GreenNet '10: Candidate Jerry Brown on greening California

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Speaker: Now, you talked about simplifying regulation, or you know, moving the way to provide for more innovation in green technology. Do you have any strategies or platforms for that? I mean, you just talked about, you know, federal government versus state and not gumming up the works. Is there a way we can avoid that, or --

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Speaker: Well, I think you need a strong executive, and when it comes, say, something like transmission lines, there's multiple sources of resistance. And I experienced the same thing in the City of Oakland. There were more ways to stop an apartment or condominium project. And for Oakland, in my mind, the restoration of vitality at the heart of the city required a very aggressive executive push forward. And we're able to overcome administrative local processes. The nature of rule is that rule makers live in a certain micro-universe of their own with very abstract contours that just lead them to keep pushing and pushing with very little sense of time or cost. And only, I think, a leader in touch with the business realities can force into the bureaucracy the sensitivity needed. And the larger question, like, should you lock up the desert for a park? What about a transmission line? You have all these different jurisdictions. It takes changes in law. It takes pressure. It takes leadership. It takes endless time on task and focus to remove the roadblocks. And in terms of, like, solar, some people, just as an example, to put up photovoltaic installation, some counties don't charge any money. They, in fact, subsidize it. Some charge $50.00. Some charge $1500.00 for a permit and then all the various applications. So that in itself is a cost item, estimated between $1500.00 and $2,000.00. That could be dramatically reduced. I'm sure the same thing is true in the low carbon standard and the portfolio standard. There's lots of fights going on, and there's so many players -- it's almost like mercury dispersed on a table -- that you need a governor with a good team to see clearly, to find out what's possible, and then just push it forward. And it does take real personal intervention. It takes understanding. It takes commitment and belief in the value of these -- of the green technology investments. And then you got to build a team to do it. And it's pretty relentless because at the same time, you have all these other pressures, and people always invoke jobs -- that's a job killer -- when they're really talking about their own individual interests. So sometimes there's something there or over exaggerated. You got to thread through it.

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