In This Newsletter:

April Special Election

Call for More Local Drilling a Terrible Idea

Drought Means Rethinking Water Use

Canada Matches California on Gas Car Ban

The Problems with Fresno’s New General Plan

Precinct Captains

Trivia Night Thursday

Fellowship Program

We Are Hiring!

Fresno County: Earth Day Cleanup!

Democratic Party Website and HQ

April Special Election

Was Devin Nunes your Congressional representative until he abandoned his seat to try and run Donald Trump’s new media operation? If so, there is an election for you to vote in.

The winner will hold the House seat for a handful of months until the district vanishes next year, swallowed up by Bakersfield and the northern foothills as the outcome of redistricting.

There are two Democrats running in this special election against three Republicans. The Democratic Party has not endorsed in this race. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, the top two candidates will face off again in June.

April 5 is the last day for your ballot to be mailed and postmarked or returned to any drop-box or voting location. Drop boxes and voting locations close at 8 p.m. on Election Day.

Voting location look-up tool: CAEarlyVoting.sos.ca.gov

Questions? Call 559-600-8683 or e-mail [email protected].

Visit www.co.fresno.ca.us/departments/county-clerk-registrar-of-voters for election information.

Call for More Local Drilling a Terrible Idea

The Fresno County Board of Supervisors’ recent decision to call for more oil drilling in our county and across the nation would not provide any relief to this gas crisis and would directly harm the health of Central Valley residents.

Even completely removing regulations and safeguards, as District 2 Supervisor Steve Brandau suggested, would not have any timely effect on the gas price spike from Putin’s war in Ukraine. If any new oil did come online, its fumes would only further ruin our valley for agriculture and human life by adding to our terrible air quality and the baking droughts from global warming.

Calling for more oil extraction here in the Valley is particularly simple-minded. Fresno County is nearly completely reliant on groundwater for household use, but now the supervisors want to add fracking.

The area in western Fresno County near existing oil extraction sites is already one of the most polluted groundwater areas, and any expansion of this poisonous industry would only introduce further pollutants and harm local residents. The Central Valley already suffers from some of the worst air quality in the world under our current oil-dependent system. Expanding extraction in California will just further poison us.

Not only is the supervisors’ plan rife with negative consequences, it has no chance of achieving its supposed goal of immediate relief. New production takes years, and it is physically impossible for California to produce enough oil to change the price of the global fuel market we are yoked to.

The only long-term solution to protect ourselves is a transformation from carbon burning to electrification. Oil prices have always see-sawed through this “boom and bust” cycle, and that cycle hurts businesses that need to predict next year’s costs, particularly farmers.

The gas crisis caused by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine shows the extreme vulnerability of our carbon-powered economy. As prices at the gas pump climb with each volley of Russian missiles, we see that Governor Newsom’s plan to end the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 was the right decision. If previous administrations had moved sooner, this disruption to global oil would hurt us less.

We need to get electric power into the hands of working Californians and cut our dependence on the fickle price at the gas station. Non-carbon electrification will help our economy by providing stability as well as safety.

Doubling down on the carbon economy only presses our necks closer to the knife of oil-baron autocrats like Vladimir Putin. We need to build a green energy fortress to protect our society. We need power that we cannot run out of, and we need power that does not poison us to burn the world.

Canada Matches California on Gas Car Ban

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently signed into law a plan for all of Canada to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035. This matches California’s own plan that passed two years ago. The United Kingdom has set its own ban date at 2030, with other countries across the world following suit.

California and Canada together are an enormous share of the Americas’ economy, so this confluence will certainly drive companies to ramp up electric vehicle production. But the United States as a whole still needs to move to match Canada’s pledge or else the commitment to the general good they are making could be undercut by Canadians taking a trip across the border to avoid the ban.

Fresno County has been taking some measures of its own, notably the recent opening of a new public solar field. The ground-mount solar system has nearly 9,000 panels, which is expected to cover 80% of the Juvenile Justice Center’s annual electrical demand. However, those numbers highlight just how much more non-carbon electricity generation our state needs.

