No doubt you've heard the warnings -- the melting ice caps and rising sea levels, the extinct polar bears and extreme weather conditions. From pop culture movies like The Day After Tomorrow, to the tireless work of advocates like Al Gore, the discussion around climate change has often focused on environmental catastrophe and what the future may hold if humans don't change their carbon-emitting ways.
These are, of course, serious concerns and we need to address them to secure our planet's future. But what's been missing from the conversation is how climate change is affecting us here at the local level, in our communities, and that climate change policy -- done right -- could result in cleaner air for many American families today.
Last year, we released research about the "climate gap" -- the fact that people of color and the poor in the United States may suffer more from the economic and health consequences of climate change than other Americans. Our newest study, Minding the Climate Gap: What's at Stake if California's Climate Law isn't Done Right and Right Away, builds on that work to show that people of color and the poor have the most to lose if efforts to confront climate change are delayed. However, they also have the most to gain if we implement climate policies that deliver immediate public health benefits for everyone.
In California, for example, communities of color are more likely to live near major green house gas emitting facilities, such as refineries, power plants and cement kilns, which also spew toxic air pollution. This inequality in pollution emissions persists even after accounting for income differences across neighborhoods. In the case of particulate matter, which affects respiratory health, we find that, on average, communities of color face a pollution emission burden that is 70% higher than for whites. This trend makes clear that getting climate change policies right and right away is important for all of us but it's particularly essential for these overburdened communities.
What's astonishing is that despite the real threat that climate change poses -- and the immediate benefits from enacting climate change policy -- some politicians and big oil corporations are saying that we need to put the climate change law "on hold" in California. Whether or not millions of us will soon be breathing cleaner air may now hinge on a California ballot initiative, a statewide referendum that has once again become a proxy war for national policy debate.
Recent news has revealed that Texas oil companies Valero and Tesoro are major contributors to a campaign -- to the tune of $600,000 -- to prevent implementation of California's climate law (known by its legislative name AB 32). These same companies are big contributors to air pollution. Our research indicates that all four of Valero and Tesoro's major refineries in California are major contributors to public health risks from air pollution. We also found that Valero and Tesoro's refineries are among the worst facilities in the state for disproportionately emitting pollutants in communities of color.
California's climate law was put into place years ago and now it's time to implement it. Allowing out-of-state oil companies to stop its implementation will not save jobs. Economic research on this issue shows that green job growth is a more likely result of climate policy and California is well-positioned for gains in that sector. If the oil companies win, it will just delay the immediate opportunity for cleaner air and better public health.
Implementing the climate law in the "right way" is also not that complicated. We suggest incentives should be structured to reduce greenhouse gases in neighborhoods suffering from the dirtiest air. Facilities responsible for the greatest estimated health impacts -- could be prohibited from paying a fee or trading emissions credits in lieu of cleaning up their operations. Revenues generated from polluter fees could also feed into a "Climate Gap Neighborhood Protection Fund" to improve air quality in these communities and enhance the ability of disadvantaged Californians to adapt to climate change impacts.
The enormous potential for cleaner air as a result of California's climate law hasn't even been a part of the debate yet, but last week a Field poll found that 58% of Californians support the policy. As more people realize that supporting smart climate policies will also give them cleaner air to breathe, that number could increase significantly. That's good news for those seeking to protect California's climate law and public health against the misguided anti-AB 32 campaign.
Whether the goal is protecting the environment or re-building America's workforce, preventing climate change is not just about reaping some future returns. Real climate solutions will give us cleaner air to breathe -- and this is an immediate benefit for everyone, especially for communities of color and the poor who are currently suffering from the dirtiest air.
Big Solar, Big Wind and Big Transmission are some of the most environmentally destructive projects out there, yet they are getting MASSIVE support under the guise of AB32. Rooftop solar within the built environment - where it is NEEDED? Totally restricted, stingy, difficult and expensive - no wonder we are all angry and resentful. I don't want to send another check to Chevron and SCE - i want them to send ME a check for producing more clean (non-deadly) power than i use.
Unless you make the focus of AB32 DEMOCRATICALLY OWNED, CLEAN SOLUTIONS WITHIN OUR BUILT ENVIRONMENT, none of us will support it. It's just another Shell game - destroying the Mojave's carbon sinks to greenwash another crappy Big Energy boondoggle. NO THANKS.
