Over the past dozen years, the California environmental lobby has never seemed more powerful in the Legislature and in state government. Under Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, the Golden State has passed

But a bracing report from the California Air Resources Board shows that environmentalists’ clout can’t shake the complete control that NIMBYs have over local planning in most of the state – to the detriment of the environment. It found that a 2008 state law – Senate Bill 375 – had been an abject failure. The law requires the state’s 18 regional intergovernmental agencies to push to put new housing near transit stations and to add new transportation options so as to decrease pollution from vehicle commuting.

Not only are three out of four workers still commuting alone to work, carpooling and transit ridership are down. As a result, vehicle greenhouse gas emissions have actually risen in recent years – and the decline from 2007-2011 seems likely to have been a function of the Great Recession, not the state push to reduce emissions associated with climate change.

The air board sees no chance that the SB375 goal of reducing statewide vehicle emissions 10 percent by 2020 will be met.

The report was met with dismay by environmental groups and journalists concerned with progress against climate change. The most common response to the air board’s finding was the call for the Legislature to take more steps to limit the ability of local governments to block projects that met certain criteria – starting with being near transit stations.

69% of Californians want local control of housing

But the appetite of state lawmakers to take on NIMBYs may be limited in the wake of new evidence that NIMBYism isn’t just espoused by activists who see every new housing project as detrimental to quality of life. Instead, it’s a core belief of state residents. A USC Dornsrife/Los Angeles Times survey released in October showed 69 percent of Californians preferred local control of housing decision-making.

And the fate of a bill to reduce local control over housing showed that even poor people – those who in theory would be most helped by adding housing stock, which likely would push down sky-high rents – are skeptical.

Senate Bill 827, by Sen. Scott Weiner, D-San Francisco, would have made it much easier to build four- or five-story apartment buildings within a half-mile of transit centers. The prospect of apartment buildings springing up in poor neighborhoods with single-family homes – such as in the Los Angeles County cities of Inglewood and Carson – led to an outraged reaction from 36 housing and transit “justice groups” led by the Alliance for Community Transit – Los Angeles (ACT-LA). Instead of seeing the bill as leading to cheaper housing, these groups saw it as likely to lead to home renters being ousted in favor of more lucrative apartment buildings, and to new waves of gentrification.

The opposition to Weiner’s bill from activists and from local governments – including every member of the Los Angeles City Council – was so intense that SB827 died at its first committee hearing in April.

Weiner has since met with ACT-LA leaders and other activists and plans to reintroduce SB827 next year with provisions that address concerns that poor neighborhoods would be upended by much laxer housing rules. But such provisions could end up leading to trading old rules giving local governments power to limit construction for new rules with similar effects.

The Trump administration is on the brink of what could prove its most consequential legal battle with the state of California, with EPA chief Scott Pruitt expected this week to 

Last week saw confirmation of months of White House and EPA leaks that President Donald Trump would throw out a 2012 Obama administration edict that required average miles per gallon to nearly double to 54.5 for automakers’ fleets of new cars and trucks by 2025. Trump’s skepticism about climate change made him particularly open to the argument from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler that out-of-touch regulators under the previous president were trying to force them to sell vehicles that U.S. consumers didn’t want to buy.

But as The New York Times reported over the weekend, Trump and Pruitt went further than automakers wanted both by rolling back mileage standards more than expected and by signalling their readiness for a court fight over the deference that federal regulators have traditionally shown to the California Air Resources Board.

The Golden State’s problems with smog in the Los Angeles Basin – visible in the 1973 EPA photo shown above – led to the first state law in the U.S. targeting air pollution being adopted in 1947, among many other precedent-setting regulations. The air board continued California’s role as a pioneer in setting vehicle emission standards after it was launched in 1968 under then-Gov. Ronald Reagan. Its vehicle emission and safety rules often end up being copied by Congress and federal regulators and by nations around the world. The state’s present rules are followed by 12 other states, including New York and Pennsylvania – meaning the Golden State dictates what automakers must provide in about one-third of all new cars sold in the U.S. each year.

California’s special status may be only state carve-out in federal law

But with California’s pollution problems beginning to look more like the rest of the nation’s in recent decades, Republicans have increasingly chafed at the idea that CARB and not the EPA should have the dominant policy-making role on vehicle fuel and emissions standards.

