By Marjorie Sun

The California Academy of Sciences and the Monterey Bay Aquarium have a big advantage that some educational institutions in other parts of the country don’t: most of their visitors — who tend to be Californians — believe that climate change is real. That means their global warming exhibits can focus on solutions, for example, rather than laying out the basics of atmospheric science.

Californians’ concern about climate change has translated into political support for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. According to survey results released in July by the Public Policy Institute of California, two-thirds of Californians strongly back the pioneering state law known as AB 32. The law requires a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. And the recent defeat of Proposition 23 by 22 percentage points would appear to affirm that support.

Californians appear to buck some national trends on climate change issues. A declining number of Americans say there is solid evidence that the world is warming. The number dropped from 79% in 2006, when AB 32 was passed, to 59% this year, according to a survey just released by the Pew Research Center.  The number who think scientists agree that the world is warming due to human activity fell from 59% to 44% over the same period. Even more telling, perhaps, is that the ratio of “yes” to “no” answers to the latter question for Republicans (30:58) is almost the mirror image of that for Democrats (59:32).

New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer details in a recent, in-depth article that billionaires David and Charles Koch, titans of the oil industry, have been spending millions of dollars waging a covert disinformation campaign to thwart climate change legislation in the United States.

Aboard the Bio-Bus

A local organization has launched a mobile counter-offensive. The Alliance for Climate Education, a non-profit based in Oakland, has created a hip, multi-media presentation spiced with animation and rock music to reach teens. Think An Inconvenient Truth goes MTV. The alliance has shown it to more than 420,000 high schoolers across the nation in the past year. The presentation teaches teens the basics about climate change and urges them to “do one thing” to fight it.

Alliance staffers also have tricked out an old school bus with clean tech, driving it to schools and museums to showcase renewable technology. The blue bio-bus runs on used cooking oil collected from restaurants. Solar panels on the bus charge cell phones and computers on board.

Unmasking the Cow

The model cow in the Monterey Bay Aquarium climate change exhibit originally appeared with a gas mask, which has since been removed. (Photo: Craig Miller)

Meanwhile, keeping the climate change exhibits up-to-date scientifically is a concern for the museums. At the Monterey Bay Aquarium, outfitting a life-size model cow with a gas mask was prompted in part by a 2006 study by the Food and Agriculture Organization. The FAO study said that industrial production of livestock in general, including cattle, pigs, and poultry, accounts for 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions. But another FAO study released in April — about the same time the climate change exhibit opened — examined the GHG emissions for the dairy industry alone, not beef production. It concluded that dairy production contributes just four percent of emissions. The study (PDF download), along with howls of protests from the local dairy industry, helped convince the aquarium to unmask the Holstein.

One last tidbit about interactive exhibits: One of the most popular — common to the Academy and the Monterey Bay Aquarium — is surprisingly low-tech. Thousands of visitors write on comment cards about what they can do to fight climate change and hang them on display boards there. One of them, in a child’s handwriting, read “Reduce, reuse, recycle and homework is bad for the environment.”

Hear Marjorie’s companion radio feature on KQED’s Quest radio program, Monday morning. A version of this post also appears on the Quest blog.

(Photo: Craig Miller)

The $40 million fight over Prop 23 presented two opposing themes: (a) AB 32 will wreck the economy, or (b) AB 32 will save the economy. Both visions for California’s climate law were hyperbolic. It would be fascinating to be able to tap into some parallel universe where it did pass, just to see what would really happen. More than likely some middle ground would prevail, as it will now, in this Universe.

Funny thing is, when California lawmakers passed the Global Warming Solutions Act in 2006, it was never intended to be a jobs program. But by Election Day 2010, it had been transformed into one by the alchemy of campaign rhetoric. Think tanks such as Berkeley-based Next 10 rolled out studies to document how California’s environmental leadership had produced hundreds of thousands of jobs. Tech investors pointed to the impressive share of venture capital flowing into “clean tech.” Outgoing governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made AB 32 a tent pole of his legacy. In an October media call, Alan Salzman, CEO of the California-based VantagePoint Venture Partners said we’re on the cusp of “a second industrial revolution,” that California could well lead the way in clean tech, if it seized the moment.

And it worked. AB 32 will stand, for now, headed for full implementation in two years with all the trimmings, including a statewide, if not regional cap-and-trade program; an actual “price on carbon,” for the first time in the West.

