Tuesday, October 24th 2006
Prop 87: Gore visits Berkeley
On Monday, Al Gore was in town to promote Proposition 87. From Inside Bay Area:
The former Vice President and 2000 Democratic presidential nominee urged a cheering crowd of about 2,000 people Monday at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Park to get out the vote for the oil-drilling-tax measure on November’s ballot…
Environmental devastation, war, famine and disease “are not political problems, they’re moral imperatives and they’re up to us to confront,” Gore said. “It starts right here in the state of California when you pass Prop. 87.” […]
Proposition 87 would tax oil companies for oil they take from California, raising about $4 billion for use in developing alternative energy sources with a goal of reducing the state’s dependence on gas and diesel by 25 percent within 10 years.
Here’s the lovefest from local bloggers: Happening Here, Berkeley Bubble, The Third Path, and Complikated. This was about as harsh as it got, from the latter blogger:
He showed up in a hybrid with “100+ MPG” painted on the side, but he had such a heavy police escort that I’m sure his travel wasn’t as efficient as he’d like us to believe. Of course, I don’t know if he’d even be allowed to travel without all of the security so it’s a moot point. Besides, ever since I saw An Inconvenient Truth, I’ve been a big fan of the former Vice President, so a small amount of hypocrisy from a man who has done so much good seems permissable, no?
Feel free to discuss Prop 87 and why we should or should not support it. FYI, I’ll be voting no.
The $0.51 per gal. corporate welfare to the oil refiners for adding 5.6% ethanol to California gas is about $500,000,000.00 per year.
The ethanol may add over $1.00 per gal. to the gas profit in California.
That may be about $100 billion in oil profit from California motorists.
The science is interesting but so is the money.
A $4 billion Prop. 87 oil tax may add $40 billion in oil profit.
Charlie Peters
(510) 537-1796
Clean Air Performance Professionals
Comment by Charlie — 11/6/2006 @ 9:37 am
I think that prop 87 should be passed. It may seem bad in the short term becuase oil taxes will be raised and the average person will be paying more on gas for their car; however, the reality is that in the long run, we will no longer be dependent on foreign oil becuase we will have alternative fuels. our environment will have a chance at being saved without gasoline as a major fuel source. We need to start thinking about our future and the long term effects.
Comment by court — 11/6/2006 @ 6:45 pm