An analysis in The Atlantic laid out how unusual the state’s status is:

“California is written into the Clean Air Act by name: At any time, it can ask the EPA administrator for a waiver to restrict tailpipe pollution more stringently than the federal government. If its proposed rules are ‘at least as protective of public health and welfare’ as the EPA’s, then the administrator must grant the waiver.

“This power is reserved alone for California, and it only covers pollution from cars. No other state can ask for a waiver. (In all of federal law, this might be the only time that a specific state is given special authority under such a major statute.)”

The administration of President George W. Bush became the first to challenge California’s special status when it rejected the state’s request to expand its definition of what substances in the atmosphere it could regulate to include non-polluting greenhouse gases. That prompted the filing of a lawsuit in January 2008 by then-Attorney General Jerry Brown that was backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. But it became moot after Barack Obama succeeded Bush in the White House and the EPA resumed treating California’s proposals with deference.

Over the past 14 months, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has filed 28 lawsuits against the Trump administration, according to a tally kept by the Washington Post. But even before Becerra began his litigation, Gov. Brown anticipated the upcoming CARB-EPA fight and emphasized its importance. In comments made in December 2016 – a month after Trump’s election – Brown framed the dispute as having consequences for the “survivability of our world” because of the threat posed by global warming.

At an American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco, according to a Sacramento Bee account, the governor said, “We’ve got the scientists, we’ve got the lawyers and we’re ready to fight. We’re ready to defend. …. And, if Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite. We’re going to collect that data.”

The Senate was less of a question, given that Democrats have a full supermajority in the upper house. As it turned out, the Senate passed the measure – and a companion bill that strengthens air-pollution reporting requirements – with all Democrats in support, as well as one Republican, Tom Berryhill of Modesto, who gained a concession (reduction of a firefighting fee for rural areas) he had sought.

But the Assembly vote wasn’t even close, as seven Republicans – including Republican Leader Chad Mayes of Yucca Valley – voted in favor of the extension. The other six Republicans were Catharine Baker of Walnut Creek, Rocky Chávez of Oceanside, Jordan Cunningham of San Luis Obispo, Heath Flora of Modesto, Devin Mathis of Visalia and Marc Steinorth of Rancho Cucamonga.

Mayes defended his vote, first by expressing how tired he is of partisanship, then noting that he supports cap and trade because “we believe markets are better than Soviet-style regulations.” He also posted on Twitter a large photo of Ronald Reagan with a recent quotation from former Reagan Secretary of State George Schultz: “Passing this bill on a bipartisan basis … is something Ronald Reagan … would be proud.” But despite his appeal to conservative icons, conservative activists and commentators were furious at the vote.

In a column Tuesday, Jon Fleischman, publisher of the Republican website Flashreport, ridiculed Mayes’ contention that the cap-and-trade system is a free-market approach to climate change: “Apparently Mayes believes that when the government creates Soviet-style limits on resources but leaves people with the freedom to exist in a world of artificial scarcity on their own terms, that is not command and control.”

Conservative former Assemblyman Tim Donnelly noted in an email blast that eight GOP legislators “voted for a (63 cents) per gallon gas tax, handing Gov. Jerry Brown another victory and a massive slush fund to spend on things like high-speed rail.” That number comes from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, which concluded that the cap-and-trade system could add 63 cents to a gallon of gasoline by 2021 if carbon credits sell for a high price.

Under cap and trade, established in 2012 by the California Air Resources Board and authorized by the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, the state caps allowable greenhouse-gas emissions by manufacturers. That cap then is reduced by 3 percent a year. Manufacturers who cannot reduce their carbon emissions immediately bid for “credits” in an auction system. The goal is to force companies to invest in low-carbon technologies, but the costs of the credits and those investments are expected to drive up costs in the meantime.

Some business groups backed the program, viewing it as a less-onerous means to achieve climate-change goals than the heavy-handed regulatory alternative. Some environmental and social-justice groups opposed the plan, which they view as going too easy on corporations. But few doubt that its passage will increase gas, food and electricity prices.

The issue is a hot button now, given that Republicans are targeting Democratic Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, because of his vote in favor of Senate Bill 1, a recently passed law that increases gasoline taxes by 12 cents or more a gallon and which also increased vehicle-license fees to pay for transportation projects. Most Republican legislators objected to a cap-and-trade driven gas-price hike so soon after this tax increase.

