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A Dark and Dirty Shadow Falls Over California Plastic Bag Ban

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By Doug Porter

Efforts to eliminate the use of plastic grocery bags in California face all-out opposition via two well-funded industry campaigns in 2016. Hilex Poly, Superbag Corp, Advance Polybag and Formosa Plastics Corporation are expected to cough up most of the probable $55.3 million price tag for the efforts.

An estimated $38.1 million war chest will back a November referendum aimed at SB270, State Senator Alex Padilla’s bill banning the use of plastic bags. The measure was suspended following a $3.2 million signature-gathering campaign funded by the American Progressive Bag Alliance.

And just to make sure they get their way, industry proponents are spending an estimated $4 million qualifying a second ballot measure innocuously titled the Environmental Fee Protection Act. It’s likely they’ll spend $17.2 million selling this bit of misdirection, according to Forward Observer.com.   [Read more…]

Race to the Bottom

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By Jeeni Criscenzo

Driving back to San Diego from a conference in Fresno
down 99 through the San Joaquin Valley,
you’d have to be sleep-driving not to see it – the Death Valley of California.
Miles after miles,
acres after acres,
east and west,
abandoned farmland as far as the mountain edged horizon,
not so long from being lush that you couldn’t identify what once was,
or dread what isn’t yet – that rugged desert
that comes next, after the tiniest bit of rain.   [Read more…]

In Drought Conditions, the Rich Are Using Millions of Gallons of Water

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One San Diego Household Used an Astonishing 4.6 Million Gallons

By John Lawrence

Hey, we’re in a drought and people are being encouraged to take shorter showers and only wash their cars sparingly. But that doesn’t apply to the rich. They are using millions of gallons of water and neither the state or local water districts are limiting them in any way. The water bill for a 11.8 million gallon user in Bel Air for the 12 months ending April 1 was $90,000. This guy was only charged 0.76 cents a gallon! No wonder he consumed water excessively; it was so cheap! California is in the fourth year of a water crisis, but the rich are using water as if there were no tomorrow.

Mother Jones nailed the zip code data on this, although no water district would reveal their excessive users by name. Privacy trumps the public’s right to know who these water gluttons are, but it’s not hard to guess. They all come from exclusive neighborhoods.

Take San Diego, for instance. There are 92 persons or families who have consumed more than a million gallons, mainly in La Jolla and Carmel Valley. The biggest single user in San Diego was someone who consumed 4.6 million gallons in a year. Anybody want to step forward and admit what a scofflaw you are and try to justify your excessive water usage?   [Read more…]

Global Parents Unite to Protect Children from Climate Catastrophe

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By Sarah Lazare, Common Dreams

In the lead-up to the United Nations talks in Paris next month, parents and grandparents from around the world announced Tuesday that they are launching a global coalition to demand climate solutions for the people they love most: their children.

“When I became a parent for first time, catastrophic climate change became a lot more real to me,” Frida Berry Eklund with the Swedish organization Parents Roar told reporters on a call Tuesday. “To build parent power around the world we need to reach out to others around the world.”

That’s exactly what Our Kids’ Climate plans to do when it stages marches and meetings at the COP21 meeting in Paris in November and December—alongside international civil society and social movement organizations, including youth organizers from around the world.   [Read more…]

California Rises Above the Republican Madness

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By Doug Porter

We are six years into the Obama administration. The dire predictions made for the United States of America by the prophets of the right have failed to occur. If this were baseball instead of politics, their batting average is so low they wouldn’t even qualify for the minor leagues. This is the kind of madness passing for normal in the GOP.

Yet somehow these very same voices continue to be treated as credible. A leading candidate for the highest office in the country says–with a straight face–that German Jews could have stopped the holocaust if they had a few real men with guns. Fox News finds some clown who agrees. And now we have a “debate”, based on a fantastical assumption.

Messages of fear continue to contaminate the political process, thanks to a press dependent on access and an ever-growing pile of Dark Money. According to an article in the New York Times, a mere 158 American households coughed up nearly half of all the money donated to 2016 presidential campaigns thus far. That’s more money–including inflation–than was spent on the entire 2000 presidential campaign.   [Read more…]

Extreme Weather Watch: September 2015 – Fires Devastate Homes in California

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2000 Homes and 200 Square Miles Up in Flames

By John Lawrence

On September 13 California Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in Lake and Napa counties. He also had issued a state of emergency in Calaveras and Amador counties. Four firefighters were injured in the fire called the Valley fire. Thousands fled as mandatory evacuations were ordered for the communities of Cobb, Middletown, Harbin Hot Springs and Big Canyon Road.

