Nick Pope
Contributor
Voters in Berkeley, California, soundly rejected a proposal that would have required owners of certain larger buildings to pay a fee in order to use natural gas.
Measure GG would have required owners of multi-family or commercial buildings larger than 15,000 square feet to pay up in order to use natural gas. It failed with 68.25% of voters moving to reject the measure, according to Alameda County election data.
Environmentalists and labor unions advocated for “Measure GG” on the grounds that reducing emissions from buildings is imperative to fight climate change, while opponents derided it in part because they view the proposal as a new and costly tax that will chase away restaurants and small businesses, according to Bloomberg News. (Stream The Daily Caller’s Original Documentary ‘Cleaning Up Kamala’ HERE)
Kamala Harris Shows Off Gas Stove On Thanksgiving After Biden Admin Proposed Crackdown https://t.co/DMpVHnqJ0C
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 24, 2023
Measure GG would have directly affected about 600 buildings in Berkeley, according to The Daily Californian. Vice President Kamala Harris, who suffered a crushing defeat to President-Elect Donald Trump on Tuesday, originally hails from Berkeley, according to The New York Times.
Berkeley banned natural gas hookups in newly-constructed buildings in 2019, a policy that liberal cities like Los Angeles and New York subsequently mimicked, according to Bloomberg News. The California Restaurant Association challenged the Berkeley ban in court, and a federal appellate court overturned the policy in April 2023.
Officials from the Biden Justice Department and Department of Energy filed a June 2023 amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit asking the court to reverse its decision nixing Berkeley’s 2019 gas ban, but the court ruled in January that it would not be revisiting that decision.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
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Even eco-wackos in Berkeley want their gas cooktops! Here in the high desert Southwest we’re enjoying our third snowfall of the FALL! Maybe I’ll make a batch of extra meaty pasta sauce today!
Berkeley politics are a bad parody, sometimes. In one city council race, the least radical (one cannot say the most conservative!) candidate was a member of the regular Communist party.
I think, after the past few weeks, that the word Democrat will become synonymous with Delusional. They deluded themselves, no, they deliberately deceived the public about Mr Biden’s failing cognitive abilities until the charade fell apart on live television.
What did they do then? They selected a completely vacant vessel to become the candidate with no process whatsoever – a de facto coronation. Perhaps something like an attack on your means of preparing cooked food for your family might make people take notice?
“”Voters In Kamala Harris’ Hometown Smack Down Initiative to Tax Natural Gas Use””
It’s all stick and no carrot; stfu this is about saving the, er, planet.
The last week’s weather in Britain has brought into sharp relief just how much we now depend on gas, for energy in general. Of course, California has a very different climate to the British isles. But we all have to live, right? And that seems to be thee problem for the climate aware elites.
Push seems to be coming to shove.
It was obvious they were going to go with Harris because she was on the ticket with Biden. Otherwise, the Democrats would have had to refund hundreds of millions in donations.
It was all about the money. Ultimately, that was a perhaps pennywise but certainly pound-foolish decision. Over $2 billion was spent on the Harris/Walz campaign and the result was Republicans won everywhere. They won the Electoral College, they won the mythical popular vote, they now control the Senate and very likely increase their lead in the House.
Democrats had the cash. They had to spend it. Receivers of the cash are happy. Probably will return the favor. So … spending it not really wasted.
And Kamala was so responsive to every instruction she got from the President’s team.
First Lady Jill told Kalama that she should “go fvck yourself”
And she did . . .
Mr,
IMHO, this comment adds nothing of value.
Hard scientists tend to minimise personal expressions of emotion and belief in their scientific work and often in everyday chat. The last couple of decades have seen a flood of soft “science” related to climate change that has damaged the quality of all science and given the public a distorted view of proper science.
We on WUWT do not need to add to that distorted view.
Geoff S
That makes zero sense.
The previous campaign ticket does not mark the VP partner as anywhere near having party approval to run for President.
A VP running for president, not uncommon during a President’s 8th year, starts campaigning and lining up supporters well before the year of the campaign.