Because of the relatively large number of Republican votes for the cap-and-trade extension, the Democratic Assembly speaker “was able to let three of his targeted members, who are occupying seats the GOP would like to pick back up, either not vote at all or vote no,” added Fleischman. He called it a “a big strategic blunder” for the Assembly GOP.

It’s unclear whether the GOP legislators will suffer a political price for their vote. Berryhill is termed out of his Senate seat. “Because of the manner in which the party is currently run and funded, those legislators who voted for the bill will not be punished in any way by the party,” said Tom Del Beccaro, former California Republican Party chairman. “However, as (former Assemblyman) Eric Linder proved with his liberal voting record and loss due to low Republican turnout, Republican voters will be less likely to turn out for Republicans next fall.”

The Republicans who voted for the bill seem undeterred. Some of them joined Gov. Jerry Brown at a celebratory press conference after the bill’s passage. “We didn’t come here to Sacramento to just be Republicans and to hate on Democrats,” said Mayes. “We came here to Sacramento to make people’s lives better.”

Chávez noted that “we’re a very small component of the world on this but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be leaders on something that’s threatening the world.”

It remains to be seen whether the GOP, which was making political hay out of the recent gas-tax vote, can keep up its political momentum now that so many of its members voted for bill that may raise gas prices by far more than 12 cents a gallon.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

Environmentalists won on Wednesday

Lawmakers on Wednesday sent a measure to Gov. Jerry Brown creating legislative oversight of the California Air Resources Board — a vital piece in the state’s climate agenda.

Assembly Bill 197’s companion legislation, SB32, which expands CARB’s authority to create and implement programs to meet reduced greenhouse gas emission targets, can only become law if the oversight bill is signed into law.

The oversight bill would create a joint legislative committee to oversee CARB and would add two legislators to CARB as non-voting members. 

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• “If the state’s revamped standardized tests are accurately measuring what they set out to measure, one thing is clear: California has miles to go before all of its students are on an equal footing to face an economy that increasingly demands a college degree and stronger workplace skills. The good news, if there is good news, is there’s improvement over last year,” writes the Los Angeles Times.

• “California lawmakers have sent a bill to the governor’s desk that would expand the legal definition of rape so it includes all forms of nonconsensual sexual assault,” writes the Los Angeles Times.

• “Welcome to the state Legislature’s annual civil war. Forget Democrats and Republicans – the divide most likely to make an impact on the outcome of this session is the perpetual rivalry between the Senate and Assembly. It’s a long-running tension, built naturally into the bicameral setup of the legislative process, that might wax and wane with differences in the relationships between house leaders and policy priorities. But it tends to flare up again at the end of every session as each house gets its hands on the other’s bills, holding some for ransom and enacting their revenge for slights, real or perceived,” writes The Sacramento Bee.

• Legislature sends bill curbing abuses by law enforcement of civil asset forfeiture to Gov. Jerry Brown, reports The Sacramento Bee.  

Assembly:

• In at 10 a.m.

Senate:

• In at 10 a.m.

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced. 

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New follower: @charlescmarquez

Stiffed, as he sees it, by bureaucratic incompetence, Elon Musk took the California Air Resources Board to task for the way it handles zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) credits — at a moment when Musk’s plans for success require a huge leap forward in business expansion.

“The California Air Resources Board is being incredibly weak in its application of ZEV credits,” Musk told those listening in on the company’s latest earnings call, as Bloomberg reported. “The standards are pathetically low. They need to be increased. There’s massive lobbying by the big car companies to prevent CARB from increasing the ZEV credit mandate, which they absolutely damn well should. It’s a crying shame that they haven’t. And as a result, you can barely sell the ZEV credits for pennies on the dollar.”

Musk has enjoyed the benefit of pre-existing policy, which required auto companies falling short of CARB standards to turn to Tesla for help. “California has a Zero Emissions Vehicle Standard that requires a percentage of all auto sales in the state to be zero emission vehicles. There are two ways to meet the standard — either a company has to sell a certain number of emission-free cars, or it has to offset the failure to do so by buying credits from another company that is exceeding the standard,” CNBC explained. “The program has been a source of revenue for Tesla — in 2013, the company made just short of $130 million selling the credits to other car companies, according to CleanTechnica. Then, in the latest quarter, Tesla only ‘recognized an insignificant amount of ZEV credit revenue,’ according to a letter to shareholders.”

