ShareThisBy E. J. SCHULTZ
Monday, April 09, 2007
How popular is global warming as a political issue? So popular that even conservative state lawmakers are getting into the act, using the issue to sell everything from building dams and nuclear power plants to thinning forests.
The arguments are simple enough: Higher temperatures reduce mountain snowpack, so more dams are needed to capture winter precipitation that falls as rain.
Nuclear power plants produce few greenhouse gases, the leading cause of manmade warming.
Forest fires, on the other hand, send plenty of gases into the air _ so why not encourage timber companies to clear more brush to reduce fire risk?
Environmentalists, who are skeptical of the proposals, are peeved that the other side has stolen their issue.
"Clearly these legislators are just dressing up their existing legislation with a thin veneer of a pretended concern about global warming," said Bill Magavern, senior representative for Sierra Club California.
Republican lawmakers strongly opposed last year's landmark legislation _ Assembly Bill 32 _ to cut the state's greenhouse gases by 25 percent by 2020. They criticized the bill as a job-killer and a primitive attempt at placing local controls on a global problem.
Have they converted? Not necessarily, says Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, author of the nuclear bill.
"It's politics," he said. "If the (Democratic) leadership has said this is a problem ... then all I'm suggesting is maybe this is one of the solutions we should look at."
That Republicans are now talking about climate change shows how far it has come, said GOP strategist Dan Schnur.
"You can always tell that an issue has evolved when both parties start using it," he said. "They're not arguing about global warming anymore in the state Legislature. They're arguing about what issue it next influences."
Without the backing of environmentalists, the Republican proposals will likely face an uphill fight in the Democratic-controlled Legislature.
_ DeVore's Assembly Bill 719 would lift a 31-year-old state ban on new nuclear power plants, clearing the way for a $4 billion plant proposed for Fresno by a group of prominent business leaders. He has titled the bill the "California Zero Carbon Dioxide Emission Electrical Generation Act of 2007."
About 13 percent of the state's electricity supply comes from nuclear plants, including two in California _ San Onofre in Southern California and Diablo Canyon in San Luis Obispo County, according to a report last year by the California Energy Commission. But a state law passed in 1976 prohibits the construction of more plants until the federal government finds a way to dispose of high-level nuclear waste.
Unlike plants that burn fossil fuels, nuclear plants emit few greenhouse gases. Such gases trap heat in the atmosphere, causing global warming, according to scientists.
Nuclear watchdog groups say nuclear plants are too expensive.
Yet the emergence of global warming as a hot issue has given nuclear supporters some momentum. A 2005 energy measure passed by Congress includes federal loan guarantees for nuclear plant financing. Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, has said nuclear power should at least be on the table.
_ Senate Bill 59 by Sen. Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, contains Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to put a $4 billion water bond on the 2008 ballot, including $2 billion for two dams _ one just above Friant Dam near Fresno, on the San Joaquin River, and another on Sites reservoir in Colusa and Glenn counties.
The state Department of Water Resources predicts warming will result in a loss of at least a quarter of the state's snowmelt runoff by 2050. This has led the department to recommend more surface storage to capture winter rain that today falls as snow.
Environmentalists, who prefer conservation and more groundwater storage, say the governor is misguided.
The proposed site at Friant sits at the base of some of the highest mountains in the state. So even with rising temperatures, there will be plenty of snowpack at those higher elevations, said Barry Nelson, a senior analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Also, research suggests global warming will cause more evaporation, meaning less runoff from the state's rivers and streams, Nelson said.
"You could be building a dam to capture water that won't be there in the future," he said.
_ Cogdill's Senate Bill 572 would direct the state to consider emissions created by catastrophic wildfires as officials implement the new global warming law.
Cogdill is still finalizing the bill's details but said it could allow timber companies to cut down more trees without going through extensive and costly environmental reviews.
That would give loggers more of an incentive to clear the smaller brush that fuels forest fires, he said, and at the same time could help revive the region's long-struggling timber industry.
(Contact E.J. Schultz at eschultz(at)fresnobee.com.)