But this was the battle, not the war. Carbon regulation is under attack far and wide. Climate legislation remains stalled in Washington (Ryan Lizza’s piece for The New Yorker is a must-read). In this morning’s press conference, President Obama seemed almost to bury prospects for a national cap-and-trade program. “Cap-and-trade was only a means to an end,” he told reporters. “I’ll be looking for other means to address this problem.”

In a few weeks, negotiators will gather in Cancun for another round of UN climate talks. Some believe this round will be the last of its kind, a final collapse of the UN “framework,” as it’s been known.

In California, the next battle may already be here, in form of Prop 26, which appears to have passed with a margin of about 53-47%. With its requirement of a two-thirds vote to impose “certain” government fees, it could pose a more permanent threat to the full implementation of environmental measures like AB 32. Those fees purportedly include “those that address adverse impacts on society or the environment, caused by the fee-payer’s business.” Sounds a lot like the permits that companies would have to buy, to balance their carbon emissions.

But Nichols, still feeling the afterglow from the Prop 23 defeat party, asserted in an email to Climate Watch this morning that:

“Prop 26 does not impair the scoping plan adopted in 2008 or any regulations developed under that plan. AB32 is on track, with renewed vigor thanks to the resounding defeat of Prop 23 by the voters.”

Nonetheless, regulators may want to gird for the next skirmish.

California’s chief air regulator was jubilant: “They didn’t know who they were messing with,” said Mary Nichols, when the first numbers came in from the polls.

Nichols, who chairs the state’s Air Resources Board, was reveling in the 20-point trouncing that voters gave the statewide ballot measure to freeze the state’s greenhouse gas law, known as AB 32. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger seized the World Series moment and the locale, adjacent to the San Francisco Giants’ ballpark, to take a swing at the oil companies that financed Prop 23: “Less than 24 hrs later, we are beating Texas again,” proclaimed the Governor, who has made the state’s 2006 climate law a tent pole of his legacy.

While much was made of the millions that two Texas-based oil companies put into Prop 23, opponents, led by some pillars of Silicon Valley’s “clean-tech” and venture capital community,  eventually outspent the oil companies three-to-one. The “no” forces argued that the state’s environmental leadership was already yielding its own dividends in jobs and innovation. Voters apparently agreed.

Carl Pope put it succinctly: “It tells me that the future of California has arrived,” the Sierra Club chairman told me on election night. “Once you create a clean energy economy, people will not let it go.”

Prop 23 sought to suspend all regulations under AB 32 until the state unemployment rate dropped to 5.5% or lower, for four consecutive quarters. AB 32 is scheduled to be fully implemented, starting in two years.

Largest Solar-Thermal Project Breaks Ground
Officials broke ground on the first large-scale solar-thermal plant to be built in the United States in 20 years. BrightSource Energy says its $2 billion, 10,000-MW Ivanpah project, located in the Mojave Desert, will be the largest solar thermal project in the world.  (More from KQED’s The California Report and The New York Times)

Prop. 23 Funding
Opponents of Proposition 23 have contributed three times as much money to the campaign as those in favor of the measure that would suspend California’s climate change legislation.  As of October 29, the “No” campaign had raised more than $30 million, while the “Yes” campaign had raised just over $10 million, mostly from out-of-state oil refiners Valero and Tesoro.  (More from maplight.org, and to see where across the US the money is coming from, check out Climate Watch‘s interactive map that tracks the major funders.)

New Bay Area Bike Share Program
The Bay Area launches an ambitious bike-sharing program with a $4.29 million grant from the Metropolitan Planning Commission (MTC) and more than $2 million from local and regional partners, including the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Beginning next year, the program will focus on commuters in the suburbs between San Jose and San Francisco, and will involve about 1,000 bikes. (More from The New York Times)

Funding for Electric Vehicles
Electric vehicle programs also got a boost in the Bay Area with $30 million in funds ($14 million in federal funding through the MTC). Projects include charging-and-battery-swapping stations, as well as new electric taxis and City Car Share vehicles. (More from the SF Chronicle and KQED’s California Money)

New Federal Emissions Rules for Big Trucks
This week the EPA announced new rules for heavy-duty trucks and buses that call for a 20% emissions reduction by 2018.  The rules, which are the first of their kind, apply to model 2014 and beyond and are expected to improve fuel economy from six, to eight miles per gallon. (More from the LA Times)

David Nahai on at the Los Angeles River in 2006 (Photo: Ilse Setziol)

David Nahai was CEO and General Manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) from 2007 to 2009. On Nahai’s watch, the utility amped up renewable energy projects and launched new outdoor water restrictions that resulted in Angelenos cutting their consumption by more than 20%.

