Plenty of nothing

I just heard a tidbit of information the other day about the Sierra Club meeting to decide whether the club would vote whether to oppose the Alameda Point Revitalization Initiative or vote to be “actively neutral.”

At the meeting, the anti the Initiative side had two speakers taking questions to support their position.   One question that was asked had to do with the alternative scenario these two envisioned for Alameda Point should the Initiative fail.   Their answer?   Do nothing.   The base is too toxic and the infrastructure too far gone to have anything done with it.

While some opponents will insist on saying that they like the plan, just not the initiative as written, the fact is, the Development Agreement and all the other points of opposition — for some — is just a smokescreen to their real objection.  Development in general.

The amazing thing is that I guess the representatives from the anti-side felt so comfortable with the Sierra Club crowd that rather than pander to the group and say something along the lines of “I support a plan for the base, just not this plan”   But there was not even the pretense of pretending to have something else to offer.

Which is why the furious spinning after the fact that the Sierra Club voted to not support the Initiative when in fact they took “no position,” which could also be read as not supporting the Initiative.   But in my glass half-full world, I think of it as not being against the Initiative instead, which is an amazing position for the Sierra Club to have taken considering that they went from just entertaining the idea of being either (1) opposed to the Initiative or (2) actively neutral to not taking any opinion at all.