I was pleased to see that San Francisco’s Van Jones was tapped to give one of the keynote speeches at Netroots Nation, the liberal bloggers’ conference that took place last week.

I was less pleased to see that Gavin Newsom managed to finagle the privilege of introducing Van. I’ve known Van for a long time, and while we haven’t agreed on everything, when we disagreed, more often than not, he was right. I cannot say the same for Newsom.

Watching Newsom’s introduction, though, I was surprised to find myself agreeing with a lot of the things that he said. It’s true that San Francisco has a bunch of pilot programs in place to start mitigating our impact (it’s also true that Newsom made mountains out of some molehill sized programs in his speech, but that’s understandable). I even managed to forget about his histopry of following up bold pronouncements with, well, nothing.

Of course, what he said while he wasn’t onstage was more like the Newsom we’ve all come to know.

Gubernatorial hopeful Gavin Newsom today stated his opposition to the San Francisco Clean Energy Act defying all expectations that he will run for Governor consisting of a renewable energy platform.

“Oh, it’s horrible,” Newsom told BeyondChron’s Paul Hogarth at the Netroots Nation confab held in Austin, Texas, referring to a November ballot initiative that seeks to advance San Francisco to a 100 percent renewable clean energy portfolio by 2040.

While not elaborating on why he will not support the Clean Energy Act, former Newsom campaign manager Eric Jaye, who maintains close ties with Newsom, is said to be working for PG&E on its campaign to oppose any perceived threat to its monopoly.

Yet again, we find a Newsom who’s everything a liberal could hope for right up until the moment where he’d have to go against corporate interests*. First he caved to PG&E’s whim on whether to replace the dirty Potrero Power Plant with cleaner city-owned generation, now our Green Mayor is joining the campaign against a proposition that would ensure San Francisco moves toward cleaner power. A campaign headed by his pals at PG&E, clients of his latest right-hand man, Eric Jaye, and presumably future donors to his gubernatorial efforts.

This probably doesn’t come as a surprise, but I’d suggest that they take Gavin’s Green Game with a pinch (or bucket) of salt. But do watch Van’s speech. It’s really good.

*Which may, of course be a pretty good description of Liberal politics in general.