Giving away your future.

When the California Legislature passed AB 32, it was heralded as ground breaking and promising to be the model for other states, or countries, to follow.  In last month's election, the citizen's of California had to vote to protect the provisions of AB 32 from attack by unified oil interests (Valero, Tesoro and the Koch Brothers empire).

Having accomplished that much we seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief and turned our attention to the next crisis du jour.  Wrong choice!  While we were media fed British Royal pablum or questioned whether Sarah Palin's visit to Haiti was intended to give her foreign policy credibility, California's Air Resources Board (ARB), the organization responsible for defining the rules under which polluters would be permitted to continue business as usual, was giving away those permits.  They make that intention clear on their web site as they publish the background information for Thursday Dec. 16 Board Meeting.  You can read the description of the free allocations here.

Next10 has posted the results of a recent study of implementation scenarios.  They find that "The research shows that giving away allowances for free helps energy-intensive industries, but this
strategy actually hurts the CA economy overall."  In fact, they find that both strategies will have a positive effect on employment in California, but that the free allocations will significantly reduce the number of net new jobs created.

I am increasingly doubtful that the public input will have much of an effect.  However, like chicken soup for the flu, it can't hurt. Contact your state legislators, and make sure that you have made it clear to the ARB that California jobs are more important than the financial health of major polluters but giving your comments here.

Environmental Attacks are no surprise

It should come as not surprise to anyone that there are major lobbying efforts going on all the time, that these lobbying efforts are well funded, that very large public relations firms make fortunes in running campaigns against the future.  What should wake people up is the ease with which these organized attacks can insinuate themselves into public discourse, easily gaining media coverage while the rest of us struggle to be heard.  I provide a good example.

Take a look at the web site for the AB 32 Implementation Group.  The banner on their home page says that they are "Working Towards Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions and Enhancing California's Competitiveness."  The site lists all of the group's members, starting with the always retrograde California Chamber of Commerce.  However, journalists at California Watch have found that even this list is very suspect, some of them being no longer in existence and others surprised that their names were even mentioned.

It should also be no surprise that the list contains 22 of California's largest carbon polluters, as ranked by California's Air Resources Board, the organization responsible for the implementation of AB 32. So, the "implementation group" is, in reality, an effort to slow down, minimize or even prevent the implementation of CA state law, all in the name of economic effectiveness.

This issue is going to loom large in the upcoming gubernatorial election.  California has an economic crisis, there is not enough revenue for state government to provision all of the programs currently in place.  Republican candidate Steve Poizner has endorsed an initiative measure called the California Jobs Initiative that would set aside implementation of AB 32 until California's economy recovers.

Meg Whitman is only a little less strident in her opposition, limiting the suspension to a 1 year moratorium on "most" of AB 32's rules.  That is a position that has gotten her in trouble with some Republicans for not being aggressive enough.

Now, let me come back to the AB 32 Implementation Group and ask why it took an independent investigative reporting effort to publish this story. All of the state's major papers have written something about the politics of the governor's race but none of them have taken the effort to go beyond reporting what candidates said and giving us some hint as to what facts were being ignored.

Let me conclude by giving everyone a fact.  AB 32 was designed to reduce carbon emissions and help forestall the type of future you can see on the big screen in The Road. But that is a long way off in most people's minds.  AB 32 will also help clean up the air pollution that makes the San Joaquin Valley one of the more medically challenging places to live in the country.  Add in the South Coast and the cost to the CA Economy is $28 Billion per year.

This is what Whitman and Poizner want for CA. Just keep on letting all businesses do what bad business do, continue to pollute because clean up is too costly.  Well, the health effects are too costly as well.  They cost every one of us, every time we have to visit a doctor or a clinic.  They cost every business that provides medical coverage for their employees.  But then Whitman and Poizner don't really care about the public.

In contrast, Green candidate Laura Wells puts forward a platform with a range of actions on climate, energy and clean air.  AB 32 is just a good first step towards getting what California needs. The Cap-and-Trade system that is at the heart of AB 32 must not be allowed to become an excuse for continuing to pollute and raising consumer costs to pay for it. Wells says that …

A community already burdened by these emissions should not be harmed further as the result of a dubious industry-concocted market-based cap & trade plan.