 I first met Nahai a decade ago when he and other members of the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board were grappling with what was arguably the nation’s worst urban runoff problem.
 Currently he’s a green-tech consultant and advisor to the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI).

 I sat down with him in his little corner of a Century City high rise. He started by reminding me that opinions expressed in our discussion were his alone, not those of CCI:

The watering ordinance you championed restricted outdoor watering to two days a week (30 minutes a pop). We haven’t seen that kind of water consumption level in 32 years. It was very successful.

But the LA watering restrictions met a quick demise. The City Council retreated to a three-day/24-minute regime after a USC study found fluctuations in water pressure, coupled with corroded pipes, probably caused a couple of dramatic waterline breaks. Should residents blame you for the giant sinkhole in the San Fernando Valley ? It came out it was possible, or maybe even probably, the blowouts were caused by the two-day watering regime. I know DWP personnel didn’t necessarily agree with that but didn’t want to argue the point. And went back to the city council and said, we’re willing  [to compromise]. But there are some curious issues. This change has only just been approved; blowouts haven’t been reported during the last year. Also, the two-day watering schedule has been happening all over Southern California. Why has DWP experienced it and others haven’t?

Can the city still cut consumption with a three-day regime? If everyone went to three days a week, we wouldn’t have as much savings, but it wouldn’t be negligible. But enforcing water restrictions isn’t simply a matter of enacting the law. It’s a matter of motivating Angelenos to rally to a cause, because the law cannot be enforced on a daily basis by a water conservation team that is not a platoon. What is needed is the stigma of wasting a precious commodity unnecessarily.

 My concern is some of the council members made certain statements that tended to undermine the resolve of Angelenos as far as water cutbacks, and it left only the price signal of the rate adjustment.

You’re referring to Councilman Greig Smith, who openly ignored the ordinance, and Council President Eric Garcetti who said his wife couldn’t keep her plants alive on twice weekly watering. It would help if city council members weren’t being defiant of the law. 

People think the drought and the challenge is over. I see it in restaurants where the minute you sit down water is served to you. The law still says restaurants are not supposed to serve water to people unless it’s specifically requested. To continue with business as usual is very shortsighted.

We’ll never be free of our dependence on external water. What we can do is to decrease that dependence somewhat. The other reason it is so important for Los Angeles to do this is various interests are vying for limited water resources—Northern California, Southern California, and agricultural interests. In order to have a dialogue that’s credible we have to act responsibly ourselves.  [If we conserve], nobody can accuse us of hypocrisy.

As much as half of the water used in Southern Californian homes is applied to yards — but a significant chunk of the state’s energy use goes to transporting that water to the region. Something like 20% of the state’s energy is used in pumping water through the Sacramento delta to Southern California. It has a heavy carbon footprint.

Global Warming is expected to reduce LA’s water supply, and yet its utility still relies heavily on the most carbon-intensive fuel, coal. Yes, but when mayor Villaraigosa came into office in 2005 — and I think this is truly one of his major accomplishments, and one for which he receives no credit — DWP “boasted” a 3% renewable energy portfolio. By the time I left DWP, they were at 15%. They should hit 20% this year. And in April they will hit 27%. Of course, the percent fluctuates depending on the [power] load. 

We did it, I believe, without exorbitant rate hikes. Which brings me to Prop 23. Moving to renewables requires a great deal of planning, especially if you’re going to do it in a way that’s fiscally responsible. Having the specter of AB 32 being overturned really throws everything into confusion.

I know you’re eager to talk about Prop 23, especially as you’re serving on the executive committee of the No-On-23 campaign. I thought AB 32 enjoyed fairly broad support in California. This is really a move on the part of a couple of Texas oil companies to defeat AB 32. Part of the reason why the utilities [oppose Prop 23] is they won’t know how to plan. What happens if the unemployment thresholds are accomplished? Will AB 32 spring back into existence by some kind of immaculate conception? Will all of the suspended regulations some how take effect again? Prop 23 is nothing but an attempt to throw a grand hand grenade into the camp of climate change legislation.

