast-track” approval of new oilfield permits, according to Chernow’s filing.
Miller replied that what Brown aides and the oil industry were pressing for “violated the Safe Drinking Water Act, and that the EPA agreed” with that conclusion, Chernow said. In response, according to Chernow, Rechtschaffen told them “this was an order from Governor Brown, and must be obeyed.”
Chernow and Miller were fired the following day.
Memos sent to Department of Conservation staff the next month – obtained through state public records laws by lawyers for the farmers – allegedly detail some ways state oilfield regulators were told they could now bypass some federally mandated environmental reviews and approve permits.
The state, under increasing pressure from the EPA, this year and last ordered the shutdown of 23 improperly permitted oilfield wells posing the most immediate threat to nearby water wells.
Current officials in the Department of Conservation said they believe the actual number of flawed permits granted under Brown is lower than the 46 percent the state records show, but they have not provided alternate figures.
The state improperly issued permits, they said, because of misunderstandings and poor record-keeping, rather than willful decisions by Brown’s administration.
The safeguards at issue in the alleged permitting dispute were a “very fundamental” part of the federal Safe Drinking Water Act’s protections against oilfield contamination, said David Albright, manager of the EPA’s California groundwater office, this week.
California “has a huge amount of work to do” to bring its regulation of oilfield injection wells into compliance with federal law, said Jared Blumenfeld, the regional EPA administrator in California. Blumenfeld cited a “sea change” over the past year in state compliance efforts, however.
Executives of Occidental and Aera Energy at the time thanked Brown for his involvement in the oilfield permitting process, as Occidental CEO Steven Chazren noted in a January 2012 call with financial analysts, two months after top regulators were fired.
That month, Occidental became the first major oil company to come out in support of the Brown’s tax measure and donated the first of $500,000 to Brown’s campaign for the tax referendum. A month later, Aera donated $250,000.
Margita Thompson, a spokeswoman at what is now the independent California spin-off of Occidental, California Resources Council, said that all the farmers’ allegations were “wholly without merit.” Cindy Pollard, spokeswoman for Aera, said the company often donates to revenue-raising state campaigns. “Aera’s contributions were not quid pro quo,” she said.
Repost from the New York Times [Editor: SB 350 passed in the California Senate and is up for a vote in the Assembly. Please phone or write your Assembly member NOW to encourage a vote for this most important climate bill. More info: 1) California Climate Leadership, 2) Earthjustice, 3) Natural Resources Defense Council and 4) Cool Davis (including a sample letter). Find and contact your California legislators here. – RS]
Bold Bill to Cut California Emissions Sets Off Fierce Battle
By Adam Nagourney, Sept. 4, 2015
Wednesday evening’s commuter rush on Interstate 110 in Los Angeles. Legislation in California’s long-term campaign against emissions calls for a 50 percent reduction in petroleum use by Jan. 1, 2030. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times
SACRAMENTO — With President Obama back from a trip to Alaska in which he portrayed the fight against climate change as an urgent international priority, California is showing how hard it can be — even in a state overwhelmingly controlled by Democrats — to get an ambitious carbon reduction bill passed.
The state has been at the forefront of global efforts to battle greenhouse gases, enacting mandates to force sharp reductions in emissions over the next 35 years. Its environmental record was applauded by Mr. Obama last week, and Pope Francis invited Gov. Jerry Brown to discuss the fight against global warming in the Vatican this summer.
But a centerpiece of California’s long-term campaign against emissions — legislation requiring a 50 percent reduction in petroleum use by Jan. 1, 2030 — has set off a fierce battle here, pitting not only a well-financed oil industry against environmentalists, but Democrat against Democrat. The bill easily passed the Senate, but is faltering in the Assembly because of opposition by moderate Democrats, many representing economically suffering districts in central California. A vote is expected early next week.
The legislation faces an onslaught by the Western States Petroleum Association and other oil industry advocates that, in ads and mailings, assert that a 50 percent cut in petroleum use could result in gas rationing and a ban on minivans.
“This law will limit how often we can drive our own cars,” a narrator in one ad says urgently, an assertion the bill’s sponsors say is groundless. The oil industry has tagged the bill “The California Gas Restriction Act of 2015.”
A defeat would be a setback for Mr. Brown — who has made a battle against global warming a centerpiece of his final years in public life — and for environmentalists who have looked to California to lead the emissions fight at time of strong skepticism about global warming in Washington. Mr. Obama urged California lawmakers to enact the bill in a recent speech in Las Vegas, signaling the importance he is attaching to the issue in his final years in office.