Ex Sen. Kamala started her run during the early 2020 Democrat primaries. She dropped out December 3rd 2019. She was so disliked that she dropped out before 2020 actually began.
Kamala was not a natural shoo-in for taking Biden’s place in the 2024 campaign. Such a deputation has never happened before except in cases of assassination.
Kamala was not chosen by the proper method, i.e., elected by a primary.
Kamala was selected by an insider group of elites who hoped they could squeak her past voters and donors.
Kamala was the one stupid enough and ambitious enough that would accept the last few months of someone else’s campaign.
No Republican complained, because frankly there are far more qualified and more dangerous candidates, but who had zero cachet at the time with voters.
Kamala is the least competent and has never been known for extemporaneous speaking. Her word salads and slurring give that away.
The insider’s plan from the get-go was hyping the hell out of her and keeping her away from anybody with any sliver of intelligence or honesty.
yes we’ve had a week of no wind at all and grey overcast so no solar either. Ed Milliband is going to quadruple that, the stupid stupid fellow
Nothing times nothing = Nothing
See what happens when people aren’t educated properly?!
Nothing times a GAZILLION = Nothing
That is the math they don’t seem to understand.
Many reasons for the defeat and I don’t think racism or sexism played a part.
Kamala Harris had 4 years as VP to a largely incapacitated President; an opportunity to shine not given to many VPs. And she achieved nothing. But she expected the American public to give her the top job!
____________________________________________________________________________
The public and policy makers need to be made aware of how little Methane affects global temperature. The GWP numbers are designed on purpose ( Sir John Houghton) to produce
scary numbers for greenhouse gases with very low concentrations in the atmosphere.
And in methane case, the reality is zero “GWP” since its absorption bands are completely overlapped by water vapor.
I note with interest that Berkeley’s Measure GG does not use the term “climate change”—wisely, since nobody can satisfactorily define exactly what that means for all people— but instead refers in the exact wording of the ordinance to “. . . allocating revenues [from the proposed tax] for building decarbonization programs, and administration; and establishing an oversight committee . . .”
(my bold emphasis added)
That’s proposed bureaucracy building at its finest!
Now get this incredible fact, not mentioned in the above article:
the proposed ordinance states the tax will be “. . . adjusted annually for inflation plus 6% . . . until its expiration in December 31, 2050.”
(again, my bold emphasis added)
Let’s very optimistically assume that inflation over those 25 years (2025 thru 2050) runs at an average of only 3%—yeah, right!—then the Measure GG tax would increase by an average of 3+6 = 9% per year.
So, for 9% per year average compounding, in just 10 years time this ordinance would have the initial tax burden go to (1.09)^10 = 2.4 times the initial tax rate, and in the last year (2050) the tax burden would be (1.09)^25 = 8.6 times the initial tax rate.
Wow . . . talk about bureaucracy feeding at the taxpayer trough! . . . I guess the Berkeley City Council thought they could slip this in because they never imagined ordinary citizen’s could “do the math”.
For the convenience of WUWT readers, I have attached a screen-grab of the Measure GG ordinance wording as obtained from the link embedded with red text “Measure GG” at the beginning of the above-article’s second paragraph.
Ooops . . . here’s the screen grab that I forgot to attach:
You left out one factor. What happens to the price of gas as inflation creeps up? The tax is, I assume, applied to the cost of gas? Yes, per your follow on post.
No . . . I didn’t leave it out . . . the tax is applied based on the thermal energy (“therms”) used annually, which basically means that it is calculated on a “per cubic foot of gas consumed” basis, NOT on the price per cubic foot . . . as is readily see in the very first line of the Measure GG ordinance wording of the screen-grab that I attached.
For reference, in 2023 the U.S. annual average heat content of natural gas delivered to end-users averaged about 1.038 therms per 100 cubic feet.
(source: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=45&t=8#:~:text=In%202023%2C%20the%20U.S.%20annual,1.038%20MMBtu%2C%20or%2010.38%20therms. )
I guess the Berkeley City Council thought they could slip this in because they never imagined ordinary citizen’s could “do the math”
____________________________________________________________________________
Reminds of the well known fable about the farmer who thought the blacksmith was charging too much to shoe his horse. So the smith offered to charge only 1¢ for the first nail 2¢ for the second 4¢ for the third and so on for all 32 nails, came to 24 Million & change.
