As the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico intensifies, the rest of the oil industry is sitting on the sidelines. Instead of helping clean up the Gulf, many of them are busy spending their money trying to pollute California.

15 oil companies have combined to spend about $2 million to undermine our anti-pollution laws by trying to place a repeal of AB 32 on the November ballot. Led by Valero, Tesoro, and Occidental, they prefer undermining California's effort at creating clean energy and green jobs to helping clean up after what their industry has done in the Gulf.

The Courage Campaign - where I work as Public Policy Director - doesn't think that's right. We are today launching a campaign to demand that instead of spending $2 million to the attack on California's anti-pollution laws, the CEOs of Valero, Tesoro, and Occidental instead pledge to spend $2 million on Gulf cleanup and restoration. You can add your name to our letter and show these oil CEOs that we're not going to stand for their attack on our environment.

During Hurricane Katrina, Wal-Mart helped fund relief and recovery efforts, so there is precedent for other industries getting involved. Yes, this is BP's responsibility. But the oil industry as a whole helped undermine the regulations and enabled the Deepwater Horizon disaster to occur.

In fact, while entire industries are being destroyed, thousands made jobless, and unknown numbers of animal and plant life are being killed, Valero and Tesoro gave another $400,000 to the Dirty Energy Proposition on May 19.

It's time California stood up to these big oil companies and told them to get their priorities straight. Click here to sign our letter, which we will deliver to the CEOs of Valero, Tesoro and Occidental.

Below is the email we sent to our members today.   Read More »

As protests unfold across the state and the nation today against cuts to education and fee increases, more attention is finally being drawn to the massive crisis facing our students, our schools, and our future.

20 years ago a year at UC Berkeley cost just over $1,000 in fees. Even that was much higher than the $0 cost that the 1960 Master Plan pledged. The early 1990s saw a big rise in fees, and by the time I started at UCB in 1997 the cost had risen to over $4,000 a year. Now the cost is slated to rise to a whopping $10,000 per year, something many students and their families cannot afford to pay. And even as those costs rise, including at CSU and community colleges, classes are being cut as educational quality declines.

It's no way to run a state. California's current prosperity is owed largely to the investments Pat Brown made in the 1960s, building a public higher education system that was the world's envy - and that fueled our innovation and economic creativity. But instead of renewing those investments for a new century, Arnold Schwarzenegger is destroying them. The fee increases are a massive tax increase on the young and on the working- and middle-classes. They must be reversed.

The only way they will be reversed is to generate new revenue. That's why the Courage Campaign, where I work as Public Policy Director, is joining the California Faculty Association and the University of California Students Association in launching our pledge to support AB 656, the oil severance tax for California.

AB 656, authored by Assemblymember Alberto Torrico, would generate $2 billion a year for higher education by levying a 12% tax on the extraction of oil and gas in California. Texas uses this tax to fund higher education there, and Sarah Palin increased Alaska's oil severance tax in 2007 in order to buy the love of her constituents. Every major oil producing state in the union has an oil severance tax - except California.

The result of this massive tax break we give to oil companies is the destruction of our public colleges and universities. Fees have risen since the early 1990s only because of cuts in the amount of state funding the schools receive. The only way to make college affordable again is to increase that funding. An oil severance tax is a good place to begin.

Stand up for students, for faculty, for staff, and for higher education today by taking the pledge to support AB 656. We will use these pledges to help convince the legislature to pass the bill, adding to the fact that 2/3rds of Californians said they'll pay higher taxes for education. Our next steps will be to target specific legislators, but for now, we need a show of force for AB 656. Let's tax oil companies, not students.

Below the fold is the email the Courage Campaign sent to our members today, supported by CFA and UCSA.   Read More »

I yearn for the day I no longer have to write titles like that:

Democrats have decided to allow a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to expire next week, conceding defeat in a months-long battle with the White House and Republicans set off by $4 a gallon gasoline prices this summer.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., told reporters Tuesday that a provision continuing the moratorium will be dropped this year from a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running after Congress recesses for the election.

Republicans have made lifting the ban a key campaign issue after gasoline prices spiked this summer and public opinion turned in favor of more drilling. President Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling in July.

"If true, this capitulation by Democrats following months of Republican pressure is a big victory for Americans struggling with record gasoline prices," said House GOP leader John Boehner of Ohio. (AP via SFGate)

To her credit Dianne Feinstein is outraged, sending out this statement a few minutes ago:

I think it's awful. This battle is not over. We will come back and fight another day - that's for sure.

I regret the House appropriations committee didn't see fit to go with a better, more widely accepted alternative, which would have kept in place a moratorium 50 miles or more off shore. In my view, there were better options than this.

Once again the Democratic Congress caves to Republicans who say "boo!" Drilling had faded from public consciousness and Democrats would have done well to insist

Especially as bailouts are being discussed, you'd think Democrats would not want to be sending any signals that they can wave the white flag if pressured to do so.

Dems would have done well to listen to Van Jones, who at Netroots Nation in July explained the need to move from opposition to proposition - that the only way we will beat back the drilling push is to aggressively propose a more sensible and sustainable alternative. Dems didn't do that, and once again they've failed at politics and failed America.

Sure, they might restore the ban next year - but it's not clear if it will be a total moratorium, or if this will have opened a door that can't be closed again. And if McCain wins, Congress will have a very difficult time reimposing a moratorium.

Otherwise they've signed a death warrant for California's oceans and those who depend on them for a living.

When you drive along Highway 101 near Santa Barbara, or Highway 1 in Huntington Beach, it's hard to miss the many oil rigs on the ocean's horizon. They are relics of a bygone age - not just the 1960s, when they were constructed, but an age in which California believed that cheap oil would always be plentiful and available. We built an entire infrastructure around that and neglected trains, walkable neighborhoods, and lagged behind the rest of the world in developing solar and wind power.

Now the consequences of that misguided belief in the permanence of cheap oil have become clear. Gas prices are nearing $5, causing economic distress and sending Californians flocking to mass transit. For his part Barack Obama is proposing massive new investments in sustainable energy and rail infrastructure.   Read More »