Round two

The tiff marked the second time Musk publicly tangled with the CARB on matters of automobile policy. Following the Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal, Musk signed an open letter to the Air Resources Board that portrayed the board’s measures as foolish and futile, arguing instead for an approach that would require Volkswagen to make dramatically more emissions-free cars. “For a significant fraction of the non-compliant diesel cars already in the hands of drivers, there is no real solution. Drivers won’t come in for a fix that compromises performance,” the letter read. “Further, solutions which result in net greater CO2 emissions, a regulated pollutant, are inappropriate for CARB to endorse. Retrofitting urea tank systems to small cars is costly and impractical. Some cars may be fixed, but many won’t and will be crushed before they are fixed.”

“A giant sum of money thus will be wasted in attempting to fix cars that cannot all be fixed, and where the fix may be worse than the problem if the cars are crushed well before the end of their useful lives. We, the undersigned, instead encourage the CARB to show leadership in directing VW to ‘cure the air, not the cars’ and reap multiples of what damage has been caused while strongly advancing California’s interests in transitioning to zero emission vehicles.”

Production prep

But Musk’s current frustrations suggested some urgency to settle scores before buckling in for a big production push. Tesla’s plans for extraordinarily rapid growth have promised a substantial increase in activity around its manufacturing plant in Fremont, California, purchased from Toyota after its partner in the property, GM, backed out of its role in the wake of the financial crisis. Musk’s automaker has already “announced plans for a gigantic increase in output when its $35,000 Model 3 enters production,” Green Car Reports noted. “That ex-GM plant had a capacity of half a million cars […]. Six years later, Tesla says it is now building 2,000 electric cars a week at the Fremont plant.”

The room for growth has spurred activity inside and outside its doors. Now, “companies small and large are looking to cluster operations around Tesla’s 5.3 million square foot factory in Fremont to help with production and also with research and development,” the San Francisco Business Journal reported. “Such companies range from a locally grown machine shop making parts for Tesla’s battery packs to a giant Mexican producer of plastic and foam auto parts opening an East Bay factory with 280 jobs.”

Cap-and-trade critics had always warned that as soon as programs were introduced, there would be aggressive efforts to game and/or cheat the rules to make money. With these warnings reinforced by the EU scandal, California officials in early 2013 said they’d learned their lesson. Greenbiz.com reported that …

California, with the advantage of advanced warning, has taken the EU market’s lessons to heart. It has recognized the crucial need to tightly control — and extensively oversee — who can participate in the carbon market and how. With the help of the state Attorney General’s office, California has adopted more stringent rules than the EU ETS [Emissions Trading Scheme].

State tax credits for payments to indigenous communities?

Now, however, the Brown administration is pondering relaxing these rules by allowing companies to get pollution credits by paying for preservation of forest lands in Brazil.

The idea has been discussed for years but has picked up momentum of late. According to recent reports, state regulators are closer than ever to formally expanding the cap-and-trade program by allowing polluting industries to offset their carbon emissions by paying indigenous communities in the Amazon to preserve the rain forests in their region. 

This idea has won praise from environmental groups, who have long depicted preservation of the rain forests in the Amazon delta as a global priority. They call it a great way for Brown to burnish his environmental legacy.

The Western States Petroleum Association has also been supportive, saying industries need options to meet their commitments under AB32 and related laws.

Brazil’s huge corruption scandal bodes poorly for CA program

But the initial coverage of Brown’s trial balloon omitted mention of two key issues: Gaming and cheating of cap-and-trade programs remains a huge problem around the world, and Brazil has both a long history of corruption and a lack of transparency.

In early 2015, Foreign Policy magazine reported how the European Union’s program had become a “playground for gangsters, international crime syndicates, and even two-bit crooks — who stole hundreds of millions of dollars in pollution credits.”

In October, Forbes magazine reported on a slew of new scandals, starting with schemers in Russia and Ukraine being accused of using the EU cap-and-trade market to sells counterfeit credits for 600 million tons worth of carbon dioxide emissions. The account noted that the less sophisticated a nation’s law-enforcement system, the more likely cap-and-trade scams were to be — and that some of the world’s richest people and companies were taking advantage.

“The cap-and-trade system of emissions trading is very difficult to control and its effects are diluted. … It is precisely because I am a market practitioner that I know the flaws in the system,” Forbes quoted financier-investor George Soros as saying.

