Bouquets and Brickbats: One little rat nearly derails huge solar project

You’ve gotta love California. We pass legislation mandating a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions — but then we allow the presence of an endangered kangaroo rat to interfere with a local solar project that will produce the clean energy we say we so desperately need.

Fortunately, the project applicant, SunPower Corp., says it’s found a way to reconfigure the California Valley project to protect the rat — without reducing electrical output. A big bouquet of sunflowers if that indeed comes to pass.

Mind you, we’re all for protecting endangered species, but if we don’t do something to reduce global warming, every single species on the planet will be at risk.

See a historic wagon roll by

The Central Coast Woodworkers Association earns a bouquet of hand-carved roses for its painstaking restoration of a historic farm wagon that will make its public debut at the Pioneer Day Parade in Paso Robles.

The wagon was donated to the Pioneer Day Committee in the 1970s. It appeared to be an old piece of farm equipment, but further research indicated that it once belonged to the U.S. Army, and could even date back to the Civil War.

Credit the Pioneer Day Committee and Woodworkers Association for salvaging a piece of history that could have otherwise been lost — and take advantage of the opportunity to see history roll by at next month’s Pioneer Day Parade.

Congratulations to lottery winner

We toss a congratulatory bouquet of cabbage flowers to the lucky winner of the $133 million lottery jackpot. It’s fun to daydream about a big win, but this guy — reportedly a Morro Bay barber — gets to live out the fantasy. We wish him the best.

Bag bill sacked, and that’s too bad

A proposed ban on plastic grocery bags was summarily sacked by the state Legislature this week, despite some last-minute attempts at a compromise.

That’s too bad — grocery bags may be just the tip of the melting iceberg when it comes to plastic packaging, but a ban would be a good start that could lead to other reductions. (For the record, The Tribune has researched using biodegradable bags for newspapers, but alternatives currently on the market are significantly more expensive than the ones used now.)

Sen. Sam Blakeslee, by the way, abstained from voting on the plastic bag ban. According to a statement from his office, he supports the concept of reducing plastic bag waste, but had concerns about the legislation as written.

Fair enough — we’ll give the legislators one more session to come up with a modified proposal they can support. If not, we’ll be bagging up brickbats — in a reusable canvas sack, of course — and hauling them to Sacramento. In our Prius.

Pass a state budget already

Here’s another bit of state business that’s not quite in the bag: The Legislature ended its regular session on Tuesday without passing a budget. Yet aside from a few angry editorials moving on the wires, we don’t sense much outrage. Are Californians so jaded that they no longer notice that their lawmakers are failing to do their fundamental job?

Not that we blame them. Sadly, no amount of ridicule or chastisement seems to make an impression on the politicians, who still conduct no-business-as-usual. Still, we’re not about to shirk our duty. We’ve got 65 badly tarnished brickbats — one for each day our not-so-golden state has been without a budget —earmarked for our so-called leaders in Sacramento.