If $4.00 for a gallon gasoline is pinching your checkbook, just wait until you see your electric and natural gas bills in the coming year.

California gets 42 percent of its electricity from natural gas.  Many homes also use natural gas for heating, cooking, and hot water.  Natural gas prices increased 45 percent in the past year.  The Wall Street Journal recently reported that gas costs may double soon. 

Gas and coal power 70 percent of America’s grid.  Coal prices have already doubled, following demand and oil price increases.  This has caused electrical rate increases across the nation.  Virginia is looking at a 29 percent rate increase this summer.  Oregon saw a 10 percent rate increase last year with another 9 percent by next January.  Maryland residents will see their electric bills rise almost 8 percent in June, increasing home electric costs by $137 a year to $1,800 annually.  Maryland’s commercial customers can expect rate hikes of 27 percent to 41 percent price by the summer.

Higher costs boost conservation efforts as consumers and business cut back and become more efficient users of energy.  In addition, government mandates and subsidies boost conservation efforts, albeit unevenly and without the efficiencies of the market. 

Conservation alone is not enough, however.  As our population and economy grows, we use more energy.  Further, the growing economies of China, India and others will continue to put great pressure on world supplies of oil and gas, keeping world prices on a constant upward ramp.  This means that conservation at home will do little to moderate energy prices as the cost of energy is determined by a global market.  Americans should conserve when it makes sense to do so – but we should not confuse conservation by itself with a comprehensive energy policy. 

California is especially vulnerable to natural gas price hikes since we get a plurality of our electricity from burning gas.  Accounting for the fixed costs of power generation and distribution, this means we could be looking at a 20-30 percent increase in electrical costs in the near future. 

Increased use of wind power can actually increase our dependence on natural gas since wind needs to be backed up by large natural gas power plants.  Solar can help offset peak energy demand on hot days, but it is still as costly as natural gas and some five to ten times more costly than coal, hydro, or nuclear power. 

Adding to California’s dire energy picture is our current policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent in 12 years, and another 80 percent on top of that by 2050 (returning per capita emissions to levels not seen since wood-burning Colonial days).   A just completed federal study on the effects of the proposed Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2007, a national version of California’s AB 32 greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program, showed it would add costs of $723 costs per household by 2030.  That’s $723 more than whatever the higher costs for energy will add to the family budget. 

It is growing more apparent by the month that turning to modern nuclear power is the only way we can realistically address the twin challenges of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing our reliance on imported oil and natural gas.  While California continues to dally on the energy front, making the false hope that somehow wind, solar, and conservation can do it all, other states are moving ahead.  There are new nuclear power plants starting the licensing process in Maryland and Texas with bipartisan legislation looking at nuclear power in Washington, Wisconsin, Illinois and other states.  Ohio’s Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, just signed a bill that requires electric utilities to generate 25 percent of their energy through renewable energy including new nuclear reactors by 2025.

California needs to get serious about energy.  Failure to get energy policy right will cause California to hemorrhage good paying jobs while doing absolutely nothing for the environment.  Since California is the most electrically efficient state in the U.S. and the most environmentally advanced, it makes no sense for us to effectively ship jobs to coal-fired states back East, or, worst yet, to India or China.  In fact, the most environmentally intelligent thing to do would be to encourage an increase in California goods and services since our environmental impact per value of goods produced is low compared to dirty, coal-fired economies such as China.  

(For more on nuclear power, greenhouse gas emissions and imported fuel, see my paper in UC Berkeley’s Ecology Law Currents, “Relative Risk: Global Warming and Imported Fossil Fuels vs. Nuclear Power” http://www.boalt.org/elq/C35.01_05_DeVore_2008.04.10.php).

Chuck DeVore
California State Assemblyman, 70th District
www.ChuckDeVore.com

Well, if words could produce electricity, we’d be in good shape this week.  On Monday, the Assembly Committee on Natural Resources killed AB 1776 (designed to improve our energy independence by lifting the state ban on building new nuclear reactors) and AB 2788 (lifting the state ban to allow one modern nuclear reactor to be built in California).The same day, U.C. Berkeley published a scholarly piece they invited me to write on nuclear power. 

Today, the Orange County Register’s lead editorial was in support of my effort to revive nuclear power in California. 

How the Berkeley piece came about was interesting.  A few months ago I was approached by the UC Berkeley School of Law to contribute a scholarly piece on nuclear power as a solution to global warming.  The piece entitled, “Relative Risk: Global Warming and Imported Fossil Fuels vs. Nuclear Power,” is in the inaugural edition of the Ecology Law Currents publication.  After more than a year of intense advocacy on behalf of modern nuclear power, writing the piece itself was not all that difficult – getting the footnotes in order was a different story as the last time I wrote a footnoted research paper was for the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College some six year ago.   My piece concludes by noting, “California is not an island. When we act to increase the cost of doing business here, whether through higher taxes or more burdensome regulations, capital and labor have the choice to move elsewhere. California is the most electrically efficient state in America and the third most energy efficient state overall… …making California less competitive has the unintended impact of moving economic activity to other states or nations with less environmentally friendly economies. Any production of goods or services lost to Nevada or Arizona sets us back in the struggle to reduce global (greenhouse gas) emissions – and a loss to coal-fired China or India is far, far worse.” 