 If AB32 is defeated, I think the stalemate in Congress will become entrenched. And you will see other countries turn away and look for another leader — the European Union or China — and this enormous amount of money that has been flowing toward renewable energy will leave the United States.

With federal climate change legislation already stalled and California ’s efforts under attack, should environmentalists and green tech investors shift their efforts to countries really wanting to do something? It’s unthinkable to give up on the U.S. The U.S. remains the leading economic power; and U.S. leadership is indispensable to [cleaning up power sources] in the third world, because it is regarded sometimes — wrongly — as a sacrifice by the countries that are reducing emissions. It’s also very important for the U.S. Deutche Bank recently reported that, for the first time, spending on renewables in China has outstripped investment in the United States. The U.S. must remain a leader because it benefits.

Why do you see a benefit where many members of Congress do not? Because members of Congress are answerable to their particular constituents. The question is, Are they thinking about this in terms of planetary benefits or national benefits, or are they responding to constituent pressures or special interest pressures?

With so much uncertainty on the horizon and the scientists saying we must make dramatic reductions quickly, are you beginning to despair? I was in a meeting with Shimon Peres one time, and he said something that I’ll borrow. He said: “Pessimists are always right to begin with, but optimists are always right in the end.” I continue to remain optimistic that just as human neglect got us to the place we are, human ingenuity will get us out.

Nahai was also interviewed for a Climate Watch feature on Prop 23, a version of which aired on public radio’s The World. The most recent polling suggests that Prop 23 has a slim chance of passing on November 2nd.

In a conference call with reporters, venture capitalist Alan Salzman called clean technology the “next industrial revolution,” and that “California is at the epicenter.” To prove his point, Salzman pointed to $9 billion invested in “clean-tech” since 2006, in California alone, and he called Prop 23 “antithetical” to the transition that global industry is now undergoing, claiming that 20% of total venture capital funding is flowing to clean-tech, of late.

Salzman’s VC group, VantagePoint Venture Partners, is backing California companies such as electric-car maker Tesla Motors and BrightSource Energy, which was recently cleared to break ground on a major solar-thermal generation project in southern California.

The news call was organized by CERES, a Boston-based business group that promotes environmentally enlightened investment. Chris Davis, who directs investor programs for CERES, said that Prop 23 would be tantamount to a repeal of the state’s fundamental climate strategy and “a huge step backwards for California and the United States as a whole.”

“You simply don’t want to project an image of policy uncertainty in a global marketplace,” said Davis, “because capital can move elsewhere too quickly, to places with more stable commitments to clean energy policy.”

“This isn’t about wearing hemp and adopting a new kind of lifestyle, Salzman added. “It’s about using the power of technology to modernize the antiquated way we do things, so that we do them better and cheaper.” Salzman may not be wearing hemp but he’ll be rocking out tonight, when he hosts a private fundraiser, with Elvis Costello performing.

At the same time, as Dan Morain writes in a useful analysis for the Sacrament Bee, money may be drying up for the “Yes” campaign, funded mostly by oil & gas interests, while Morain’s tally has opponents closing in on their $20 million goal.

At a recent gathering of environmental journalists, Gloria Gonzalez, Americas Editor for Environmental Finance magazine, told me that Prop 23 was being watched and discussed around the world, as governments and investors alike look for a signal from California. The negative polling on 23 may already be sending that signal.

Meanwhile, some are saying the more permanent threat is posed by Proposition 26, which would require a two-thirds vote to approve any kind of government fees, including those imposed by AB 32, the state climate law that Prop 23 is designed to suspend. Asked about that, Davis, who also represents the Investor Network on Climate Risk, said other environmental groups, such as the Sierra Club, are mobilizing against that measure. Wouldn’t it be something if, after all this hoopla, Prop 23 turned out to be a really expensive diversionary tactic.

Climate Watch producer Gretchen Weber is watching the money flow and updating our interactive map, showing major donations on both sides in the Prop 23 trenches.

View Top California Proposition 23 Donors: Yes and No in a larger map

Listen to Rachael Myrow’s radio feature on The California Report.

