My friend Ed Mainland urged me to write about Prop 26:

Michael Brune issued a national Sierra Club Convio alert yesterday about the danger of California's Prop 26, and none too soon. Big Oil and Big Tobacco are back again with another "polluter protection" ballot measure, Prop 26, which threatens to let polluters off the hook for poisoning the state's food, air and water. A decade ago, voters rejected their effort then to reclassify mitigation fees as taxes. That would have subjected fees to a two-thirds vote requirement for passage by the state legislature or local electorates. Now the polluters are trying again with Prop 26, which would make California's fiscal shortfall even worse by sticking taxpayers with the bill for cleaning up messes these corporate goliaths create. When Big Oil soils our coasts, when energy producers spew smog into our air, when chemical firms taint our food or when industry fouls our drinking water, they should be made to pay for mitigating the damage they cause.