See Relative Risk: Global Warming and Imported Fossil Fuels vs. Nuclear Power for the full paper.

Penguins, polar bears, global warming, Tibet, pawnbrokers and Matricula Consular cards were discussed today in the Assembly.
 
The California State Assembly passed two measures of note Thursday morning.  What was approved was less important than what wasn’t approved, while also serving as an illustration for what consumes our time in the legislature. 

Assembly Joint Resolution 41 by Assemblymember Ted Lieu (D-El Segundo) memorializes the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to list both polar bears and penguins as needing protection under the federal Endangered Species Act.  Never mind, that aside from a few polar bears and penguins residing in California zoos, the nearest of the furry white former are 2,600 miles to the north while the closest of the feathery black and while latter are almost 8,000 miles to the south. 

The impetuous for Assm. Lieu’s action is “…global warming caus(ing) catastrophic environmental change in the Arctic…”  Lieu, a lawyer, discounts that polar bear populations have quintupled in only three decades, citing instead a federal report that asserts greenhouse gas emissions will render “…two-thirds of the world’s polar bears extinct by mid-century.”  This would leave the world with almost 70 percent more of the ravenous carnivores than it had in the 1970s.  Curiously, scientists believe that polar bears have done quite well in other, warmer times, such as during a warm spell in medieval times as well as during the prehistoric Holocene Climate Optimum that began 9,000 years ago and lasted some 4,000 years.  Perhaps with polar bears, some like it hot - or at least hotter than things are today.  In any event, polar bears and penguins will be delighted to know that the California State Assembly has gone to bat for them, sending copies of the AJR 41 to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Speaker Pelosi and others.

Of course, the legislature could do something that could at least partially arrest global warming fears by ending California’s anachronistic ban on the construction of modern nuclear power plants - the only ultra-low carbon and large scale source of reliable baseload electricity.  But, that would be logical, and logic in Sacramento is scarcer than penguins or polar bears.  By the way, AJR 41 passed 57 to 11. 

Putting things into perspective, Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee (R-San Luis Obispo) spoke out on the floor, not in opposition to AJR 41, but with the observation that his own resolution, Assembly Concurrent Resolution 119, on the horrific Chinese human rights abuses in Tibet remains bottled up in the Rules Committee over fears that it would be too controversial.  ACR 119 would designate March 10 as “Tibet Day” by “…condemn(ing) the recent activities taken by the People’s Republic of China against Tibet…”  We’re talking about “people here” Assm. Blakeslee reminded his colleagues (as opposed to animals), people who, according to the United States Department of State, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, and international human rights organizations, are subject to “…egregious violations of human rights including the repression of political, civic, and religious groups such as Tibetan Buddhists, Catholics, Protestants, Falun Gong practioners, Muslims, democracy advocates, labor organizers, lawyers, journalists, environmental activists, political dissidents, and other innocent people; the illegal harvesting of vital body organs and coercive third-trimester abortions; the perpetuation of slave labor camps; and the deprivation of basic fundamental freedoms of expression, assembly, and religious beliefs…” by the officially atheist and communist People’s Republic of China.

Oh, and lest you think that the Blakeslee Tibet measure had as much nexus to California as the Lieu penguin measure, consider this: China’s cyber offensive against critics of its human rights abuses in Tibet and elsewhere resulted in the blocking of California-based Google as well as YouTube in China, as well as causing service disruptions outside of China too.  Messing with Californians’ Google and YouTube is serious business. 

So, while penguins and polar bears are worthy of protection, the basic human rights of a few million people aren’t worth a few words and a ream of paper in Sacramento. 

Now, if Tibet was peopled by penguins and polar bears, that would be cause for swift action in the Assembly!

Meanwhile, the Assembly passed AB 1870 by Assembly Member Kevin De León (D-Los Angeles) on a 47 to 22 vote.  AB 1870 expands the identification that pawnshops and coin dealers may use to include a Matricula Consular card, a purported form of ID only used by our neighbor to the south.  That pawnshops and coin dealers have to ask for ID in the first place would seem a government infringement on the operation of the free market - except that both lines of business have been plagued in the past with being fences for stolen property.  Hence, the requirements in current law for valid ID limited to drivers licenses issued by any state or Canada, or ID issued by any state or the federal government or a passport from any nation, so long as that passport is accompanied by “…another item of identification bearing an address.” 

