SACRAMENTO >> As the Legislature weighs the future of cap and trade, California’s groundbreaking program to cut greenhouse gas emissions that expires in 2020, it is considering key changes pushed by environmentalists and fought by Big Oil and other industry groups in a proposal that had its first committee hearing near press time on Monday.
Air pollution — not just climate-warming greenhouse gasses — would be melded into the complex cap-and-trade program under Assembly Bill 378, by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia. Garcia heads the Assembly’s Committee on Natural Resources, which was reviewing the proposal yesterday afternoon.
The bill, drafted with input from an emerging coalition of mainstream and environmental-justice groups, tries to address a nagging concern associated with the landmark program: that cap and trade attacks a global problem, but does little to curb air pollution harming poor and working-class communities.
“We’ve done a lot for this global environment, but we’ve done very little for the needs of these communities,” said Garcia in an interview last month.
Cap and trade is generally seen as the most flexible and cost-effective way for industries to comply with California’s strict carbon emissions standards, which by 2030 will be 40 percent below 1990 levels. The regulatory program allows industries to pay to pollute by buying and trading carbon-emission permits.
AB 378 would impose additional regulations on industry. It would require the state’s Air Resources Board to grade individual plants and to set new limits on air pollution as a condition for receiving some of the economic benefits of cap and trade.
A competing bill supported by the Western States Petroleum Association, Assembly 151, by Assemblywoman Autumn Burke, D-Inglewood, and Assemblyman Jim Cooper, D-Elk Grove, would indefinitely extend cap and trade, but without the local pollution provisions.
It is unlikely that both bills — in their current form — would advance out of the committee, given their conflicting directives.
