In late September, just in time for the election, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB-32, a sweeping piece of legislation aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Setting aside the surreal notion of the man who once boasted that he “created” the Humvee now heralding a “bold new era of environmental protection,” environmentalists and green-minded voters should temper their optimism. One piece of legislation in the heat of an election does not make the Governator a right-wing John Muir. Let’s not forget his veto of SB 744, which would have given the public access to big timber’s harvesting plans. Or how he stocked the Forestry Board with timber industry allies and friends of Grover Norquist. Let alone, the way he gutted the Coastal Commission’s energy program as a favor to Liquefied Natural Gas lobbyists.
But even if Mr. Schwarzenegger’s miraculous conversion from Hummer shill to climate steward is sincere, we should ask ourselves: Does a reality-based stance on climate change earn the Governor, or any “right-wing greens” like him, a pass on other political and social issues? More importantly, how much support should the Sierra Club or other prominent environmental organizations give Mr. Schwarzenegger and his ilk? In Rhode Island, the Sierra Club endorsed Lincoln Chafee during the last election. While Mr. Chafee had a laudable voting record on green issues, his reelection, as it turns out, would have kept the Senate in Republican hands. What would that have meant? Senator Jim “An Inconvenient Truth is like Mein Kampf“ Inhofe—Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, that’s what.
While the example of Lincoln Chafee might be a bit unfair, and particular to this last election cycle, here in San Francisco, we’ve seen an even more troublesome example of what happens when good-meaning greens make a Faustian bargain with right-wingers. Bluewater Network, one of the nation’s stalwart organizations for maritime environmental issues, supported a non-union company in its bid to land the Alcatraz Island ferry contract from the National Park Service. The result: dozens of good-paying union jobs, gone; union labor on San Francisco Bay, in serious peril. All for the chimera of a solar ferry that hasn’t even left a draftsman’s table.
From Alcatraz’s inception as a National Park in the early 1970s until September of this year, crews from the Masters Mates and Pilots and Inland Boatmen’s unions operated the boats that shuttled passengers to and from “The Rock.” Their safety record was impeccable. But in late 2005, the National Park Service awarded the ferry contract to a non-union company, Hornblower Yachts, Inc. Hornblower’s reliance on part-time, low-paid labor has earned it the nickname the “Wal-Mart of the Water,” as has the cutthroat, Sam Walton-style business practices of its CEO, Terry MacRae. Since the early 80s, MacRae, an avid Schwarzenegger backer, has grown Hornblower from a tiny dinner boat company into a powerhouse multinational corporation, with vessels in dozens of ports. The company also has several military contracts.
How could such a thing happen? Why would the National Park Service give the most lucrative contract on San Francisco Bay to a non-union company like Hornblower? Many people speculated that Bush’s National Park Service was trying to break union control of the waterfront. While that might be part of the reason for the decision, it’s not the whole story. In 1998, Congress passed “The Concessions Management Act.” The act directed the National Park Service to emphasize environmental stewardship when they award new service contracts. Knowing this, MacRae contacted Bluewater Network. He promised Bluewater that Hornblower would build two solar ferries for the Alcatraz service if they would support his bid for the contract. Bluewater agreed.
Most observers now believe Bluewater’s brief in support of Hornblower’s bid put the non-union company over the top. But buried in the fine print of the Hornblower agreement with National Parks, is reference to the fact that the company has only budgeted $5 million for the solar ferries. Five million dollars for a technology that does not yet exist on anywhere near the scale the Alcatraz run would require. The only existing solar ferry in the world putters tourists around Sydney Harbor. But it only holds 150 people, half the capacity of Alcatraz boats. And its maximum speed? Six to seven knots, again half of what the Alcatraz run requires.
Terry MacRae told the Bay Guardian in September that he “believes” 5 million will be enough to build the new, completely revolutionary boats. But his “belief,” reminiscent of other ring-wing “faith-based initiatives,” is not what Bluewater signed on for. Upon learning of the $5 million ceiling, they wrote to National Parks about their concerns. But it was too little too late. The horse had left the barn, so to speak. In spite of an ongoing picket line in front of their dock, Hornblower has been raking in millions of dollars from the wildly popular tourist destination since they began service in September. In November, they even doubled the price of a ticket.
It’s impossible to overstate the importance of the Alcatraz contract on San Francisco’s waterfront. Whoever controls that ten year, $14 million license to print money controls the Bay. To make matters worse, Hornblower has already started to make plans to bid for other union ferry runs, such as the Vallejo and the Alameda-Oakland services. With their competition crippled by the loss of Alcatraz, the future of union labor on San Francisco Bay looks very bleak indeed. As for the solar ferries? Time will tell if MacRae and Hornblower really are serious about building them. But for the dozens of captains, deckhands, and ticket agents standing on the picket line day in and day out instead of earning a paycheck, the prospect of two green vessels plying the Bay doesn’t mean very much.
Even before their Election Day thumping in November, the wheels on the Evangelical-Republican political juggernaut were already falling off. Witness: David Kuo’s book, Ralph Reed’s venal love of Jack Abramoff’s money, and, last but not least, a certain Colorado pastor and Bush advisor who couldn’t keep his nose out of the crank or his quill out of unclean ink. Put bluntly, the jig is up for the faith-based crowd. Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with Rudy Giuliani and a handful of other so-called moderates, are already showing the Republican Party how to grab the center on environmental issues. But the story of Bluewater Network’s unfortunate affair with Hornblower Yachts underscores the danger of cozying up to the right-wing just because their green credentials appear to be in order. Focus on the tree of a candidate’s environmental probity and we might just find ourselves stuck in a forest of nightmarish right-wing policy.
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JB Powell lives in San Francisco. His novel, The Republic, is available from Livingston Press or at Amazon.