By expanding the law to include the notoriously unreliable and easily forged Mexican Matricula Consular, this bill would have the effect of setting back anti-theft efforts by decades. 

According to testimony by the FBI before the U.S. House of Representatives, the Matricula Consular is mainly used “…by illegal aliens in the United States,” while foreign nationals, whether in the U.S. legally or illegally, “…have the ability to obtain a passport from their own country’s embassy or consular office.”  The FBI testified that the Matricula Consular is not a viable form of identification “…due to the non-existence of any means of verifying the true identity of the card holder.”  Because Mexico doesn’t have a database to coordinate the issuance of Matricula Consular cards, the cards are often issued to the same person under multiple names.  This allows the person with multiple consular ID cards to better evade law enforcement when they commit crimes.  Further, according to the FBI, “…the Government of Mexico issues the card to anyone who can produce a Mexican birth certificate and one other form of identity, including documents of very low reliability. Mexican birth certificates are easy to forge and they are a major item on the product list of the fraudulent document trade currently flourishing across the country and around the world.”  In some cases, a Mexican consulate will even issue a Matricula Consular card to a person who is unable to produce any documents whatsoever.  According to the FBI, the Matricula Consular is easily forged as well.  Banks in Mexico won’t even accept a Matricula Consular card as a form of ID!  Other than all that, Matricula Consular cards are fine, majority Democrats evidently suppose.  

I rose to speak in opposition to this bill as did Assemblyman John Benoit (R-Bermuda Dunes), a veteran of the California Highway Patrol.  All 22 “no” votes came from Republicans.   

All the best,

Chuck DeVore
California State Assemblyman, 70th District
www.ChuckDeVore.com

After more than a year of trying to push the boulder of modern nuclear power uphill in California, it is nothing short of fantastic to have Gov. Schwarzenegger put his considerable shoulder into the effort too. 

Shane Goldmacher over at the SacBee just reported on the Governor’s pro-nuclear comments over at the Capitol Alert blog.  In part:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is making waves in energy circles after saying Friday that nuclear power has “a great future” and that it is time to “relook at that issue again rather than just looking the other way and living in denial.”

Schwarzenegger, who has made environmentalism a centerpiece of his governorship after signing a landmark greenhouse gas reduction law in 2006, decried environmental “scare tactics” that “frighten everyone that we’re going to have another blowup and all of those things.”

Referring to a recent conversation he had with John Bryson, CEO of Edison International, Schwarzenegger said of nuclear power, “I think that’s a very important kind of a subject that we ought to debate over in the future because we’re talking about carbon free, you know, power and energy.”

“There’s no greenhouse gas emissions,” he later said of nuclear power.

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, an Irvine Republican who floated an initiative to lift California’s ban on nuclear power last summer, has already seized on the comments as a positive sign.

“I’m delighted to see Gov. Schwarzenegger now out front on this vital issue. California cannot meet its global greenhouse gas reduction targets nor meet its growing need for clean energy without modern nuclear power,” wrote DeVore, who voted against AB 32, the 2006 measure which requires California to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020, on his blog.

DeVore has authored two pieces of legislation, AB 1776 and AB 2788, on nuclear power again this year.

In addition, Doug Wilson, the chairman of Townhall.com, just penned this piece on the importance of local elected officials, writing in part:

As you might expect, many conservatives have long-since taken this message to heart. For example, while Washington has bickered and bantered about our energy crisis, state leaders have taken concrete action to address the problem.

Consider the efforts of Chuck DeVore, a Republican legislator in the California State Assembly. DeVore recently stumped for a bill that would legalize nuclear power in the state. He was blocked by the Democrats, but now Governor Schwarzenegger announced to the Wall Street Journal that it is time for the Golden State to relook at nuclear power if it ever wants to meet energy demands for the future. DeVore has played a big role in bringing the issue out to the forefront and now he may gain real traction with the governor’s endorsement.

To be sure, conservatives may disagree on the merits of his nuclear bill. But that aside, we should applaud DeVore and his colleagues for taking action to address a problem that Washington refuses to confront in a serious manner. In order to maintain the strength of the conservative movement, we need to follow DeVore’s lead and advance state and local solutions for other issues such as healthcare, education and immigration.

This is great progress.  I encourage anyone who can to write a letter to their state legislator to encourage them to support AB 1776 and AB 2788.

All the best,

Chuck DeVore
California State Assemblyman, 70th District
To Comment, see: http://www.chuckdevore.com/blog/index.php

I’ve been working on ending California’s ban on the construction of new, safe, and clean nuclear power plants since December 2006.  Since that time, I’ve found supporters and allies all over the California – just not very many in the state Capitol.  In Fresno a wide spectrum of labor and business wants to build a reactor to provide clean and reliable energy.  California’s construction trade unions want nuclear power – it means jobs and affordable electricity.  The California Republican Party unanimously endorsed nuclear power at their convention in September 2007.     (more…)