Meanwhile, in January, Transparency International reported that over the previous year, Brazil’s corruption problems were growing worse at a faster rate than in any nation on the planet. Agence France Presse reported last week that a scandal involving billions of dollars of missing revenue from state oil giant Petrobras continued to grow, with dozens of government and business leaders implicated.

Efforts to remove President Dilma Rousseff from office have been complicated by the fact it is hard to find many credible critics of Rousseff within the Brazilian government, given how many prominent Brazilian politicians are either directly tied to the scandal or indirectly tied through close political alliances.

According to Calmatters, state air board officials said they would look to avoid problems caused by Western nations’ cap-and-trade programs in another tropical nation: Nigeria. But the issues there involved indigenous communities being denied use of forest lands they relied on because of restrictions under new conservation agreements — not necessarily the problems that California could risk if it counts on Brazil as a partner in a cap-and-trade pact. 

Brown also said the problem is so complex that it’s likely no one knows how to solve it.

Emissions Targeted

The governor conveyed his warning at the California Air Resources Board’s Oct. 1 workshop, “California Climate Change Scoping Plan: 2030 Target.”

The 2030 target reduces California’s greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels in the next 15 years. Brown also designated a 2050 target: emission reduction to 80 percent below the 1990 level.

The 2030 target is “the most aggressive benchmark enacted by any government in North America to reduce dangerous carbon emissions over the next decade and a half,” said Brown in an April 29 statement.

The governor began his remarks at the workshop with an admission of ignorance on climate change science.

“I come today because this is a topic that is not easy to grasp,” he said. “It’s complicated. The more you dig into controlling air pollution or measuring greenhouse gas emissions or attempting to understand the [climate] models that examine and attempt to predict how world climate patterns will change over time, it definitely is a very complicated science that we mere lay people just get little glimpses of.”

That complexity makes it easy for climate change skeptics to disseminate misinformation, according to Brown.

“It allows people who have bad motives or soft minds to then raise doubts that are not based on science or facts, but are able to be communicated without people reacting with total ridicule,” he said. “And it takes enough knowledge that it’s hard to be in this conversation at any level of depth.

Relying on Climate Scientists

Brown said we should rely on climate change scientists who “have clearly stated that human beings and the industrial activity of our modern lives is affecting climate by building up heat-trapping gases, and that the effects over time will be catastrophic.”

“When and how all of that unfolds is something that cannot be said on a precise date,” he continued. “But we know with a high degree of confidence that we are facing an existential threat to our well being and the well being of the generations that come afterwards.”

Brown acknowledged that the public has thus far been largely indifferent to the climate change issue, ranking it well below crime and jobs among issues they are most concerned about. That indifference or ambivalence may be due to the omnipresence of fossil fuels in the quality of our lives.

“What we are looking at is making a shift in the way life shows up,” Brown said. “We are who we are because of oil, coal and natural gas. Fossil fuels is what makes it. I assume that most of the people here are here because fossil fuels got you here, clothed you, medicated or whatever way you are functioning as a modern person, you are dependent on fossil fuels.

“So when we say we are going to reduce [emissions by] 10 percent, 20 percent, 40 percent, we are setting forth a huge challenge that is very easy to state. But anybody who has any understanding of what is implied by what is being called for, realizes this cannot be done lightly or without a mobilization globally that we have never seen before outside of time of war.”

Potential Economic Meltdown

Brown, citing a Sept. 29 speech by the Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney, warned there is a potential for a global economic meltdown when energy companies are forbidden from using up to a third of their fossil fuel resources.

“Once it becomes conventional wisdom, once we get it that climate change is going to be catastrophic and that becomes clear and vast majorities of people at all levels of society agree with that, it may be too late because we’ll be too far down the road,” he said.

“If the oil and gas companies are undermined, the financial system itself can be undermined. We can’t wait until everybody gets it. We have to start now.”

Brown said the state’s current annual output of 460 million tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions must be reduced to 431 million tons by 2020 and down to 260 million tons by 2030.

“To go from 460 where we are to 260, that takes heroic effort, scientific breakthroughs, massive investments, a lot of cooperation and a political understanding that does not exist today,” he said. “So this is not stuff for amateurs. This is quite challenging.”

“It’s a political problem,” Brown continued, “but also it’s a technical problem. And it’s going to require a lot of breakthrough, a lot of research and billions, tens of billions of dollars, invested by many, many different sources.”

