May 25, 2017
In the course of advocating for or against bills at the State Capitol, a person learns a lot of interesting bits of information.
Some of that information reveals how much certain interest groups have managed to grab public funding for their obnoxious pursuits. Other information reveals how clever some persistent polluters are.
In short, one learns a lot about annoyingly stupid realities that ought to be changed.
Two of these realities are targeted for correction by two bills we support. They deserve your attention and action in the coming week, when they go to the Senate floor for votes.
Reality number one: People who can afford to buy those expensive off-road motorcycles, jeeps, quads and trucks and drive them maniacally at state vehicle recreation parks are ripping off the rest of us.
They don’t do that just by mangling hillsides, trashing trails and generating a lot of health-threatening air pollution. They also do it by paying a whole lot less for using the state parks properties.
For instance, an annual pass for a person who wants to passively picnic at any of the nearly 280 parks in the California State Parks system costs $195. The off-highway vehicle user pays just $50 for an annual pass to use the system’s seven off-highway vehicle parks.
Granted, the OHV users don’t get to drive in every park in the system, but they sure do a number on those parks they enter. Their fees don’t begin to cover the crass damage. In economist speak, the externalities are in no way internalized.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Even the most damaged parks, more than 25 years after coming under the state parks system control, still don’t have capacity limits. That means as many people as can shove their fat vehicles onto the landscape on a holiday weekend, do. Natural flora and fauna be damned.
We’re trying to help reverse this situation by supporting Senator Ben Allen’s Senate Bill 249. It’s designed to make sure the way the state parks system deals with off-highway vehicles is reformed. The off-highway vehicle parks need responsible management and oversight.
Reality number two: The natural gas industry is determined to keep us hooked.
Natural gas is not a healthy product, but you’d never know that by listening to the gas companies.
I have a lot of respect for clever branding. It appeals to my geeky fascination with wordplay. I’d like to know who the brilliant marketer was that decided to call methane in all its forms “natural gas.” Kind of makes it sound like a benign product that you’d find at a health food store.
But that’s not what it is. Instead, it is mostly composed of one of the most potent climate-forcing pollutants. And there are other gaseous chemicals that are not benign mixed in.
The gas industry, which includes some of the folks who also bring you oil, has lately been aggressively ramping up its efforts at the Capitol Building and state agencies to make sure methane—natural or not—continues to be one of California’s energy drugs of choice.
The industry is annoyed, and maybe alarmed, that Californians are embracing renewable energy and zero-emission vehicles at a rate faster than only die-hard optimists predicted two decades ago.
Even the massive gas leak in Aliso Canyon in northern Los Angeles County last year didn’t embarrass the gas industry enough to stop its heavy lobbying.
This year the industry is out in full force trying to kill a couple of bills that would instill common sense into plans to restart the Aliso Canyon gas storage facility. It’s also pressing for other bills and policies that will put hurdles in front of electrification of truck and bus technology.
The Sierra Club and our activists are working to unhook the state from its methane dependence in a range of ways. But most pressing this week is Senator Henry Stern’s SB 57, which would keep Aliso Canyon closed until the gas company and regulators figure out why the storage facility leaked in the first place. We support the bill. The methane purveyors don’t.
You can help change the reality.
Call your state senator and urge that he or she vote “YES” on SB 249 and “YES” on SB 57 when they come to the senate floor this coming week. You can find contact information for your state senator at findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov.
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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