Can someone explain prop 80 to me?

[drmom]

I know that people here say to vote for it, but why do the "no on 80" ads say it's bad for the environment?

[cascadiance]

1. For the same reasons they call the "Clear Skies Initiative"

the "Clear Skies Initiative" when it has nothing to do with clear skies (except maybe clear of birds, as Al Franken would say...)

[Oerdin]

2. Prop 80 is actually...

a pretty bad deal. Many people in our partyt are supporting it out of a knee jerk type reaction but all it would do is recreate the local monopolies and make it illegal for people to buy electricity from anyone else. The really bad part is this prop would set energy percentages for renewables then make it virtually impossible to raise those standards in the future unless an additional prop was passed. The percentage of renewable energy in the state would be set at 20% and legally a power company couldn't sell more or less then 20% even if they wanted to. That's just retarded.

Right now I buy my electricity from Green Mountain Energy and only buy non-green house producing electriccity. If prop 80 was passed no one would be allowed to do that any more. The big problems with the 1996 deregulation were the loop holes Enron had written into the law and the fact that whole sale prices were deregulated but not retail prices. Combine that with the stupidity of politicians who didn't sign long term contracts until after Enron had spiked the prices and you see why we had a problem. The good news is since the Enron debacle the loop holes have been closed and the system is running very smoothly. Prop 80 would once again throw a big monkey wrench into things.