California Senate Bill 790 (SB 790) bans utility companies from using ratepayer funds for negative publicity campaigns against local community utilities ( community choice aggregators, or CCA). They are now required to file the details of any anti-CCA marketing with the California Public Utilities Commission. Only PG&E has not filed in the case of AB 2145 (popularly known as the “Monopoly Protection Act” ) because the marketing is being done by associated third parties. Doesn’t this make a mockery of California Senate Bill 790?
The Federal Government responded within 24 hours of Vancouver’s calling for a referendumon Kinder Morgan’s proposed Trans Mountain expansion project. Not by ensuring BC residents can obtain a proper hearing before the National Energy Board – Vancouver’s complaint – but by announcing stiffer regulations for oil spills. The title for this episode of the Kinder Morgan saga should be “BC’s Pipelines: The Empire Strikes Back!”
Fifty one of BC’s faith leaders have written Christy Clark an open letter requesting she reconsider her decision to approve the expansion of coal facilities on Texada Island. This follows the discovery, last month, that the provincial government secretly approved a plan to expand for a tenfold to twentyfold increase of the material being exported to China. They wrote that coal is “the fossil fuel most directly linked to the rise of CO2 emissions in China” and “making money at the expense of the health and prosperity of the planet is wrong.”
Though Port Metro Vancouveris expected to release its final decision about the Fraser Surrey Docks next month, there is little doubt that the proposal will be approved. An estimated four million tonnes per year of thermal coal will soon be coming up from the US. Will the Fraser Surrey Docks Expansion Bring Aerosolized Coal Dust?
On Saturday, May 10, thousands of Canadians Defend our Climate in Demonstrations were held in every province except Newfoundland, as well as in the Yukon and Nunavik.
