[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Robert Cruickshank

As David Dayen noted yesterday, fires continue to burn across California, with the massive blazes in Goleta and Big Sur getting the focus of the state's attention. And as he and other outlets have mentioned, California's firefighting capacities have been strained beyond their limits.

More and more residents, especially in Big Sur, have noticed just how many fewer firefighters there seem to be for this blaze, as compared to previous fires in the area. As conservative demands for low taxes and budget cuts have helped slash available fire protection, residents in Big Sur increasingly feel they are on their own, though they appreciate the fire protection they have received. The legacy of Hurricane Katrina - when nobody came to help New Orleans - has led some residents to refuse to evacuate out of a belief that if they don't protect their homes, nobody will.

It's a frustrating and sometimes chaotic situation that is the direct product of conservative attacks on basic government services - they want people to fend for themselves, and often that is extremely difficult to do.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Robert Cruickshank
California High Speed Rail Blog

The California Chronicle has two short articles about the State Senate's approach to high speed rail, focusing on Democrat Leland Yee of San Francisco and Republican Roy Ashburn, whose district sprawls across eastern California but is based in Bakersfield. The articles help explain the politics surrounding HSR in our state capital, and may give us a preview of what we can expect to unfold Monday morning at 10 at the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on AB 3034.

The Yee article focuses on his work to restore the "spine" of the HSR corridor, from SF to LA and Anaheim, which as you all know was threatened by AB 3034's provision for building smaller, potentially disconnected HSR corridors instead. The article quotes my comments from Tuesday in support of Yee's position, and includes this portion from a Yee press release:

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Robert Cruickshank
California High Speed Rail Blog

The Senate Transportation Committee yesterday approved AB 3034 by an 8-4 vote. But as Erik Nelson at the Contra Costa Times reports it included some great amendments, including Sen. Leland Yee's plan to restore the primacy of LA-SF:

“The committee, at the urging of Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, restored language that restricted use of the $9.95 billion in bond proceeds to the "spine" of the 800-mile system, which is now slated to run from Anaheim to Los Angeles to San Jose and San Francisco through the Antelope and San Joaquin valleys.”

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Robert Cruickshank

As we're all painfully aware, during the '00s the US media have become ardent defenders of the status quo, generally unwilling to discuss harsh realities that might threaten that status quo unless absolutely forced to do so - Hurricane Katrina, for example, or the reaction to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Perhaps the most significant issue not being discussed in the media is peak oil - which, in its simplistic form, explains why the high fuel prices we are seeing today are going to be a permanent feature of life.

Gas prices are NEVER coming back down - rising demand is meeting a shrinking supply and the result is the end of the cheap oil that modern America was built upon.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Robert Cruickshank
California High Speed Rail Blog http://cahsr.blogspot.com/

The California Air Resources Board has released its draft scoping plan for implementation of the AB 32 greenhouse gas reduction law. This is the law that was passed in 2006 that requires California to reduce carbon emissions by 25%, to 1990 levels. It is rightly seen as a landmark national, even global law.

And as CARB recognized, its goals cannot be accomplished without high speed rail.

The cornerstone of the CARB plan to implement AB 32 is to use a cap-and-trade system. I prefer an outright carbon tax, but cap-and-trade is what we're likely to see initially here in California. This is where the overall amount of carbon emissions is capped, and credits are created to allow pollution up to that cap limit. Those credits can be traded - so if, say, a factory wants to pollute, it must purchase more credits, causing those who sell them to reduce their emissions. Over time the number of available credits is steadily reduced to achieve lower emissions.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Robert Cruickshank

As you might remember from last fall, California conservatives tend to prefer low taxes to adequate fire protection. As Northern California is ablaze - with two huge fires burning out of control in the Big Sur mountains to the south of me - attention is again focused on providing adequate fire services. And as Democrats and Arnold Schwarzenegger debate the best way to fund it, conservative Republicans continue to fight the very concept. From the San Jose Mercury News:

“Hoping to buy more fire engines and helicopters, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing a statewide surcharge on property insurance of $6 to $12 a year. Another lawmaker, state Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, wants to charge a $50 yearly fee on the 900,000 homeowners living in rural areas to fund fire prevention....

The new engines were recommended by a state task force after massive wildfires in Southern California in 2003 killed 24 people and burned 3,600 homes.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Robert Cruickshank
California High Speed Rail Blog

I've been traveling around California a lot in the last few weeks - mostly by train - and everywhere I go the most common topic of conversation is gas prices. The relentless march to $5 continues - we blew right past $4 a few weeks ago - but more important than the volatile day-to-day price is the underlying fact that gas prices have risen by nearly 400% in the last nine years. This is due to the phenomenon of peak oil - the shrinking supply and rising global demand for oil. Since the production of oil is at or near its all-time peak, we will have to either reduce our demand or pay ever-rising prices. Simple supply and demand law.

So you would naturally think that any effort to assess the high speed rail project - whose primary selling point is that it allows people to travel between metro areas within our state without being beholden to the ever-rising price of oil - would consider this point. Of course you would be mistaken - the State Senate didn't mention it at all in their report. Most newspaper editorials on HSR neglect the issue as well.