It will also require Californians driving a lot less, he said, by living closer to where they work and telecommuting. “Californians drive over 330 billion miles a year – 32 million vehicles of various kinds moving around on almost entirely fossil fuel,” he said. “We’re going to reduce and take fossil fuels out of our lives and out of the economy.

“And we’re going to creep our prosperity and ability to keep inventing and improving the quality of everybody’s life. And not only here, but we’re going to do it all over the world. And we’re going to add a couple billion people besides and probably another billion cars.”

Changing Lifestyles

The governor admitted, “How the hell we do that, probably nobody knows. But the people who have the best understanding and the best capability to do things [are] right here.”

Brown acknowledged that it will be a big challenge convincing people to change their lifestyles. He also admitted that even getting the conversation started is tough:

In my world of politics this is … a dark reality that you just can’t even talk about. Because it’s too obscure, too complicated, it’s not high in the polls, “don’t bother me now.” But if that mood persists … it will be too late then, and there will be a real catastrophe.

People don’t like to think that something horrible could happen. We all like our happy time news in the morning. But you got to see it, and then we have to take steps to make sure it doesn’t happen.

This is about taking the steps to deal with fuels, the investment in biofuels, [energy] efficiency in appliances and buildings, across the whole range of how our modern civilization works, within the limited reach that the Air Resources Board has confidence and the legal authority to do, which is quite a lot. Everything that can be done will be done. California will do what it has to do.

Leading the Way

Brown believes California is setting an example other states and countries will follow.

“People know about California, people are watching what’s going on, and there’s a lot of goodwill to get us to the goal,” he said. “Of course, it’s going to take a lot more than goodwill. It’s going to take billions, trillions of dollars. And it’s going to take commitment all over the world.”

Brown’s pep talk received a standing ovation. After the applause died down, CARB Chairwoman Mary Nichols said, “You can see why I get up raring to go to work every morning.”

Facing Opposition

No one at the workshop questioned whether California’s efforts will do much to prevent the planet’s climate from changing, and whether the cost will be worth it.

But state Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford, issued a statement on Oct. 7 in opposition to Brown signing into law Senate Bill 350, which mandates an increase in renewable energy among other emission reduction actions:

The district I represent is still reeling from the Great Recession and the devastating years-long drought. Too many people in rural and inland communities are impoverished; standing in food lines because they can’t find work to make ends meet.

Senate Bill 350 is a devastating measure that will force already-struggling families deeper into poverty by drastically increasing energy costs that are already some of the highest in the nation.

It’s wrong when parents have to choose between the necessities of keeping the lights on and feeding their children. The governor’s signature on SB350 kicks folks while they are down. It is a selfish gesture designed to fluff up his “legacy” and pander to coastal elites’ “environmental” self-righteousness.”

The impact on most Californians from the state’s climate change regulations has been minimal thus far. The state has been averaging a 1 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions annually. That pace is projected to continue through 2020, and is enough to meet the 2020 reduction goal.

But residents and businesses will be hit harder after that. Emissions will need to be reduced by at least 5.2 percent annually from 2020 to 2030 in order to meet the 2030 target.

“This gives an indication of the challenge of the work that we have ahead of us in the scoping plan to develop an approach, to develop a set of measures that can contribute to and achieve this ambitious greenhouse gas reduction level for 2030,” said ARB Assistant Executive Officer Michael Gibbs.

An analysis of the economic impacts of the climate change regulations will be conducted as a part of the scoping plan. No cost estimates were provided at the workshop, but several officials in addition to Brown said that billions of dollars in increased funding will be required.

“Investment in [energy] efficiency [in buildings] will need to be quadrupled or quintupled from today’s levels in order to reach the scale necessary to meet the 2030 and 2050 goals,” said Patrick Saxton, representing the California Energy Commission. “Clearly this is much more than ratepayers and taxpayers can fund on their own.”

Regional workshops on the scoping plan will be held this fall; the Air Resources Board will receive an update on Nov. 19. The draft plan is scheduled to be released in spring 2016. The final plan is expected to be approved in fall 2016.

Courtesy Sen. Kevin de León’s office

As many as 7,000 low-income Los Angeles residents could eventually take part in a state-funded electric car sharing program that rolled out last week.

State and city officials celebrated the soft launch of the endeavor — which aims to improve air quality by cutting carbon emissions — at an L.A. affordable housing complex.

