July 30, 2015
Every legislative year offers chances for positive environmental action. However, this year is different from the average year. This is the kind of year where the so-called “policy window of opportunity” appears wide open for making the kind of significant positive change that sends signals worldwide.
There are a full bushel of good environmental bills still moving through the legislature, but three are especially important, both for their content and their symbolism. When the legislature comes back to work on August 17, it will have just four weeks to act on these bills. Then the governor will have another four weeks to sign these bills.
That means Californians who care about the environment—including every Club member and supporter—have just over two months to make sure legislators and the governor know we want them to act for the environment on key bills.
We know that the opposition—which ranges from electricity utilities to oil companies to certain rural counties that don’t want to admit that there are some problems in paradise—is actively working to either weaken or kill the three bills.
So that means your voice is more important than ever right now.
It’s summertime. Many of us are distracted by the longer days, the memories of recent vacations or plans for upcoming vacations, or the task of finding ways to keep children happily occupied during school breaks. It is easy to ignore what’s going on in the domed capitol building in Sacramento.
But it’s also dangerous to ignore that. We have made some of California’s greatest progress on environmental policy during the dog days of summers past; but we’ve also lost the most, too.
So I’m asking you to do just two things to help make sure we take advantage of this year’s window of opportunity for California’s environment.
Call your state assemblymember (click here to find out who that is) and tell whoever answers the phone that you want your assembly member to help make sure these two bills get through the legislature and to the governor’s desk:
SB 350 (de Leon): This bill will make sure California stays on a path to reduce climate pollution by setting some important goals for the year 2030 for increasing renewable energy, reducing the amount of oil used for transportation, and increasing energy efficiency. This bill will send a clear, loud signal that Californians are committed to cutting our greenhouse gas pollution. The state’s most polluting industries are opposing this bill.
SB 788 (McGuire): This bill will close a loophole in the law that would allow new oil drilling off the coast of Santa Barbara. At least one oil company is preparing to take advantage of this loophole. We’ve tried many times to close the loophole. If there’s any time we need to get this bill passed, it’s now, just months after we saw again in Santa Barbara and points south just how damaging oil spills can be to California’s coast. The oil industry wants to kill this bill.
(For extra credit, mention that you want to see SB 32 (Pavley) pass out of the Assembly, too. This bill makes sure it’s clear that California’s landmark legislation passed in 2006 to address climate change—AB 32—extends to and beyond 2050. That is, we’re committed to solving this problem. Polluting industries that have fought any efforts to cut climate pollution are opposing this bill.)
Next, call your state senator (click here to find out who that is) and tell whoever answers the phone that you want your senator to make sure this bill gets through the legislature and to the governor’s desk:
AB 243 (Wood): This bill raises a relatively new topic for legislation and not a moment too soon. This bill acknowledges that legally growing medical marijuana has become a big business in parts of California and is also causing substantial environmental damage because its growing practices have been essentially unregulated. This bill makes it clear that pot farmers have to play by the rules already required of other agriculture. And it creates a fee mechanism to make sure damage caused by pot farmers—which includes such things as damaging stream banks to illegally draw water—gets fixed.
If you don’t know who your assemblymember or senator are, you can go here and type in your address, and a nifty computer program will show you their names and district numbers. Then you can click on their names to go to their websites, where you’ll find their office phone numbers in Sacramento and in their home district.
It doesn’t matter whether you call their Sacramento office or their district office; either office is fine. If nobody answers and you get a message machine, leave a message. Legislative staff members count the number of calls they get on issues, no matter whether they talk to the caller or just listen to a message.
Completing the whole task should take you about ten minutes.
That’s just ten minutes out of a busy summer. But it’s ten minutes that will make a big difference. If you do all this and it works, you’ll get a lot in return.
You’ll get better environmental policies. You’ll get the chance to tell our friends in other states and countries that you’re doing your part to curb the effects of climate change, clean up the air, and protect natural areas.
And you’ll earn the ability to look at the children in your life and tell them you’re trying to make the world better for them. That’s the best and most invaluable return on investment of ten minutes.
Thanks in advance for those minutes.
Sincerely,
Kathryn Phillips
Director
Sierra Club California is the Sacramento-based legislative and regulatory advocacy arm of the 13 California chapters of the Sierra Club.
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