Environmental Law

"Environmental Justice" Opposition to Cap-and-Trade Emerges

By Dennis Pfaff and Kevin Livingston, Editors

The notion that a cap-and-trade program provides the best way of forcing and/or encouraging reductions in greenhouse gas emissions appears to be running into some opposition from one sector of the environmental community.

The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday (Feb. 20) that Low-income community groups in five California cities launched a statewide campaign to "fight at every turn" any global-warming regulation that allows industries to trade carbon emissions. The groups warned such a move would amount to "gambling on public health."

Here's the Times' description of the opposition:

The 21-point "Environmental Justice Movement Declaration" challenges the stance of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (pictured above with New York Gov. George Pataki discussing an emissions market program in 2006), a national advocate of a cap-and-trade program that would allow heavy polluters, often located in poor neighborhoods, to partly buy their way out of lowering their emissions.

"Under a trading scheme, 11 power plants to be built around Los Angeles could offset emissions by extracting methane from coal seams in Utah or planting trees in Manitoba," said Jane Williams of the California Communities Against Toxics, which fights pollution in low-income areas.

The defiant tone of news conferences in Los Angeles, Fresno, Oakland, Sacramento and San Diego indicated that political turbulence might be ahead as the state Air Resources Board hammers out a strategy to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as required under a 2006 law.

Joining Williams in leading the movement was Angela Johnson Meszaros, director of the California Environmental Rights Alliance. They are co-chairs of the California Air Resources Board's Environmental Justice Advisory Committee. That panel was established under California's AB 32, the 2006 law mandating sharp reductions on emissions blamed for changing the planet's climate. 

In addition to Schwarzenegger, cap and trade schemes, at least for the electricity sector, have drawn support from the California Public Utilities Commission President Michael R. Peevey, large sectors of the utility industry such as Pacific Gas and Electric Company and even garnered cautious backing from environmental groups, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Full post as published by Climate Law Update on February 20, 2008 (boomark / email).