Whitburn, Gloria, Broadway, Hartley, Lee – and what they drive.
At last night’s League of Conservation Voters forum on environmental issues, the five of the six candidates vying for Toni Atkins City Council seat tried to prove they were the greenest of them all (James Hartline decided not to come because CityBeat editor David Rolland was the moderator). The best moment may have been when candidates were asked to tell the audience what car they drive, and the mileage they get. If you’re an environmentalist, this is a pretty good litmus test question to see how personally candidates take going green. Curiously, none of the candidates knew their gas mileage with any confidence.
Anyway, here’s what the candidates said they drive, the mileage they claimed, and the official EPA estimates. Bear in mind, EPA estimates are typically several miles per gallon higher than what most people get. Candidates in order of most green answer to least.
Paul Broadway: Shares a car with wife, but usually takes the trolley. Nothing more environmentally correct than mass transit.
Stephen Whitburn: 1991 Honda Civic. Says he used to get mileage “in the high 20s.” The EPA gives it 24 city, 30 highway, but older cars often lose a bit of efficiency, so it’s probably more like middle 20s. Still, only slightly less eco-conscious than owning no car is driving the same car for a really long time.
Todd Gloria: 2003 Volkswagon, didn’t mention the model. He think he gets 22-23 mpg. That’s about right for both the Passat and the Jetta.
Robert Lee: 2001 Mercury. He figured mileage would be 20 mpg, and that’s about right. He didn’t specify a model, but the EPA says the 2001 Mercury Grand Marquis gets 25 mpg highway, 18 city, and the Sable gets 27 highway, 18 city.
John Hartley: 2003 Ford Ranger. He gets 27 mpg on the highway. The EPA says it gets 23 mpg on the highway.
A couple of other highlights from the event last night: All five candidates support water reuse, though only Whitburn, Gloria, and Broadway support mandatory water conservation measures. Stephen Whitburn would like to see a ballot measure that asks people to pay for garbage removal. Todd Gloria would have voted for the Kensington Terrace project if he’d been on the council.
Maybe the best response was Broadway’s: asked to grade the council and mayor, he said “Incomplete!”
Of course, he was last to have to answer, so had time to frame the good joke. Others were handing out Ds or Cs, and I kept thinking, “for what?”
Btw, though Gloria admitted that he would have cast a YES vote on the Kensington Terrace project, he needn’t have said: that he knew about the project for 7 years and many, many homeowners and residents of Kensington did not know until too late to stop it says it all. The developers and the planning group may have followed the letter of the law on noticing, but, as is prevalent these days in our urban neighborhoods, not the spirit of the law. Flying below the radar of the busy but working families in urban settings is not the right spirit. Because residents don’t scrutinze the SDDT or legal-notice columns nightly doesn’t mean they don’t care about their community and how it grows.
Another thing: I admired Whitburn’s willingness to consider urban growth and development in itself a “microenvironmental” issue. Though the LCVSD-sponsored event was essentially focusing on the macroenvironment, unchecked growth and development in our urban communities impact the local environment in terms of increased vehicle traffic and loss of green space, at least. These impact the regional macroenvironment in terms of air quality and water pollution, and also contribute to long-term water and energy use problems.
And finally, everyone spoke fervently about protecting our canyons, but no one mentioned that this isn’t likely to be a huge issue going forward, given passage of Kehoe’s Senate Bill 373. Or will it?
Paul Broadway and his wife not only share a car, it’s a Chevrolet Aveo.
I just want to report back to Mr. Wolff and his wonderful blog that the League of Conservation Voters decided to endorse Mr. Todd Gloria for San Diego City Council, District Three. I hope to become more enivironmentally acceptable in the future. I have always tried to reuse, recycle, and reduce in everyway that I can imagine. If anyone has any ideas that might make me more acceptable to the League of Conservation Voters, please feel free to send them to me in an e-mail.