And neither is he a member of the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, nor any other local government body, since he left the office of Mayor of Oakland.

While news from the 4th Congressional District has certainly been dominating the discussion here at Red County Placer, and I will have more to say on that issue, I wanted to focus this morning on a campaign of lawsuits and threatened lawsuits that Attorney General Jerry Brown is waging to force action on greenhouse gas emissions, which he has decided should be the chief concern of California's highest ranking law enforcement official.

The highest profile of these lawsuits was Jerry "Greenbeam" Brown's lawsuit against San Bernardino County over the approval of their new General Plan earlier this year.  Brown argues that the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which addresses the air and water pollution effects of development and land use, should also address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The problem for Jerry is that GHG and climate change and global warming and all the other issues supposedly addresses by "lowering our carbon footprint" are not in CEQA.

GHG emissions reductions are addressed in AB 32, signed by Governor Schwarzenegger last year.  The only problem for "Greenbeam" is that AB 32 is not yet in effect.  AB 32 essentially mandates that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and other state agencies adopt a series of rules and regulations over the next 3 years to reduce GHG to 1990 levels by 2020, and then make further reductions by 2050.

I am not going to get into the whole debate over GHG and global warming and "climate change" now, although so you know where I am coming from, I think the science on whether man made emissions of carbon dioxide are the chief cause of any increase in global temperatures is pretty weak.

But that question is moot.  Even if it were conclusively proved that man was ruining the planet, as Al Gore would have you believe, the process to address the issue still needs to be applied by law.  And Jerry Brown has acted way outside of the law in trying to apply one law, CEQA, that doesn't even apply to green house gases, and another, AB 32, that specifically says the the new regulations must be in place before it can be implemented.

In the San Bernardino County lawsuit, the County and the AG settled, with the Board of Supervisors agreeing to rewrite their General Plan to address greenhouse gases by 2010, when the new AB 32 regulations are in effect.

In his comments after the settlement was reached, listen to Jerry Brown's comments:

"[San Bernardino County] needs elegant density, with people living closer to where they work."

Excuse me, Mr. Attorney General, but who elected you to the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors?

Land use decisions are the province of local government officials, be they city or county officials.  This is how it should be, so that decisions about where and what should be allowed to be developed are made by officials who live in and know their community. 

Curiously, when Jerry Brown was Mayor of Oakland, a locally-elected official with responsibility for land use planning, he wasn't so gung-ho about CEQA.  In fact, he asked Assemblywoman Wilma Chan to carry legislation exempting Oakland redevelopment plans from CEQA.  He was then quoted as saying:

"I haven't seen any spotted owls or snail darters in downtown Oakland."

Funny how the job you hold changes your perceptive, eh?

Since the settlement of the San Bernardino case, Jerry has been hot on the trail of new dragons, that is, developments, to slay.  And he has turned his eye towards Placer County and the recent approval of the Placer Vineyards development.

Brown acknowledged last month that, while he has not decided whether he would file a lawsuit against Placer County, his lawyers had already been in touch with Placer County.  In the August 22 edition of the Bee:

[Brown] specifically cited the Placer Vineyards project. "Although we didn't sue on that, I told (Department of Justice) lawyers, I want them really thinking about how to shape the land use to reduce oil dependency and greenhouse gases," Brown said.

"The attorney general has both a persuasive power and a coercive power," he added in the interview. "The lawsuit is the coercive power. But ... we really want to work as a partner with local government on the common objectives of making our cities and counties more livable."

So again, Jerry, I would point out that since leaving Oakland, you have no power to "shape the land use." 

Republicans in the Legislature were right to demand changes to this in the recent budget stalemate, and were effective in winning some concessions. They should continue to fight this fight to keep land use planning in the hands of local government, and keep Jerry Brown's new crusade out of Placer County.