More than 1,300 people fled Middletown, north of San Francisco, as their homes were consumed by the flames. Main Street in Middletown burned up. 600 homes gone. More than 5,000 were without power. The Valley fire burned 40,000 acres in just 17 hours. On Sept. 13 it was reported that 1000 homes gone. As of October 5, the Valley fire was 99% contained. 1,958 structures were destroyed, 93 structures damaged.

A separate blaze — called the Valley Fire — in Lake County, about 170 miles to the northwest, has killed three people, destroyed nearly 600 homes and burned hundreds of other structures.   [Read more…]

SeaWorld’s Crying the Blues Over Orca Breeding Ban

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By Doug Porter

There was good news and bad news for SeaWorld at Thursday’s meeting of the California Coastal Commission.

SeaWorld prevailed in its quest to nearly double the size of its killer whale enclosure, to be marketed as the Blue World Project, despite an ongoing campaign by animal rights activists urging a no vote from the panel.

The bad news was the condition barring the theme park from acquiring any further orcas by way of breeding, artificial insemination or transfers. When the current batch of 11 whales reaches old age there will be no replacements, meaning the $100 million or so SeaWorld was getting ready to throw at the project looks not-so-good. I smell a lawsuit a’coming.   [Read more…]

Planning My Garden for an El Niño Winter

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By Jeeni Criscenzo

Now that my knee is healing, and the weather is cooling off a bit, my attention is turning back to my garden. Knee problems aside, the oppressive heat of the past two months pretty much silenced the siren call of my garden. Just dragging my sweaty self out to feed the chickens was my quota of physical exertion for the day. Some evenings didn’t even cool enough to inspire my meditative stroll through the succulent labyrinth.

Resigned that my vegetable garden this summer was a total disaster, I had removed all of the fencing that kept the chickens out of my raised beds. So while I wasn’t working, the chickens were.   [Read more…]

Empire’s Newest Terror: Climate Colonialism

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By Will Falk

I was recently invited to an event at Chicano Park billed as “Live Art For a Sustainable Future.” The promotional poster featured a beautiful image of an indigenous woman with the phrase, “All my relations against climate colonialism.” The event will feature San Diego’s best artists gathering in one of San Diego’s most beautiful spaces to encourage action against climate change on Friday, October 9 from 4-7pm in Chicano Park.

I have seen the term “climate colonialism” being used more and more often and I think it reflects the proper analysis. As one of the San Diego Free Press’ resident radicals and after spending two years on the road fighting the forces producing climate change, I want to express my thanks to the poster designer who used the term “climate colonialism.”

It’s good to see the term being used because it stems from a radical understanding of the connectedness of environmental and political issues.   [Read more…]

SANDAG’s Gary Gallegos: ‘Transit is not going to work for every person in the region’

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By Sam Ollinger / BikeSD

“We are not going to put everybody on a bike, we are not going to take everybody out of their car, transit is not going to work for every person in the region.” – Gary Gallegos, executive director of SANDAG, San Diego’s Metropolitan Planning Organization. January 8, 2014.

“the SANDAG plan is to spend more than half the $204 billion on mass transit, adding five new Trolley lines, 32 new rapid bus lines and 275 miles of new bikeways, as well as 160 miles of freeway lanes intended to help transit and encourage carpools and van pools. The net effect would be to reduce county greenhouse gas emissions by considerably more than state targets.” – UT Editorial Board

I don’t know what sort of drugs the UT Editorial Board is consuming, because if they bothered to read SANDAG’s own analysis they would have seen that implementing the existing Regional Transportation Plan (scheduled for a SANDAG board vote on October 9th) in its current form is going to increase the region’s greenhouse gas emissions.   [Read more…]

Nuclear Shutdown News for September 2015 – the Costs of San Onofre

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Disaster Capitalism and the Shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Plant

By Michael Steinberg /Black Rain Press

This story starts with a clandestine dinner in Warsaw, Poland. Present are Michael Peevey, president of the California Public Utility Commission, and Stephen Pickett, a high ranking official with Southern California Edison, a major electrical utility.

It is March 2013, the same month SCE announced the unexpected permanent shutdown of its San Onofre Nuclear Power Station.

No nukers were elated. But their joy later turns to disappointment and then outrage when the CPUC subsequently hands down a decision that leaves us on the hook for billions of dollars in costs supposedly related to the shutdown of San Onofre.

How did this happen, and so relatively quickly?   [Read more…]

Your Weed Killer Might Kill You

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By Jill Richardson / OtherWords

When I began writing about agriculture nearly a decade ago, I learned quickly that people generally believed that Roundup, the best-selling weed killer made by Monsanto, was relatively harmless.

Roundup breaks down quickly, everyone said — and into non-toxic components, they added. If homeowners can buy it at gardening stores, and cities around the United States use it to kill weeds in parks where children play, it must be benign, right?

Wrong. Within the past year, the story has changed.   [Read more…]

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