California’s clean energy leadership is needed

On July 3, the Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee will be voting on SB 100 which would mandate that California utilities produce 100 percent clean energy by 2045. The final Assembly vote in August requires a fifty percent majority and Gov. Brown’s signature.
Moving California toward 100 percent emission-free energy is crucial for avoiding the worst impacts of rising sea level and extreme weather events around the world.
In 25 years, West Antarctica tripled its rate of ice loss, per a study published in the journal Nature. According to an international collaboration of 88 scientists, West Antarctica lost 3 trillion metric tons of ice from 1992 to 2017.
The combined loss of ice in West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula
increased from 60 billion metric tons annually to 192 billion metric tons annually. In other words, climate change is real, and it’s taking place at an accelerating rate.
California is the world’s fifth largest economy so our leadership is
urgently needed to counteract the federal governments roll back of emission
control and clean energy progress.
Senate Bill 100 would lead the way toward reducing the potential of massive sea level rise and managing the increasing negative effects of climate change.
California’s SB 100 would align America with the global community in addressing the impacts of rising sea level and extreme weather events around the world.
Please call or write to our Assemblymember Tim Grayson, members of the Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee and Gov. Brown to tell them your concerns about climate change and ask them to support a clean energy future by voting for SB 100.

Mark Altgelt,
Vallejo

We will remember this vote

Thank you to the Benicia Herald for the extremely well-written article regarding the recent City Council meeting during which the approval for an Industrial Safety Ordinance was discussed and once again put off to a future date. It appears three of our councilmembers who voted to “postpone” further review of the issue until November hope the voters will not remember their failure to approve the ISO.
Thank you to Mayor Patterson and Councilman Young for having the courage of their convictions to stand up to the secrecy that shrouds Valero’s safety response. The concerned voters of Benicia will not forget the NO votes cast by Hughes, Schwartzman and Campbell.

Georgia Taylor Benedict,
Benicia

Also on the agenda

The controversial Industrial Safety Ordinance failed, 3-2 opposed, at the last Benicia City Council meeting. However, the proposed local cannabis excise tax on the November ballot was approved unanimously. We will be asked to approve a 6 percent cap that the council can move down as necessary to stay under or on par with other nearby cannabis excise tax rates.
Although it was after midnight, a patient prospective new business cannabis oil processor, with cultivation sites in multiple counties, indicated his company was considering consolidation of operations into Benicia that are now engaged in Sacramento and Oakland. His company processes and distributes cannabis oil products for the patient-centered health care industry. He indicated upwards of 100 new jobs in our town. Many others are expected to look at Benicia for cannabusiness operations. Cannabis oil processing facilities of a few thousand square feet extract isolates with values ranging from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of dollars per gallon, before taxes. Petroleum oil refining takes up hundreds of acres of land and produces a product worth four dollars a gallon, after taxes. Petroleum oil refining is a filthy, high-risk, low-yield, 20th century economic model. Cannabis oil refining is a clean 21st century low risk, high-yield economic model. This is why I advocate for petroleum oil refining to be displaced with cannabis oil refining instead of wasting time, funds, and staff resources monitoring petroleum related operations in the name of public safety.
There will be local candidate choices in November that prefer continued dependence on a petroleum-based economic model over anything cannabis related, even strictly medicinal.

Stan Golovich,
Benicia

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