Skip to main content

Guv Candidates Who Won't Take Fossil Fuel Bucks Shouldn't Stop There

Each of the three Democrats running for governor of Massachusetts has pledged not to take certain campaign contributions from the oil, gas and coal industries, the State House News Service (SHNS) reported yesterday. 

Jay Gonzalez, Bob Massie and Setti Warren are among the latest candidates for public office in this nation to take the "No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge," which has been conceived and promulgated by a group called 350 Mass Action. 

350 Mass Action bills itself as "a statewide volunteer network dedicated to eliminating the influence of fossil fuel special interests over our political process and advancing a fair and speedy transition beyond fossil fuels towards a 100% clean, renewable and just energy future." 

The pledge requires Messrs. Gonzalez, Massie and Warren not to "accept knowingly" any contributions exceeding $200 from the political action committees, executives or "front groups" of companies whose primary business is extracting, processing, distributing or selling fossil fuels.  (Knowingly.  Isn't that a great lawyer word?)

In 2016, the SHNS informs us, 350 Mass Action put forward a similar pledge, asking candidates to forswear donations of over $200 from executives, lobbyists or others employed by 10 specific companies: British Petroleum, Chevron, Eversource, Exxon/Mobil, Global Partners, Global Petroleum, Kinder Morgan, National Grid, Shell and Spectra Energy. 

Seventy-five candidates for the Massachusetts legislature ultimately signed that pledge, and 40 were elected, 350 Mass Action says.

I’m kind of impressed that three would-be governors of a major state have taken such a bold position against the oil, gas and coal industries. 

I'd be seriously impressed, though, if this trio swore off using fossil fuels ever again.  No cars.  No train, bus or airline trips.  No furnaces or boilers for home heating, etc., etc.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Historical Significance Had Little Heft on the Scale of Progress in Booming Malden

The First Church in Malden, Congregational, a once-cherished emblem of the history of Malden, Massachusetts, was wiped out a few weeks ago for the sake of a new downtown development. The site of the church was contiguous to the Malden Government Center complex (city hall and police headquarters), which had been built in the mid-1970s in the middle of Pleasant Street in an attempt to create a pedestrian shopping mall from that point down to where Pleasant Street spills in to Main Street.   It turned out to be an ill-conceived and ridiculously hopeful project: no mall ever materialized.   For years, the people of Malden yearned to correct that colossal mistake by demolishing the Government Center and reopening the entire length of Pleasant Street to the smooth flow of vehicular traffic.   Enter the Jefferson Apartment Group of Virginia in 2015.   It proposed spending $100 million to demolish the Government Center; replace it with apartments, offices and hundreds of par...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ethics Chief Gets Permanent Appointment; Case Overview Shows Agency's Vital Role

A week ago today, on Feb. 17, the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission announced the appointment of David A. Wilson as its executive director, where he’s responsible for administering and enforcing the state’s conflict of interest and financial disclosure laws. A graduate of Columbia University School of Law and Brandeis University in Waltham, Wilson is kind of a fixture of Massachusetts government, having been an attorney on the Ethics Commission staff for three decades.   For the past eight months, he’d been serving as the commission’s acting executive director.   He needs no warm-up for this big role. The commission is composed of five members, three appointed by the governor and one each appointed by the secretary of state and attorney general.   All of the current commissioners are attorneys, and three of them are retired judges: Barbara Dortch-Okara, Regina Quinlan and David Mills. (The non-judge lawyer-members are Thomas Sartory and Maria Krokidas. Wilson’s appoin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Boston Municipal Research Bureau 'Update' Has Me Thinking Thoughts of PILOTS

I always thought that hospitals and universities owned most of the tax-exempt land in the City of Boston.   Boy was I mistaken. The total area of Boston consists of 47.84 square miles.   Of that total, 49 percent, or 23.44 square miles is tax-exempt.   And of those 23.44 tax-exempt square miles, only 4.98 square miles are owned by institutions devoted to medicine and health care, higher education, cultural pursuits and worship (churches, synagogues, mosques), etc.   The rest is mainly owned by the government. I got this information from the latest (10-3-17) “Bureau Update” from the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, an independent organization that’s been keeping tabs on Boston’s finances since 1932.   Thank you, BMRB. Here are some other things I gleaned: The state government owns 48.5% of all the tax-exempt land in the city. The city and federal governments own, respectively, 28.6%  and 1.6% of all the tax-exempt land. The total assessed value of al...
Post a Comment
Read more