A Million Solar Roofs

When Matt and I were up in Berkeley dealing with the flat tire fiasco, we also had the opportunity to talk to a lovely woman from Environment California, which I think is the enviro arm of CALPIRG. She was hyping the Million Solar Roofs Intiative, an effort to use state subsidies to build up CA's solar industry over the next decade.

I was curious about the bill, so I was pleased to come across this article on the legislative nightmare surrounding the bill. It sounded very familiar from my time up in Hartford at the General Assembly. I guess there is a lot of bi-partisan support around the bill, but a lot of the Republicans are opposed to including prevailing wage language to ensure that installers would get a decent (union-level) wage.

Josh has a some interesting things to say about the bill:

It's this kind of failure build not just a momentary majority but a stable, inter-generational, cross-cause constituency that caused some environmental leaders last year to declare "The Death of Envionmentalism."...The stakes for both movements - fostering an alternative to a laissez-faire race to the bottom and building an economy which values and invests in human beings and the earth - are too high not to work together. Everyone has on the left has some work to do to get their own house(s) in order. If you want to see what the payoff from broader-based, cross-issue organizing looks like, just check out the modern Right in this country.