The environmental fight here comes on the eve of the United Nations climate change conference in Paris later this year. There, Mr. Brown and Kevin de León, the State Senate Democratic leader who led the fight for the bill in his chamber, are planning to outline for an international audience California’s campaign against greenhouse gases. On Wednesday, the Legislature passed and sent to Mr. Brown a measure requiring the state’s public pension funds to divest from coal companies.
“The rest of the world is watching very closely what is happening in California, and I think so far they see a success story,” Mr. de León said. “Our economy has grown — we are adding jobs, and we are reducing our carbon emissions. Therefore it is absolutely crucial that this measure passes because it will be a big blow to the rest of the states and the whole world if it doesn’t.”
California has mandated an 80 percent cut in emissions by 2050, using 1990 emissions levels as a baseline. The goal has been championed by Democrats like Mr. Brown and Republicans like former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. This bill on petroleum, one of several the Legislature is voting on to put these limits in place, is intended to ensure that California meets this target.
The legislation, Senate Bill 350, leaves it to the state’s Air Resources Board to determine how the 50 percent mandate would be met; it does not mention gas rationing or banning minivans. It also includes no penalties in case the mandate is missed. Opponents, in defending the warnings about rationing, noted that the bill is short on specifics on how the reduction would be achieved; they said they see no other way the mandate could be met.
“I can’t figure out any other way to reach a 50 percent reduction in that frame without doing some pretty dramatic measures,” said Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the president of the Western States Petroleum Association. “If it isn’t gas rationing, what is it? I keep hearing what it isn’t.”
Mr. Brown, in an interview in his office here, said the oil industry was using fear tactics to try to derail the effort before the Legislature adjourns on Sept. 11, but said he was confident of eventual success.
“You’ve got the oil companies fighting Pope Francis,” Mr. Brown said. “Fighting the scientists of the world. Fighting the governor of California. They are engaged in literally a life-and-death struggle, and I have no doubt who is going to be the victor.”
He added: “It’s a shameless effort to maintain their revenue stream — regardless of what the impact is on everyone else. There is no rationing in the bill. Read it. None.”
The concerns have come not only from Republicans, but also from moderate Democrats who represent communities in central California. Many of these communities are struggling with high unemployment and slow economic growth.
“So much of our economy is driven by the use of petroleum,” said Assemblyman Henry T. Perea, a Democrat from the Central Valley and a leader of moderates in his house. “We don’t know what impacts S.B. 350 will have on it. We don’t know because we don’t know what the plan is. What does that look like? We haven’t heard that answer to that. And in the absence of information, you create your own.”
Kristin Olsen, the Assembly Republican leader, said her party was eager to find ways to curb harmful emissions. “My son has asthma — of course I want clean air,” she said. But she questioned why California had to be a leader in an effort that she argued had such significant economic costs.
“We want to be leaders,” she said, “but not when there are no followers. And at some point we have look at the fact that no one is following California’s lead. We are less than 1 percent of the world. At some point we should work on reasonable cost-effective measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to improve our air quality. But not at the cost of jobs.”
Ms. Boyd, of the petroleum association, said the bill’s sponsors had erred in trying to push the measure through without explaining how it might work. “We think there should be a lot more detail, and it should be articulated pretty clearly about how one thinks they are going to be about this superaggresive mandate,” she said.
Backers of the bill said reductions would be achieved by, among other things, bolstering the fuel efficiency of existing cars and increasing the number of electric cars on the roads, while pushing urban planning policies that help enable people to walk to their jobs and to shopping districts.
“We don’t have a choice — we have to make these changes,” said Tom Steyer, a billionaire hedge fund manager and environmental advocate who has been championing the bill. “In listening to these people talk about how there is going to be rationing, I’m like, stop making up stories and start telling us what will happen under your scenario.”
“We are in the process of changing how we use energy in the United States of America,” Mr. Steyer added. “The way this happens is, the private sector comes up with new ideas, and people either like them or not.”
Mr. de León, the leader of the State Senate Democrats, said that he was preparing amendments to his bill to try to ease concerns. One amendment would give the Legislature more of a say over the final recommendation by the Air Resources Board.
Mr. Brown said that even if this bill were to be defeated, enough other legislation was already in place that he was confident of long-term victory.
“This is not the whole battle,” Mr. Brown said. “This bill has become a lightning rod. It’s important. But California is way down the road in terms of the thrust and momentum that has been building up for over a decade.”
