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Clearing air: Show biz or 'reality'?
Gov. Schwarzenegger owes us answers about firing of air board officials and cleanup progress.
| Wednesday, Jul 4 2007 10:05 PM
Last Updated: Wednesday, Jul 4 2007 10:10 PM
Californians deserve straight answers. Maybe the hearing Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez has scheduled Friday in Sacramento will help get them.
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Last week, Gov. Schwarzenegger fired Robert Sawyer, the man he appointed as chairman of the California Air Resources Board. This week, the board's executive officer, Catherine Witherspoon, quit.
The governor and his staff claim the pair was not moving fast enough to implement California's groundbreaking plan to reduce air pollution and global warming.
Sawyer and Witherspoon claim the governor is full of hot air. Schwarzenegger publicly speaks about cutting air pollution taking the bows for a courageous "super hero" attack on global warming, while privately pressuring Sawyer and Witherspoon to delay cleanup efforts.
The chaos created at the governor-appointed board responsible for cleaning up California's polluted air is embarrassing for the Schwarzenegger administration. It is a major setback for California's air cleanup efforts.
For decades, California has been the leader in scrubbing pollution from the air and implementing tough controls on its residents and industries. Why? Because it has to be.
With its unique geography and smog-trapping valleys, California is one of the nation's most polluted states. Depending on the timing of the survey and the data used, Bakersfield is considered to have the second or third most polluted air in the nation.
California's residents are dying and becoming sick from breathing this polluted air. An alarming number of our children struggle with asthma.
The air in the Central Valley and most other parts of California does not meet federal air pollution standards. Federal penalties, such as the withholding of critically needed transportation funds and the imposition of building moratoriums, loom if California doesn't clean up its act.
So climbing onto their white horses last year, the Democratic-controlled Legislature and California's action-packed Republican governor rode to the rescue with Assembly Bill 32 a landmark global warming law that would cut greenhouse-gas emissions that both pollute the air and increase global warming.
In a chest-beating show, California declared: If the Bush administration and Congress are too chicken to do the tough stuff to curb global warming, California will lead the way.
California's initiative is being closely watched and dreaded by both industry and political interests, including the foot-dragging Bush administration.
But now it appears, with the firing of Sawyer and resignation of Witherspoon, this "war on global warming" was just show business a public show of bravado, while the governor was protecting the interests of some of his biggest campaign contributors by delaying tough air pollution-cutting initiatives.
Californians deserve some straight answers and a straightforward air pollution cleanup strategy from their governor.
The fallout from the ousters of Sawyer and Witherspoon is that the California Air Resources Board has been thrown in chaos just when it is supposed to be developing strict rules to curb pollution and global warming.