Going Green and the Rise of the Liberal and Progressive Agenda in Torrance

The “Creative Greenius”

Sporting a spiffy South Bay Club 350 dress shirt well known environmental activist Joe Galliani, pseudonymed the “Creative Greenius,” made an appearance at the last Council meeting.  South Bay Club 350 is a local climate action group that the Creative Greenius helped organize.  The Greenius took the opportunity to praise the Council for approving the installation of 16 electric vehicle charging stations throughout Torrance.

Galliani, an electric car owner, lauded the $560K project and expressed his belief that it will make Torrance a destination location for electric car owners to come eat, shop, and spend money.  As an advocate for a wide variety of climate related issues throughout the South Bay, he noted that he’s “never seen more Tesla’s in one place than in Manhattan Beach” and that he hoped to see those Tesla’s here in Torrance.  Not to pick bones too much with the revered Greenius, but one might surmise that the prevalence of Tesla’s in Manhattan Beach has a lot more to do with the income of the residents there than the availability of public electric vehicle charging stations.  But I digress.

The Greenius was also undoubtedly ecstatic with an initiative unveiled by fellow electric car owner and green agenda advocate, councilmember Tim Goodrich, to bring Community Choice Aggregation to Torrance.  Galliani’s blog chronicles his recent efforts to fight a bill in the state legislature that he believes would kill Community Choice.  One post even relates how local state representative Al Muratsuchi called him personally to apologize after voting in favor of the Community Choice killing bill claiming he was lied to about the bill’s implications.

Community Choice Aggregation is sold as an opportunity for municipalities to exercise local control and leverage group purchasing power to lower energy rates.  But the real boon for climate activists like Galliani is the potential for it to deliver more “green” friendly energy.  For example, the Greenius quoted the Climate Protection Campaign on his blog stating that “Community Choice is the single most powerful measure under local control to achieve the greatest greenhouse gas reductions in the shortest period of time.”

All of that sounds great, but of course Community Choice is not without its risks.  In an apparent botched rollout of a similar program in San Francisco it turned out that green power could end up costing significantly more.  At one point, it was reported that typical electric bills were set to increase from $73 a month to $300 a month.  Cities also incur significant financial risk as start-up costs and long-term financial obligations may not be recovered if the Community Choice Program fails to retain a large and stable customer base.  One study estimated those at risk costs at nearly $4 Million for the City of Berkeley.

No matter how individual residents feel about Community Choice Aggregation it’s not often that historically conservative leaning Torrance is lumped in with liberal bastions like San Francisco, Berkeley, and Marin County some of the other entities currently pursuing Community Choice.

Further evidence of the advance of the green agenda was the Council’s approval for the Mayor to attend the Global Mayor’s Forum in China co-sponsored by the World Urban campaign.  The main focus of that event will be urban sustainability with agenda topics such as reducing carbon footprints and mitigating climate change.

Resident Mark Stephenson criticized the trip, perceived by some as a boondoggle, due to its 50% percent increase in the Mayor’s allotted travel budget and use of economic development funds that former Mayor Scotto previously characterized as very tight.  Perhaps in an attempt to counter those sentiments, Democratic Councilmember Weideman emphatically voiced his support for the trip stating that he “really approved of the item” as it would foster “international networking and long-term economic development.”

It’s not surprising to see far left leaning progressives such as Goodrich advocating for a green agenda.  What may be a surprise to some, however, is the complete acquiescence and seeming support of such initiatives by the two Republicans on the Council, Councilmembers Ashcraft and Rizzo.  In addition to those initiatives mentioned above, just in the last few months we have also seen the Optimized Street Sweeping Program, Car2Go, an increase in union power, and a bypassing of three culturally diverse higher finishing Republicans in the past election in favor of a non-Republican appointee to the Council.  Not a peep of opposition has come from Ashcraft or Rizzo to any of these left leaning decisions.

Ironically, Ashcraft and Rizzo recently headlined at a meeting for the Torrance Democratic Club (TDC) in an evening billed as an opportunity to reach across the aisle.  Given the recent stances of Ashcraft and Rizzo that event may not have been as bi-partisan as advertised by the President of the TDC Jimmy Gow as the positions of these Republicans appear quite indistinguishable from their fellow Democrats on the Council.