City officials hope to establish as many as 100 vehicles as part of the pilot program, which the state is partially funding through a $1.6 million award. The city expects to use an additional $8 million “in in-kind city resources and private operator investment in equipment and operations,” according to L.A.’s  Sustainable City plan.

The state money comes from California’s controversial cap-and-trade program, designed to curb the state’s reliance on fossil fuels. Critics call it a pollution tax that unfairly burdens large industries.

State Senate leader Kevin de León speaks at roll out of electric car sharing program in L.A.
Photo courtesy de León’s office.

“Fighting smog and climate change so that our kids can breathe clean air requires more transportation options that don’t rely on dirty fossil fuels,” state Senate leader Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, said in a press release. “This electric car-sharing pilot project offers a glimpse of the future, and represents the type of shift in policy, infrastructure, and behavior that we need.”

Officials say the project will educate residents about car sharing and transportation alternatives, install electric vehicle charging stations and introduce an electric car sharing fleet.

Specifically, it will “provide affordable last mile/first mile solutions for low-income families and other residents who do not own a car or need a second car for trips requiring a light duty passenger vehicle,” according to L.A.’s  Sustainable City plan.

“Our EV car sharing pilot is a perfect example of how our state’s cap-and-trade dollars should be put to work: providing transportation options for Angelenos in need, and helping us achieve our clean air goals outlined in my Sustainable City plan,” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti added in the news release.

The program is formally called the Car Sharing and Mobility Options in Disadvantaged Communities Pilot Project. It is run by the California Air Resources Board, and originated last year after the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown signed two of de León bills, SB1275 and SB535, according to the Senate leader’s office. Those laws direct CARB to invest the state’s cap-and-trade revenue into programs that bring clean air and jobs to communities heavily impacted by climate change and poor environmental quality.

Contact reporter Chris Nichols at chris@calwatchdog.com or on Twitter @ChrisTheJourno

The studies give policymakers more information on the choices they will be making.

The first study is by economist John Husing, “Policy Choices & the Inland Empire’s Public Health.” He is the vice president of Economics & Politics Inc., a think tank that studies the Inland Empire. He also produced a PowerPoint summary of his findings, “Public Health, Socio-Economics & Logistics in the Inland Empire.”

Husing cited a University of Wisconsin study that found poor health was attributed to four factors:

• 40 percent socio-economics;
• 30 percent individual health behaviors;
• 20 percent medical care;
• 10 percent environmental causes.

Husing pointed out several “clashes” between socio-economic health and clean air regulations that end up worsening public health:

• Cal-EPA’s ozone reduction goal is not possible unless truck emissions are reduced below what current technology can achieve.

• Cal-EPA’s ozone reduction goal is not possible unless all vehicles in California are electrified. Yet currently, less than 1 percent of all registered vehicles in California are electric, according to SmartGridNews.

• There’s a clash between public health and the California Environmental Quality Act. When CEQA is too rigorously enforced, Husing wrote, it becomes the “Let’s sue until they run out of money act.” When that happens, it increases poverty, but serves such groups a “NIMBYS [Not in My Back Yarders], the Natural Resources Defense Fund, the Center for Biological Diversity … some lawyers, and unions.”

Although air pollution might be reduced, according to Husing, actual public health could be reduced by increasing poverty.

That’s because, citing the Wisconsin study mentioned above, Husing said the environment actually is the lowest on the rung of importance of the four health factors, but “it has been elevated almost to the exclusion of other priorities.”

Warehouses

What happened to manufacturing is now being proposed for trucking and transporting of goods.

In recent years, the Inland Empire has become a giant warehouse for Amazon, Target, Walmart and other companies shipping goods into the Los Angeles basin. Logistics and shipping jobs accounted for 16.7 percent of Inland Empire job growth from 1990 to 2012, and 27.6 percent of job growth from 2012 to 2013.

Husing made the case that it is such modest jobs that lift people out of poverty and into the middle class, and thereby into improved health. “Bluntly, it does our region little good if we create a pristine environment but let people increasingly die of the diseases and behaviors fostered by poverty,” Husing concluded.

Second study: Diesel trucks 

The second study concerns diesel trucks and the California Construction Trucking Association. Joe Rajkocacz, director of governmental affairs for the CCTA, explained the matter in an email to CalWatchdog.com.

