On election night I plan to pop some popcorn, turn down the lights in the TV room, and watch the returns roll in from California (unless, of course, my beloved Cleveland Cavaliers have a game on that night). The Hollywood Left and Big Oil have been staging an epic campaign battle, spending unprecedented millions on Proposition 87, a ballot initiative that would raise $4 billion for alternative energy investments by taxing oil drilling.

 

Time Magazine reports that the Tinseltown contingent, which counts Bill Clinton and Al Gore among its many high-profile pitchmen, held a 52%-to-31% lead at the polls a couple months ago, but that margin has shrunk to basically zero thanks largely to an oil industry ad campaign claiming that gas-pump prices will shoot skyward if the issue passes.

 

Time also reports that the L.A. Times and several other top California newspapers are urging voters to reject the oil-tax initiative, contending that the state's already sky-high gasoline prices create plenty of incentive for private research on alternative fuels. Also, incumbent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's projected mudslide win over Democratic challenger Phil Angelides is likely to discourage many Prop 87 supporters from turning out to vote.

 

A plan to transport New York City trash by barge to Portsmouth, Va., where it would be incinerated and converted to energy has gone up in smoke, according to a report published yesterday by the Virginian-Pilot.

 

The Portsmouth City Council voted Tuesday to end negotiations with Covanta Energy Corp. after New York officials declined to commit to sending a minimum amount of trash to the facility.

 

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has finally relented and pulled the plug on the city's anemic blue-bag recycling program, the Chicago Tribune reports.

 

That fate had been foregone for at least a year. The Tribune played a big part in putting the writing on the wall last year when it ran a series of stories exposing the Daley administration's exaggerations of the city's recycling rate under the blue bag program, which Chicago launched in 1995.

 

Pete Fehrenbach is assistant managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.