Drought Means Rethinking Water Use

The long drought is continuing across the western United States, and California is struggling to meet the demands of our worsening carbon-poisoned climate. More than 93% of California is considered to be in severe or extreme drought, and entering April means the “rainy season” is officially over.

All of California’s major reservoirs are currently at below-average levels. The snowpack is at 39% of what it typically is this time of year. The long-term megadrought that began in 2000 has become so severe that it’s now the driest two decades in the region in at least 1,200 years, and climate change is largely responsible.

 Governor Newsom has called on all Californians to reduce their water use by 15% compared to 2020, but it’s not a mandate and so far total savings sit at 6%. However, it is unlikely that purely voluntary conservation will get anywhere close to addressing the massive gap between California’s water consumption and the amount of rain we are receiving.

California recently finally began to regulate groundwater pumping but is still battling the consequences of 100 years of abuse and continued oversight difficulties. Beyond limiting nonfunctional outdoor watering and urging more conservation, the governor’s new order puts in place permitting rules for new wells to ensure they don’t overdraft groundwater that people rely on for drinking.

The Turlock Irrigation District is piloting the first in the nation construction of solar panels over water canals, with construction beginning this fall. The original UC Merced study showed this would result in energy and cost savings, while also reducing water loss from evaporation.

The Problems with Fresno’s New General Plan

According to the California Attorney General’s office, the new Fresno County General Plan fails to adopt any meaningful climate adaptation resilience strategies and fails to provide a vulnerability assessment. The Fresno County Board of Supervisors recently turned down a $175,000 grant that would have helped the county do just that, and assess how our worsening environment is impacting the health of our county’s vulnerable urban and rural populations. This freely offered money, requested by the public health director, David Luchini, would have helped develop projects to lessen the impact of heat, wildfire smoke and other climate-driven problems in local rural communities.

The General Plan also doubles down on concentrating polluting industries in poor communities that already suffer from air and water pollution. Malaga and Calwa are some of the most environmentally vulnerable in the state, but the new zoning plans would worsen the situation of these disproportionately Hispanic areas.

Across California, restrictive zoning means commercial and industrial sites are often concentrated in the places least able to fend them off. Poor communities subsidize rich communities by housing all the necessities other people do not want in their backyards. We need to be mindful of that history and strive to do better.

Precinct Captains!

Want to help us win in 2022? Be a precinct captain! Join and become a part of our team! Sign up here!

Fellowship Program!

We are helping create the next generation of Democrats in the Central Valley! Are you a student interested in getting involved and learning more about the political world? You would be ideal for our fellowship program!

For more information, e-mail  [email protected]

We Are Hiring!

We are creating a grassroots team of organizers to elect Democrats in the Central Valley! Are you passionate about making the world a better place by electing the right leaders! For more information, e-mail [email protected]!

Fresno County: Earth Day Cleanup!

Democratic Party Website and HQ

Visit Your Democratic Headquarters! Our office is now open, and we can’t wait to see you again! Help us register people to vote or change to vote by mail. Pass out candidate or issue literature and pick up candidate swag too! Sign up to help us around the office!

News and events will alway arise faster than this newsletter can come out. That is why the Fresno County Democratic Party website is the best place to get regular updates on upcoming events in the area, as well as information on ways to get involved. There is also information on scheduled meetings of the many Democratic clubs in Fresno County, so you can find one that most suits you and your interests

https://fresnocountydemocrats.org/

The Democratic Party HQ (1033 U St.) is open 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Monday–Friday. Call 559-495-0606 or e-mail [email protected] for information or to volunteer.

Support your local Democratic Party by donation via ActBlue or by mailing a check to Fresno County Democratic Party, P.O. Box 5795, Fresno, CA 93755.

Our newsletter is prepared by Francis Horan.

Democratic Party Headquarters: 1033 U Street, Fresno, CA 93721

[email protected]
559-495-0606

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