Unfortunately, it’ll take about 2 to 4 years to substantially recover the cumulative losses from the depths of the steep fall over the many months of approx 2007 through 2009. US will have momentary setbacks, but eventually we will best our past as we always do.
Just imagine the dire predicament after the revolution, civil war, ww2, great depression, Vietnam/Watergate/Hippie Generation/Oil Price Shock, Indefinite Iraq War Legacy Cost Drag - to cite a few. The only way we'll lose is if we think like losers - which is, inherently, anti-American and a betrayal to our vigorously tested history.
Growing Green Jobs (led by high tech) will help over the months and years.
If the law is not halted, the public will faces sharply higher utility costs and higher costs for any product whose distribution and sale involves energy costs.
Recently the World Bank approved a loan to interests in South Africa, for the construction of a modern, efficient coal fired power plant complex. The people of South Africa will benefit by obtaining reliable electrical energy, and electrical energy produced at a reasonable cost.
It is too bad that our state government didn't seek a loan from the World Bank to help construct new, modern and efficient power plants in California or in nearby states, that would keep our energy costs low and competitive with other states and nations.
At that point a cap and dividend system would become more effective than cap and trade. Essentially if we decide to regulate multiple air pollutants GHG and criteria under the guise of AB 32's mandate the cap and trade program will be irrelevant and is a waste of time to develop. It would just be window dressing.
Might as well cap and dividend.
I am sympathetic to these communities but considering the black box technological holes that exist in reducing CO2 in the early years particularly extra revenues should be focused on research grants. It will both maximize the promise of green jobs, our ownership of the emerging technologies, and create the best possible chance of achieving long term co2 goals globally.
Or we can take that money and offset negative impacts of criteria pollutants saving some number of people from cancer while not preparing in the best possible way to address a recognized threat to global civilization and the planet as a whole.
Of course creating a strategy that effectively regulates multiple pollutants will only increase the costs of GHG reductions and make the cost of GHG regulation look higher than it is. Which will then be used as arguements against the international and national frameworks that are the only way for any effective system of GHG reductions.
Development of all sources of energy is a prudent policy, but not by mandating and subsidizing inefficient, otherwise
uneconomic sources. Over the past two decades, taxpayers have spent $30 billion dollars in subsidies to develop
“alternative” energy. Today wind and solar combined account for less than one-half of one percent (0.005) of
America’s annual energy consumption. These are supplements, at best, not alternatives. To equal a 1000 MW natural
gas fired power plant occupying about 10 acres would require a wind farm with 500 tall windmills occupying 40,000
acres. America’s most productive utility-scale solar plant occupies 82 acres and has a capacity (assuming the sun is
always shining) of 8.2 MW. It would require 250 similar plants occupying 20,000 acres to equal one natural gas fired
plant. America’s demand for electricity has been growing at about 2% per year, so we need to build 10-20,000 MW of
new capacity every year just to keep pace with growth. That means hundreds of thousands of acres of solar/wind plants
just to keep pace with growth, let alone become “alternatives”. As a side note - a single 3 MW wind turbine (blades
made in Mexico) needs 2 tons of rare earth elements for the permanent magnet generator - 100% of which comes from
mines outside our borders.
The debate around the hypothesis of AGW is far from over. A
of entering a major cooling trend.
Carbon dioxide is a minor greenhouse gas and comprises only about 0.038% of the earth’s atmosphere. Water vapor is
the major contributor (95%) to the greenhouse effect. Approximately 185 billion tons of CO2 enter the earth’s
atmosphere each year – about 90 billion tons from biologic activity in the oceans and about 90 billion tons from such
sources as volcanoes and decaying plants. Humans only contribute about 3% of the CO2 and 0.28% of greenhouse
gases, therefore, 99.72% of the greenhouse effect is due to natural causes.
The long term goal of Cap & Trade is “80 by 50”, or an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050. This would require a
reduction in the so called carbon footprint from about 20 tons per person per year to less than 2 tons per person per year
(taking into account population growth). America’s carbon footprint has not been as low as 2 tons per person per year
for centuries.
doomsday predictions. Temperature and CO2 variations are dependent upon an extremely complex interaction of a
myriad of variables. Changing just one variable, the number of variables, or how they relate to one another causes the
model to change dramatically. Climate is an extraordinarily dynamic system with thousands of components that are not
completely understood. Variables such as temperature, CO2 input, water vapor, cloud feedback, cosmic rays, solar
activity, magnetic effects, aerosols, and many others must be considered. IPCC has been highly criticized for neglecting
many variables and “curve-fitting” by adjusting selected variables.