He said the CCTA has been embroiled for the last four years in a lawsuit, which it lost, against the California Air Resources Board to stop the mandatory installation of $20,000 diesel exhaust filters on trucks and new, cleaner truck engines. The lawsuit contended the regulations caused undue economic hardship for the trucking industry. The regulations were imposed by CARB under AB32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

CARB contended the regulations were needed to make California’s air healthier.

On March 3, the the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected the CCTA’s appeal on the grounds it was filed in the wrong court. The CCTA, however, claimed it is exempt from California’s air pollution regulations under federal law and that is why it appealed in federal court.

CCTA said it now will appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. And it may take up the matter through other legal channels, such as challenging the science on which the air quality regulations are based. CARB contends exposure to diesel soot (particulate matter) causes premature deaths.

CARB’s science has reportedly been supported by a recent USC study showing that clean air is linked to stronger lungs in children. CARB is touting the USC study as a basis for its air pollution regulations, including on diesel trucks.

However, physicist and health researcher Jim Enstrom, Ph.D., MPH, said in a telephone interview the USC study ignores that children’s immune systems and lung capacity get stronger as they grow older. Enstrom is the author of a 2005 study that found there is no relationship between particulate matter in the air and mortality rates of the elderly.

Rajkovacz said that any relationship between diesel exhausts and mortality “doesn’t exist other than in the minds of rogue environmentalists both within and outside of the California Environmental Protection Agency.”

Future court proceedings will decide the legal issues. But no doubt the controversy of health and prosperity will continue.

On June 2, President Barack Obama announced his new rules to mothball “dirty” coal power plants so as to reduce carbon-dioxide power plant emissions by 30 percent from their 2005 level. He also set voluntary targets for the percentage of renewable energy in each state by 2029.

Coverage generally focused on Obama’s overall proposals rather their specific implications for individual states. But if Western states take Obama’s goals seriously, or if these goals are given some teeth, that could hurt California.

At first glance, it appears the Golden State would fare well under key sections of the president’s plan.

California has no large in-state coal power plants connected to the power grid. While several cities in Los Angeles County get their power from coal-fired power plants in Nevada, Arizona and Utah, their contracts expire by 2020.

There are 80 fossil fuel power plants in California that would be subject to 30 percent reduction in carbon dioxide levels from 2005. But normally, they would be retired by 2030 anyways and replaced with more energy-efficient natural gas power plants as well wind and solar power plants.

Furthermore, Obama’s 34.1 percent renewable energy target for California by 2029 seems oddly low. Because of state policies, California is already on course to reach 33 percent by 2020.

But the president’s much-more ambitious renewable energy targets of 91.7 percent for the state of Washington and 85.3 percent for Oregon may reduce cheap hydropower availability to California because these states might stop exporting to California — especially during cold snaps or heat waves. This could be devastating for a state energy grid that in coming decades will be forced to rely more on inherently less dependable wind and solar energy supplies.

California doesn’t count hydroelectric power as renewable energy under AB32, its Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. However, the U.S. EPA’s draft new renewable energy targets for each state leave it open whether hydropower will count or not.

Washington and Oregon, however, would be prone to keep their cheap hydropower in-state to meet their high renewable energy targets. Today, Washington’s and Oregon’s hydropower plants produce 57 percent and 50 percent of their power, respectively.

EPA mandate may reduce some states’ advantages

A central focus of the debate over the AB32 state law is whether the higher energy costs it mandates for California in coming years will spur companies to go to cheaper states or nations. The term used in environmental and regulatory circles for this is “leakage.”

Cara Horowitz — executive director of the Center on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA School of Law — says this concern has “been one of the motivations all along for California hoping it wouldn’t have to go it all alone. Leakage is a real risk to California if it continues to be well out in front on the climate change question.”

But if AB32-style mandates such as the EPA rule take effect, then “California becomes less likely to lose business to Texas,” she thinks.

Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, put it another way: “Requiring the use of renewable power and ‘energy efficiency’ is exportable.”

What she means by the term “exportable” is exporting California’s high electrical energy prices to other Western states that now have the competitive advantage of cheap coal, hydro or nuclear power.

States that generate enough electric energy to meet their consumption such as Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Utah and Texas would have to play by the rules of those Western states that are not self-sustaining: California, Nevada and Colorado.

By keeping the cost of electrical energy high like California in all Western states, there is less likelihood of “leakage” of not just companies but of population to states that no longer have the huge economic advantage of cheaper power.