Candidate supports Prop 87

Marin Independent Journal (California)

The state of our country, including our state, has been impoverished both financially and morally by our dependence on oil.

We find ourselves repeatedly dragged into war with countries that just so happen to have large oil supplies under their sand, while the excuses for those wars are proven false and the oil keeps flowing in along with the body bags.

We find ourselves without usable public transit and without access to alternatives to gasoline engines and petroleum products like plastics.

There are better solutions, but they are not implemented. We give billions of dollars in subsidies to oil corporations instead of investing in clean, sustainable energy and packaging.

Proposition 87 is a step in the right direction. It taxes the oil producers. In general, if one is going to tax people for a bad habit, I favor taxing the pushers, not the users, particularly when the pushers in this case have so much money and political influence at their disposal.

Proposition 87 creates incentives for alternative energy, aiming to reduce dependence on oil by 25 percent and netting up to $4 billion in new revenue for California. Through management by a board of existing elected state officials, it avoids creating new bureaucracy. Fifty-eight percent of the funds are earmarked for alternative fuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel blends, to reduce gasoline and diesel use, 27 percent for research and innovation and 10 percent for commercialization.

There are many further steps we could take in the direction of clean, sustainable energy and energy independence. For example, greater availability of biofuel, infrastructure for fuel alternatives and programs to convert diesel to biodiesel.

Yet taking the first step is crucial, especially given a Legislature so beholden to corporate interests. It should have happened long ago. Now, when it is late in the addiction cycle, we need to finally start breaking our addiction to petroleum products, and equally as important, start putting the costs and responsibility for that addiction squarely where it belongs: with the corporations that fought so hard to establish and maintain the current situation.

This proposition is endorsed by Public Citizen, the Green Party, the Gray Panthers, the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, Union of Concerned Scientists and Natural Resources Defense Council. You won’t get a reform of this nature from our corporate-owned legislators, so please vote “yes” on Proposition
87.
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Cat Woods of Novato is the Green Party candidate for Assembly.