Are there variations in CO2 and temperature? Absolutely. Is it a catastrophe? Absolutely not. Are humans to blame?
Improbable. In recent earth history, over two-thirds of Ohio was buried beneath thousands of feet of glacial ice. That
ice is now gone. Why? Climate change. And there were no SUV’s, cow flatulence, or power plants around to cause it.
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which are the primary basis of the AGW scenario, only include analyses of shortterm
trends which are essentially meaningless in the overall climate cycles. The IPCC’s infamous “hockey stick” chart
- which claimed that the twentieth century was the warmest in the past 1000 years - is no longer featured in updated
reports as it was proven to be plagued with methodological errors.
Think about the past 40 years. In the mid-1970’s the “consensus” was that the planet was cooling, and unless humans
changed their habits, we were all going to freeze. The 30 year trend that prompted the global cooling scare was abruptly
replaced with a 20 year warming trend that peaked in 1998. The past 10 years have returned to a cooling trend. Over
the past 33 years mankind has consumed more than 3 times the world’s known oil reserves in 1976. The result? We’ve
warmed a little, we’ve cooled a little. Short term trends are nothing more than irregular statistical variations of the long
term data.
I have attended many of the CARB/CAR meeting on the Forest Project Protocol meeting and know many people on the workgroup. At the March18th meeting in Sacramento, Gary Gero stated that CARB does not have lawyers and cannot fight every lawsuit.....so when people like the Center for Bio. Div. file a lawsuit, like they currently are (they don't Sierra Pacific Industries participating) the board will simply and arbitrarily change the rules...like they did with interpretation the CalFire's rules on Maximum Sustained Yield requirements for landowners with more than 50K acres.
This will go back-and-forth as industry group will now file suits ( when it moves from voluntary to mandatory). The rules will be a constant moving target with seemingly no one really incharge, then it collapse under the weight of bureaucracy.
There is another issue that no one else has brought up either...and that is the soon to be included country of Mexico. Mexico will be allowed to register Forest credits to CAR, what that will do to the price for credits? Buy VanEck Forest credits at around $10/metric ton or buy credits from a forest in Mexico for $1/metric ton, yet there are viewed by CAR and CARB as the same? Why PG&E is heavily involved with the new Mexico Forest Project Development?
Whereas AB32 will likely raise the unit cost of energy, the overall approach must include efficiency gains so that the overall change in cost to the consumer is not significant. Plus, increased reliance on renewables reduces our susceptibility to market bobbles in the cost of oil and natural gas.
Efficiency of lighting, computers and communications will help keep office workers, entertainment, design work and light manufacturing etc. in state despite increases in energy costs. The effects of AB 32 can be mitigated over time.
California's Climate Law is mostly popular with the wealthy, who can accept higher costs in return for some psychic income from doing something "Green."
For people who have to work for their income to support themselves, California's Climate Law is a disaster that is coming right at us, like a runaway train.
1. Most California utility rates are tiered--baseline usage is about 10-cents per kwh, the next 30% at 14 cents, then it jumps to 20-cents plus. This means that the poorest people are least affected by the cost impact, and the utilities run programs that help them to reduce their power usage. So as the author said, the poor will benefit the greatest, since they will get the greatest improvement in the air.
2. With current California and federal subsidies for solar, a business can install photovoltaic at about the same cost of power off the grid. If you have a home and your current power bill is about $150, there are companies that will install and maintain solar on your roof and your total cost will remain about the same (for the next 25 years). The facts is that energy/labor intensive manufacturing jobs already moved out of California, first to the Maquilladoras in Mexico, and then to China.
3. The climate law will be popular with people who like to breathe. A lot of people in SoCal griped about AQMD, but the air improved incredibly since 1970..
With respect to your final statement, it's just fear-mongering. I think the "disaster" will only impact those who have polluted our air with impunity.
Most people in California are willing to sacrafice for cleaner environment, however, putting food on the table and paying the rent or mortgage have to take precidence right now. Plus, once the economy recovers then AB32 goes back into effect.
Climate change will only become a problem for them when there's no suitable place left to jet off to.