Statistic: According to the CSU-Fullerton study linked above. CA's dirty air causes 3,812premature deathes of adults over 30 every year.  That compares to the 2,976 lost in the 9/11 attacks.  Yet, we would do nothing because it costs too much?

It should also come as no surprise that demagogue millionaire politicians will twist every event to their partisan advantage, playing off the emotions of a public that wonders if their job is secure or that they will be able to stay in their homes. 

Battling intellectual smog

California's AB 32 was intended (so they say) to help this state battle global warming by controlling greenhouse gases. That would alleviate problems that we have with physical world smog.

Unfortunately, there a those who still believe Any Rand and that regulation is evil and they produce an even more insidious intellectual smog. It is reported that a CSU-Sacramento Report estimates the "cost" to small businesses from California's AB 32 at $50,000 per year.

UCLA Economics professor, Matthew I Kahn, provide a good analysis of why they get it wrong.

Peak Water?

This is just a short update regarding two significant water events… sort of a follow on to my previous post regarding Green Water Policy and an underscore of it's importance.

Today at 3:00 PM EST, Dr. Peter Gleick, founder of the Pacific Institute and a foremost authority on water will be webcast from the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, D.C. One of the topics will be this question.

Have we passed a peak in the availability of freshwater for human use?

The webcast is supposed to be archived.

The second event is a California State Senate hearing on Improving Water Conservation and Management in Southern California: Successes and Opportunities This is the first big deal event in the tenure of Fran Pavley as Chair of the California State Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water. I imagine that she will try to engineer the same type of solution for water that she did for the control of green house gasses in the well known AB 32. If she does, we are all in trouble as AB 32 will not come close to meeting expectations.

I urge all So Cal Greens to attend this if possible and to be attentive to the results if you can not be there. The hearing will be held on Friday, February 6th, from 1 pm - 3 pm, at Santa Monica City College, Business Building 111, 1900 Pico Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90405

Do you like fresh air and cool weather?

California has passed and Governor Schwarzenegger has signed a bill knows as AB-32. That was in 2006. Since then, it has become the shining star of climate related legislation even though nothing has yet to be implemented. However, it did help move Fran Pavley from the Assembly, where she was the author of the bill, to the State Senate where she has been named to Chair the Committee on Resources.

So, where are we in the implementation cycle, or what has California accomplished in 2 years? Click Read more! to find out.


To begin with, AB 32 mandated that the Air Resources Board start by putting together a Scoping Plan. This was to be an attempt to tell us all just how things would work and what it would finally cost. That plan is in the final review process. The 2nd and last public hearing on AB 32 will be held on Dec. 11 in Sacramento.

I have two serious concerns. The first is the simple fact that carbon trading schemes will not work, no matter how good the intentions or the goals might be. Schwarzenegger's pick to implement the cap and trade program, Mary Nichols, did similar work when an Assistant Administrator in the Clinton Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Not only did that fail, she neglected compliance issues at the same time as all attention was focused on the pollution credit scheme.

This post at Climate Progress make the point very effectively.

Q: What is the difference between carbon offsets and mortgage-backed securites?

A: Lipstick.

Carbon offsets and mortgage-backed securities are quite similar in that is impossible for the vast majority of people, even experts, to know what value they have, if any.

Similarly, Cap and Trade mechanisms in the Kyoto Protocol have not worked. It is too easy for major multi-international corporations to circumvent them and at least one organization that is supposed to police compliance has been booted from the job.

Then, in her effort to sell the plan, Nichols has done what they all do; exaggerate the benefits and ignore the rest. Before anyone takes this all seriously, they should read the peer review comments on the economic modeling that the Air Resources Board did to back up their pet project. Even those who are sympathetic to the goals of AB 32 has a hard time believing the case being presented. UCLA Economist Matthew Kahn is one.

In this review, I will highlight why I believe the current modeling exercise underestimates the cost of meeting
AB32’s goals. I will present a research methodology for cheaply collecting the necessary data to test whether the optimistic numbers reported in Table I-2 of
http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/scopingplan/document/economic_appendix1.pdf could be accurate
estimates of the expected net costs of this regulation.

The first public meeting on the AB 32 scoping plan turned in to a bit of a circus. I would hope that this is a repeat, and that they repeat until someone gets it right. I doubt that Nichols is the one to do it.