Whether or not they believe in some
imminent environmental doomsday, just about everybody “gets it” that
we have to stop wasting water, polluting the air and exhausting the planet’s
resources.
It’s taken a long time but the
environmental movement has won.
President Obama wants green
technology to be the center of our new post-collapse economy; 43 million
Americans are growing their own food;
hybrid cars; people are conserving water and putting solar panels on their
rooftops in record numbers.
Everybody gets it — except the
leaders of the environmental movement who are so enamored of themselves and
their political connections they have lost sight of the goal of a cleaner,
greener world. They are what are called “greenwashers,” profiteers in
ego, power and money who have lost touch with the ordinary people
They are betraying their own cause
at the very moment of their triumph.
David Allgood, regional director of
the California League of Conservation Voters, and Mark Gold, president of Heal
the Bay — fresh from the defeat of Measure B that they backed blindly — have
now mounted a campaign to save DWP General Manager David Nahai’s job.
Recognizing the axe is about to fall
on Nahai, they sent out this email Tuesday appealing for letters of support to
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa:
Colleagues:
Our friend, David Nahai, is under
attack for not sufficiently supporting Measure B. There’s also grumbling about
his management skills. In truth, some of these allegations are warranted
because David Nahai is a human being, not a god. (I suspect that only gods need
apply at DWP.) Mark Gold joins me in believing that Nahai has performed a
yeoman’s job. We all know his replacement would NOT be an environmentalist –
and without him we’d lose many recent gains.
Mark and I ask that you take a look at the attached support letter and
if you concur with our judgment, add your name and organization to it. Time is
of the essence, we would like your response by end of business tomorrow. Please
email your response to me at davidallgood@ecovote.org. Many thanks for your
attention and support.
David Allgood Mark Gold
Attached to the email is their
letter to the mayor
Nahai Support.pdf praising Nahai as an environmental savior instead of the
man whose penchant for lying and arrogance has alienated the public in general,
the people who work for him in particular, even IBEW union boss Brian D’Arcy
specifically.
Allgood and Gold credit Nahai for
helping
“develop the landmark 1380 (sic, it’s 1280) megawatt
SolarLA plan,” of acting “wisely and decisively” in the face of
“monumental challenges,” and having “worked to protect both the
environment and the ratepayers of
Talk about lies.
The solar plan was slapped together
without any coherent planning to lend some credibility to the fatally flawed
Measure B they supported without giving it any thought. Nahai, as president of
the DWP Commission and now it’s GM, has overseen the largest water and power
rate increases in the utility’s history, broken faith with the memorandum of
understanding with the city’s Neighborhood Councils and rebuffed every effort
to give the public a voice through creation of a Ratepayer’s Advocate.
Decisive maybe, hardly wise.
But standing up for a pal counts for
something and Nahai is definitely a pal.
He has been part of the leadership
team of the California League of Conservation Voters and a long-time supporter
for years — a connection that helped establish his environmental credentials, even as he
personally was consuming water and electricity at his home at up to three times the
level of those ordinary people he holds in such low esteem.
None of this should surprise anyone.
Dissident groups that succeed inevitably lose their way and become institutionalized, dependent on large sums of money to feed the organization and themselves, too close to the very power structures they once opposed.
Allgood and Gold know better. They believe passionately in the environmental movement and have achieved a great deal that is worthy of respect.
But they have forgotten who brought them there: The ordinary people, not the rich and powerful.
Allgood’s Facebook page
gives insight into who he is: Politics (“hard left”), Religion
(“atheist”), College (“many…None, difficult, my god it was the
60′s…”
A lot of us were products of the 1960s. It was a time of anti-establishment ferment when many of us called into question our institutions of government, religion and education.
The environmental movement now is one of those institutions in question.
You’re too kind. How bout Nahai’s mansion water waste and his infamous billboard? The guy’s a pompous jerk.
Re: http://ronkayela.com/Nahai%20Support.pdf
Really no reason for them to post date the letter. April 1 would have been just fine.
Is this slander or libel? I forget.
“Libel is the written or broadcast form of defamation, distinguished from slander, which is oral defamation.”
Did Ron publish an untruth? If not, he’s on safe ground. Just what was it that made you go “Wow”? Looks just like any other day at LADWP.
as someone who has worked non-stop for 2 years to get LA to power itself and leave outlying wilderness areas and rural communities alone (aka a REAL environmentalist, instead of a greenwasher), i can tell you that both Nahai and the City Council have been entirely UNWILLING to entertain the types of programs that have proven to work over years and years in 45 other places.
where is LA’s AB 811 funding? they should put the $100 million they have stolen from ratepayers directly into a ratepayer loan fund so that WE can install efficiency and rooftop solar for no money down, and WE can produce the 33% RPS that CA requires. it is nothing short of imperialism to try to destroy the joshua tree area with Green Path (snort!) and bankrupt ratepayers with DWP infrastructure that we pay 112% for and never own, plus being forced to pay a premium for the “green” power that slaughters wildlife and greatly increases GHGS.
Sierra Club and NRDC are on this list, with LCV and HTB – their participation in the LIES of RETI (including their “fact” that green path is already built, because that skews the results in favor of Big Energy giveaways), plus their unswerving allegiance to increasing GHGS (look up SF6 if you don’t think Big Transmission will fry the planet 24,000 times faster than CO2), to killing off threatened species (check out the inevitable tortoise slaughter at Ivanpah), to destroying carbon-absorbing ecosystems (like the Mojave), while enriching Big Energy and impoverishing ratepayers – all without offsetting a gram of coal – is CENTRAL to the mess we are in.
We can no longer trust the democrats nor the Big Enviros to adequately steward our environment and protect the middle classes from exploitation. We never really could trust the Republicans on that, although they are surprisingly open to Feed in Tariffs (i guess because FITs replace Big Wind and Big Solar, not Big Coal and Big Oil?) It is we individuals against Big Energy, Big Enviros and Big Government Greenwashers.
We need a generous feed in tariff NOW in this state and cannot settle for less than 40 cents/kWh in the first phase. we need ab 811 loans. we need to fight for our public lands, our planet and our homes because the status quo is completely FUBAR – this is gonna be incredibly ugly…
There is something seriously wrong in Los Angeles. It seems we reward the crook. And never account for the loss.
Mayor Villaraigosa selects the General Manager and the Board of Water & Power Commissioners. The Mayor is short of funds, so he has the General manager and the Board approve a transfer of funds to the City’s General Fund. The Mayor spends the money. Now a judge rules that the transfer is illegal. So the General Manager and the Board of Water and Power Commissioners are instructed to pay back the money to the rate payors.
As I see it, LADWP increased the rates to fund a bunch of projects. So if they transferred $100 Million to the City General Fund and paid another $100 million back to the rate payors, that is $200 million that came out of the LADWP projects.
Why should the ratepayors pay double and the Mayor, who used his connections to take the money, not pay anything?
Come to think about it, this is the same scam that happened with Flischman Hillard. LADWP, a monopoly, hired a marketing firm. Mayor Hahn benefitted from services that were “Pro-bono.” The Mayor had the City Attorney go after Flischman Hillard. Flishman Hillard ended up paying $6 million to the City. So who repaid the ratepayors for the loss of money and the loss of budgeted LADWP work?
Good blog post mate. This has made me search for much more.