It’s a good story . . . but you should have checked the math: starting at a penny for the first nail and doubling the price for each successive nail means you’ve reached a sum total of $42.95 million by the time the 32nd nail is hammered in.
That’s perhaps a distinction without a difference to the moral to the story.
BTW, I made a mistake too . . . I should have stated “citizens” (not “citizen’s”) doing the math 🙁
I did it on Excel and rounded off the answer:
.01
=2*a1
Copied on down to a32
But Hey thanks for spending time on my post. I’m no different than anyone else vying for attention.
But did you sum the column of calculations, or just use the last value of (2^32)/100? I do believe you have to use the sum of all 32 rows to be consistent with the fable’s wording.
P.S. I too checked it out using Excel prior to making my post in response to you.
You are exactly right. Duh!
Made some steel cut oatmeal this morning. Water boiled in about a minute. Gotta love that gas.
story tip – This in a nutshell is what’s wrong with Scientific American and politicized science in general:
https://x.com/kevinnbass/status/1854247712268664937?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1854247712268664937%7Ctwgr%5E711993a7eee7e12f59b28ca4a6d42771b3bb1bf2%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftownhall.com%2Ftipsheet%2Fmattvespa%2F2024%2F11%2F07%2Fliberal-media-meltdown-ii-n2647363
(Sorry, don;t know how to make the link shorter,)
Gen x is tired of the boomer and millennial crap.
Fascists are people who hate elections when their guy loses- like Laura Helmuth.
Yes, Trump somehow is a “threat to democracy,” as they attempt to elect someone who nobody voted for.
No way Commie-La would have been the candidate if she had to be voted in under an actual primary.
Charming…
To post a long link, highlight some text in your post and then click on the (chain) link icon. Put your link in the box that pops up and save.
Thursday funny:
How the lessons of the UK election could help Kamala Harris defeat Donald Trump
Deborah Mattinson and Claire Ainsley
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/07/how-lessons-of-uk-election-could-help-kamala-harris-defeat-donald-trump
The Guardian featured a gushing account from Keir Starmer’s former senior advisers, bragging about how they were perfectly placed to help Kamala Harris in her campaign.
https://order-order.com/2024/11/07/starmers-former-senior-aides-boasted-about-helping-harris/
EPA declared CO2 a pollutant. Ok, so why are not 350M Americans facing trial for polluting? All of us emit CO2 and methane. So why are there not 350M criminal cases?
In a way, there is- and the punishment is to take away all our ff. But Trump will change that.
Decarbonization? Gas burning does not produce carbon. CO2 is not carbon.
Nowhere in the proposal is a definition of Decarbonization, which to my mind, makes it legally unenforceable.
In Washington State, Initiative Measure No. 2066, also a save natural gas measure passed with 51.35%. King County (aka Seattle 😒) went the other way with “No = 59.3%”.
[I have a 44-year-old house built as “all electric” being 6 miles from the pipeline that could provide gas. The house has a proper stone-lined alcove with a modern wood-burning stove. 🤠]
At least you have cheap electric rates thanks to hydro, although selling to California has probably boosted the prices some unless WA is smart enough to only sell what they don’t need themselves.
I am miles from the nearest gas main but I have a propane powered Wok hob for stir-fry’s and omelettes. You cannot beat gas for heat control and immediacy of heat.
More good news. Build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators, remove all wind and solar from the grid and remove all mandates for renewable energy and transportation.
looking at my utility bill, i am pretty sure we already all pay a fee to use natural gas
And voters in Washington state are apparently approving (all votes not counted yet) State Initiative I-2066 which would prohibit Washington State from “prohibit(ing), penalize(ing), or discourage(ing) the use of gas in any form of heating, or for uses related to any appliance or equipment, in any building.”
It would make sure that natural gas remains available to anyone that wants it.