Election Section

Berkeley Measure GG is the most exciting and impactful local climate policy on offer in California, if not the nation. A citizens’ ballot measure supported by community and workers, GG will tax wealthy owners of the largest (>15,000 sqft), most polluting buildings for their methane use, and invest the money in all-electric home and building upgrades averaging $15,000 for EVERY Berkeley homeowner/renter household. By cleaning up our local air and buildings, it will improve quality of life for all, while reducing Berkeley’s greenhouse gas emissions by over a third! 

Measure GG would be so transformative that it has ruffled the feathers of Berkeley’s businesses and political elite. Like the fossil fuel industry, they have been greenwashing and misleading the public on climate action for decades, touting insubstantial milestones and symbolic resolutions in place of real action. It is important to unearth this history to better understand the context and necessity of GG.

Greenwashing While the World Burns
In 2006 Berkeley’s former Mayor Tom Bates submitted a nonbinding resolution to the ballot setting a “goal” of reducing Berkeley’s greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 and requiring the creation of a “plan” to achieve it by 2007. Voters overwhelmingly approved the measure, but it took well over two years until the City actually adopted its non-binding “Climate Action Plan.” The plan went unfunded and unfulfilled for a decade.g

In 2018, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and climate activists attempted to break through decades of inaction, announcing that humanity had twelve years to get its act together on emissions reduction. Berkeley citizens mobilized to pass one of California’s first “Climate Emergency” declarations and a “Fossil Free Berkeley” resolution aimed at further speeding up emissions reductions. The Council, under the leadership of Mayor Jesse Arreguín, watered down the resolutions and sent them to bureaucratic purgatory.

By 2021, with the climate crisis continuing to spiral out of control and prior plans completely obsolete, Arreguín and City staff once again chose appearances over action. Entitled “Race to Zero & Net-Zero Carbon Emissions,” their latest feel-good and non-binding greenwashing resolution set a zero emissions goal for 2045, and aimed to reduce emissions 60.5% from 2018 levels by 2030. As with prior versions, this resolution was unfunded, and sure enough, little progress has been made. In fact, City data shows that in order to meet the resolution’s goals, the City needs to reduce its emissions by another 50% relative to 2023 levels.

To the extent Berkeley has achieved emissions reductions to date, it is largely due to trends outside of Berkeley’s control, namely increased renewable power on the statewide electric grid, the proliferation of EVs, and improved appliance efficiency. Yet the City continues to take credit for these reductions and rests on its laurels, critically underfunding climate efforts and avoiding bold action. This is greenwashing. 

But there is hope for meaningful action. Between 2019 and 2021, City leaders serious about climate change organized with the community. Former Councilmember Kate Harrison passed multiple transformative policies, including the nation’s first ban on gas infrastructure in new construction and pilot programs to help Berkeley residents electrify their apartments and homes.  

The gas ban in new construction was so effective that it spared Berkeley from at least five years of new gas infrastructure, spread across California and the nation, and scared the gas industry enough to fund dubious lawsuit research and counter-bans. The pilot projects, while still ongoing, are already being acknowledged as models of success but remain unfunded past their initial allocations. 

The community-sponsored Measure GG would build on these wins and reclaim Berkeley’s mantle of climate leadership. It would provide permanent funding for electrification over 25 years, supplying ⅔ of all the money needed to permanently electrify every single home and low-rise building in the City. 

Measure GG is Needed Now - YES on GG 

City leadership and economic and political elites decry GG for being developed outside of City Hall, claiming their alternatives are superior. The reality is that even when they do implement parts of their numerous plans, they do so in a way that has no teeth. Berkeley’s flawed building decarbonization policy for large buildings, the Buildings Emissions Savings Ordinance (BESO), has no mandatory electrification requirements and instead simply requires that buildings report their energy use periodically. Not only is compliance poor – just 60% – but also what data the City is collecting demonstrates that gas use in these buildings is increasing! Without teeth–which Measure GG would provide–BESO is merely an accounting exercise. 

Sadly, the current City leadership is doubling down on their largely performative approach to building decarbonization. Rather than focus on implementing the Berkeley Existing Buildings Electrification Strategy, a policy roadmap they approved in 2021, they are dithering about whether to reinstate a watered-down version of the gas ban in new construction. Even if their measure ever passes, it will placate their big business handlers by allowing new polluting gas infrastructure and appliances to be used indefinitely in new large buildings. That is, unless The People intervene through the ballot via Measure GG in November. 

Through a single policy, Measure GG will ensure the decarbonization of the entire building sector in Berkeley. It will effectively close the door on gas in new construction and send a strong signal to all large buildings – old and new – that they have to eliminate their reliance on gas. It will fund a just transition in our community: helping our residents electrify their homes and comply with new regional regulations that will soon make it illegal to install gas furnaces and gas water heaters. Simply put, Measure GG is an investment in Berkeley’s healthy and climate-friendly future. 

Please join doctors, parents, tenants’ advocates, labor organizers, and community members who believe the greenwashing and gaslighting sho​​uld end, polluters should pay for their climate pollution, and that everyday Berkeleyans deserve fossil fuel free homes. 

Vote YES on GG and “Go Green!”