WHAT, ME WORRY? Those who doubt the fact that all roads lead into and out of Santa Barbara need only take a gander at Proposition 7 — soon coming to a voting booth near you — which would require that all California electric utilities generate no less than half their electricity from renewable sources by the year 2025. That, by the way, is huge. Currently, most utilities are producing anywhere from 7-13 percent of their juice from renewables like solar and wind. And existing state law requires only that they hit 20 percent by the year 2010. Were it not for Santa Barbara resident, CallWave biz dude, and political big spender Peter Sperling — along with his bigger-than-life father John Sperling — this measure would never have seen the light of day. The Sperling father-and-son duo spent gobs of cash paying $700-an-hour attorneys to craft the initiative language in the first place and then bankrolled legions of paid signature gatherers to collect enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Since then, Peter Sperling — who regularly shows up on Forbes magazine’s list of richest Americans — has spent close to $6 million trying to win the hearts and minds of California voters by leaving unsolicited messages on their cell phones, extolling the virtues of Prop. 7.

If a proposition can be judged by the quality of its enemies, then you can’t do much better than the Sperlings have. Thus far, PG&E, Southern California Edison, and Sempra Energy have spent no less than $27 million trying to deep-six Prop. 7. To listen to their arguments, one would think these companies are interested only in protecting consumers from higher electric bills. Or in saving smaller solar generators from a competitive disadvantage with the bigger solar operators. With this kind of cynical, big-bucked opposition, one might reasonably expect a unified tsunami of environmental support. And why not? California utilities — which rely to an unhealthy degree on coal-powered electrical plants — qualify as the world’s 16th biggest global warming polluter. Such emissions have increased more than 35 percent in the last 18 years. If alternative energy is now equated with national security, then maybe California needs the swift kick in the ass that Prop. 7 would provide. Certainly we can do better than 20 percent. And, if nothing else, Prop. 7 would help jumpstart a much-needed economic renaissance based on green energy. So what’s not to like?

It turns out Prop. 7’s backers have proven more adept at making enemies than in making friends. All kinds of traditional eco-warriors have lined up against Prop. 7, including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Union of Concerned Scientists. While they concede the motivations behind Prop. 7 were no doubt good, they note also that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In a nutshell, they claim Prop. 7 will help large-scale renewable providers at the expense of the smaller operators, and this, they claim, will hurt, not help, the renewable energy industry.

Supporters of Prop. 7 concede that the Sperlings could have done much better working with the statewide environmentalists who’ve been toiling the renewable energy turf. Instead, they charge, the Sperlings and their political consultant, Jim Gonzalez, announced the birth of their proposition as a fait accompli. It’s easy to understand how that might bug. And Gonzalez, a tough and accomplished political pro, reportedly suffers from a serious case of the my-way-or-the-highway personality disorder. Nor did father John Sperling get where he is today by giving a damn what other people thought. The dyslexic son of a Mississippi sharecropper, Sperling earned a PhD and became a college professor. Then, in the 1970s, he ignored the howls of derision from traditional academics to start the University of Phoenix, the for-profit college off which he made his billions. After dealing with cancer firsthand — and experiencing the medicinal benefits of marijuana — he has helped bankroll 17 statewide initiatives designed to decriminalize marijuana use, including California’s. He’s famous for trying to clone his dog Missy, starting his Genetic Savings & Clone to get the job done. For his efforts, he succeeded in cloning a cat, but not Missy. Now in his eighties, Sperling is bankrolling research into the expansion of the human life span. In 2004 and 2006, John and Peter joined forces as a father-son finance team to help the Democrats regain a majority in Congress. It was about the same time that the Sperlings became the focus of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation that eventually went nowhere.

Critics claim that under the terms of Prop. 7, projects smaller that 30 megawatts won’t be recognized as meeting the law. Admittedly, I’m no lawyer, but when I read the fine print I missed that. So I called Tam Hunt, a certified über eco-wonk with the Community Environmental Council who also teaches at UCSB’s Bren School of Environmental Sciences. Based on his reading, Hunt said Prop. 7’s eco critics were reading words that simply weren’t there. Under Prop. 7, he said, smaller projects may not qualify for certain incentives, such as expedited environmental review. But, Hunt added, few big projects would actually qualify for that either. But even if that were true, Hunt said there’s plenty of meat on the solar bone these days for small operators to gnaw upon. That’s because Congress just approved a 30 percent tax break for small solar installations — and the State of California recently set aside $3 billion to underwrite smaller solar projects. Hunt said small solar businesses should not suffer. Prop. 7’s critics also contend that so long as the state legislature is making progress, then a ballot initiative is unwarranted. But the legislature is not making progress, as Professor Walter Kohn, one of UCSB’s three Nobel Prize winning scientists who have endorsed Prop. 7, reminded me. Kohn, who has emerged as a powerful advocate for solar energy, recalled how last year the state legislature rejected a bill that would have required utilities to increase their renewable energy portfolios from 20 percent to 33 percent. Actually, the measure died twice. And in a legislative body dominated by Democrats. There’s some speculation that in exchange for environmental opposition to Prop. 7, the big utility companies have agreed not to squawk if and when a 33 percent proposal comes back next year. I figure if Prop. 7 goes down hard in November, the 33 percent solution will have a hard time finding any friends in Sacramento. Then where will we be? Stuck with a measly and pathetic 20 percent renewable requirement. That might be enough to get you into Santa Barbara, but hardly enough to get back out again.

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