Valero's Benicia refinery in Solano County. (Photo: Craig Miller)

Last week, as the campaign rhetoric for and against Proposition 23 was heating up, The California Report host Rachael Myrow and I spent an afternoon with three of Valero’s environmental specialists at the company’s refinery in Benicia, up the Sacramento River from San Francisco Bay. They briefed us on the refining process in some detail and drove us around the 400-acre refinery site, near the Carquinez Strait in Solano County.

Valero has been in the spotlight as the largest single contributor to Prop 23, with more than $4 million in the game. The company maintains two medium-sized refineries in California. The Benicia plant produces gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, as well as most of the asphalt used to pave highways in northern California. Unless halted by Prop 23, the cap-and-trade system of carbon pricing under the state’s greenhouse gas law (AB 32) would likely cost refiners millions in emissions fees.

“Our refinery operates under some of the most strict emission limits that exist anywhere in the world,” said Chris Howe, who directs health, safety and environmental affairs at the plant. But Howe and his co-managers made it clear that they don’t consider carbon dioxide emissions to be “pollution.” It should be noted that regulators, including the federal Environmental Protection Agency, appear to differ with that. In a landmark  “endangerment finding,” the EPA concluded that greenhouse gases such as CO2 “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” The published finding also uses the term “greenhouse gas pollution.” Clearly CO2 presents a different kind of threat than “local” air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide (SO2) and oxides of nitrogen (NOX), the building blocks of smog. But Kristine Roselius of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District says that distinction may be overblown. “When you reduce GHGs (greenhouse gases), you reduce smog and soot pollution,” wrote Roselius in an email.

Howe says his facility has to comply with 50,000 individual requirements under various environmental laws. “It’s a continuous challenge to maintain compliance with all of those,” said Howe, who maintains a staff of ten people who monitor environmental compliance full-time.

Don Cuffel, Valero’s lead environmental engineer at Benicia, says that the company has spent $650 million over the past five years, adding systems to keep SO2 and NOX out of the air. Cuffel says that keeping a lid on those local pollutants while reducing greenhouse gases presents them with a dilemma, since all that added equipment requires energy to run, and a natural byproduct of combustion is…CO2. Standing in front of the refinery’s desulfurization unit, Cuffel describes one example in the video clip below.

Asked how he feels when he hears critics refer to Valero as one of the “toxic twins” (with neighboring Tesoro), Howe says: “It’s fairly easy and common for people to make statements like that but it typically comes from a real ignorance of our business. I’ve been in the environmental management business for the majority of my career,” said Howe. “We strive to get out and explain to people what we do. We’re proud of our performance and are seeking to be in compliance with all rules, all the time.”

Clearly they’re not entirely successful, as was highlighted last week, when Prop 23 opponents released a list of 120 environmental violations at the Benicia refinery, since 2007 (200 at Tesoro, across the river). Howe estimated that 10% of the Valero citations resulted in some detectable effect on the local community,  such as a “nuisance odor,” and that most were self-reported to regulators, by the company. “By no means would I consider these significant and putting folks in harm’s way,” said Howe.

In response to an email query on that topic, Roselius of the Air Quality District wrote that all of the Bay Area’s five major oil refineries tend to generate similar numbers of citations. Last week directors at the District added theirs to the list of organizations officially opposing Prop 23.

You can take a brief tour of Valero’s Benicia refinery in the slide show, below:

Prop 23 has backing from oil & gas interests in Texas, Kansas, Ohio, and Colorado, among other places.

True, most of the money backing Proposition 23 on California’s November ballot has come from two big oil refiners, both headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. But the opposition has some high rollers in the game, as well. High-profile venture capitalists and tech investors have lined up against the measure with open wallets. In fact, a tally released this week by the California Fair Political Practices Commission reveals that opponents of Prop 23 are outspending proponents by almost a two-to-one margin. According to the Commission, ten different committees have marshaled more than $13 million to defeat the measure, “mainly from individuals.”

Climate Watch producer Gretchen Weber mapped the major money trail for both sides. This map includes only those funders with contributions of $100,000 or more, as of October 6th. Both sides have received numerous smaller contributions:

View Top California Proposition 23 Donors: Yes and No in a larger map

Funding for the “Yes-on-23″ campaign is dominated by two large oil refiners, Valero and Tesoro Corporations. Both companies maintain major refining operations in California. Since this map was published, Marathon Oil of Findlay, Ohio, posted a $500,000 donation in support of the measure.

As for the “No” campaign, most major money trails seem to lead back to Silicon Valley, highlighted with such names as Schmidt (Google), Packard (H-P) and Doerr (venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins). According to filings with the California Secreatry of State, investment banker Tom Steyer, co-chair of the “No” campaign, has ponied up $5 million, more than the largest single oil company contribution supporting Prop 23.

If passed, Prop 23 would suspend California’s greenhouse gas regulations until the state’s unemployment rate fell to 5.5% or less, for twelve months. That’s a drop of nearly seven percentage points from the current rate.

Hear Rachael Myrow’s radio feature on Prop 23 at The California Report.

Photo: Craig Miller

While Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown debate the pros and cons of the state’s global warming law (AB 32) and the ballot initiative that would suspend it (Proposition 23), two of the four “alternative” candidates interviewed this morning on KQED’s Forum program, attacked the science behind California’s climate change policy.

“I’ve become convinced that the whole thing is an exaggeration at best, and a scam at worst,” said Dale Odgen, the Libertarian Party candidate.  “The science has been fudged in order to get grants for people.  People like Al Gore have used it to become even more wealthy at the expense of the rest of us.”

Expressing a similar sentiment, Chelene Nightingale, the American Independent candidate, appeared to focus on the cause, telling host Michael Krasny that “We’re gonna have climate change. We’ve had it since the beginning of time ’til the end of time,” but that the prevailing opinion of climate scientists is,”based on junk science.”

Their views are in stark contrast to those of the majority of Californians, according to a July survey by the Public Policy Institute of California. In it, 73% of respondents said global warming is a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” threat to the economy and quality of life in the state.  The survey also found that 54% of Californians believe the effects of climate change have already begun.

Their comments came on the same day that a group of scientists and policymakers delivered a new report to the desk of Obama Administration science and technology advisor John Holdren, concluding that the United States must adapt to a changing climate now and prepare for increasing impacts on urban infrastructure, food, water, human health, and ecosystems in the coming decades.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has compiled a list of documents and statements that attest to the consensus on climate change in the scientific community.

Neither Whitman nor Brown have said much about the science of climate change, choosing instead to focus on their plans regarding AB 32 and the role global warming legislation plays in the state’s economy (Brown says it’s good for the economy. Whitman says it hurts).  Both candidates say they oppose Prop 23, but Whitman has said that as governor, she would suspend AB 32 herself, under a provision written into the law.

The other two candidates for governor interviewed on Forum — Carlos Alvarez of the Peace and Freedom party and Laura Wells of the Green Party — did not discuss their views on climate science during the program.  Wells did express her support for AB 32.

(Archival Photo: Angela George)

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger used his appearance at the Commonwealth Club in Santa Clara today to “put a spotlight” on what he called the “self-serving greed” of oil companies Valero, Tesoro, and Koch Industries. These companies, two of which he described as among the state’s top polluters, are bankrolling Proposition 23 for their own gain, while trying to hide behind a false claim that the initiative would be good for the state’s economy, said the Governor. Prop 23 would suspend California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32, which authorizes incentives and regulations for reducing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Schwarzenegger’s speech was timed to the fourth anniversary of the law.

Proponents of the ballot measure claim that allowing AB 32 to be fully implemented would drive businesses from the state and could potentially cost the state more than a million jobs, a figure which has been challenged in several studies.

“They are creating a shell argument that this is about saving jobs,” said Schwarzenegger. “Does anyone really believe that these companies, out of their black-oil hearts are really spending millions and millions of dollars to protect jobs? It’s not about jobs at all. It’s about their ability to pollute and thus protect their profits.”

He said that green jobs in California have grown ten times faster than the statewide average since 2005, and that they now comprise the single largest source of jobs in the state. Passing Prop. 23, would kill investment in the strongest sector of California’s economy, said the Governor.

“The old oil companies are all out for Prop. 23. Silicon Valley is overwhelmingly against it,” he said. “Which side do you believe our economic future as a nation is on?”

The full recording of the Governor’s speech from today’s Climate One event at the Commonwealth Club will be broadcast tonight at 9 p.m. in the Bay Area on KQED Public Radio (88.5) and in the Sacramento region on KQEI (89.3).