Download: Estuary News, June 2013 PDF
In the last six months, California has held three very special auctions, and the items in question are much harder to put your finger on than the gilt rim of a tea cup. In this auction, the objects are less tangible — the so called greenhouse gases, or GHGs, known to warm earth’s atmosphere — but more likely to influence the course of human history than any mahogany credenza or dueling pistol.
When it passed the Califor nia Global Warming Solutions Act in 2006, the golden state firmly embraced the singular role of leading our frustratingly reluctant nation on climate change action. AB 32 set the goal of returning the state to 1990 emission levels by 2020 and launched a dozen different initiatives to get there, from renewable energy investments to a low-carbon fuel standard. It also created the nation’s first economy-wide cap and trade program for emissions.
“Cap and trade covers 85% of emission sources in California. If we get rid of it, we’re probably looking at command and control from the Air Resources Board,” said Jane Luckhardt, a Downey Brand lawyer and one of 15 speakers at a Bay Planning Coalition workshop on cap and trade hosted by URS Corps in Oakland this June.
The program is basically a market in which you can buy and trade emissions. The main premise is that while one entity, say an oil refinery, might be able to reduce its GHG emissions 50% by replacing some ancient boilers with newer technology for a reasonable cost, another entity, say a cement maker, might have very few options for reducing emissions. So the latter can buy credits from the former, or other traders, during the new auctions.
“Initially any industrial facil ity that generates 25,000 or more metric tons of GHG comes under the cap,” explained environmental and sustainable development lawyer Cleve Livingston, another one of the speakers. In 2013, these included oil refineries like Valero, Chevron, and Shell, cement manufacturers, big power plants, and co-generation facilities at various universities. Under the cap, these emitters have three years to show compliance, and can either buy allowances from other industries, invest in energy efficiency, or purchase offsets (dairy methane capture programs, urban tree planting, or forest management — blue carbon credits from wetlands are not quite yet auction-ready). “The point is to allow industry to find the most efficient measures to reduce carbon,” said Livingston.
The state has held three auctions in the last six months, with prices settling in between $10-$14 per metric ton. In the most recent auction, the state approved 81 entities to bid in the auction for 14.5 million MT in 2013 allowances, and 9.56 MT in futures
for 2016. In this last auction alone, they sold 100% for 2013, and 80% for 2016, and raised $117 million to help the state advance AB 32 and prevent climate pollution. Governor Brown is already angling to borrow the auction money, arguing that
other AB 32 spending
programs are “not ready
yet for prime time,” according to Luckhardt.
At least 25% of funds raised from the auctions are supposed to go to climate pollution reduction related projects in the most impacted communities. But first these communities have to be identified. Speaker John Faust from the state’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment described the screening method his team is developing, which uses 18 environmental and socio-economic indicators ranging from exposures to pesticides, toxics, and ozone to the presence of impaired water bodies or toxic clean up sites. Indicators also try to take into account the sensitivity of specific communities due to poverty, asthma, low birth weight, or the presence of lots of children or elderly people. Faust showcased the new screening tool at the workshop, which maps these communities based on ZIP code. A first version of the tool was released in April, but the team is still considering improvements.
Other speakers covered what Bay Area local and regional agencies are doing in terms of transportation and sustainable development planning, how the state may be impacted economically by AB32, how California’s food processing industry is responding, and how groups like the Environmental Defense Fund are both championing and watchdogging the program. Not only can the program serve the public trust, but it is also an opportunity for private speculation that makes some wary.
At press time there was some uncertainty about the nitty gritty of the future cap and trade program as Morningstar Packing and the California Chamber of Commerce are arguing that allowances held back and auctioned by the air board amount to the imposition of an illegal tax. Their cases go to court this August.
Speakers also expressed some worries about “leakage” — where a big employer like Sacramento’s Campbell soup factory moves out of state or out of country to avoid expensive retrofits. Everyone mentioned the need for a national GHG control program to reduce leakage to other states like Texas, where climate change does not officially exist.
“Some argue emissions reduction strategies will be an economic disaster, but others argue it will be one of the greatest shots in the state’s economic arm in generations,” said Livingston. “Somebody’s got to be on the leading edge, and though some companies may move out, others may move in. Within the next few years, the results of our efforts will get much clearer, but until then the jury is out.”
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By Ariel Rubissow Okamoto
Nothing could be stranger than sitting in the dark with thousands of suits and heels, watching a parade of promises to decarbonize from companies and countries large and small, reeling from the beauties of big screen rainforests and indigenous necklaces, and getting all choked up.
It was day two of the September 2018 Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco when I felt it.
At first I wondered if I was simply starstruck. Most of us labor away trying to fix one small corner of the planet or another without seeing the likes of Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Jerry Brown – or the ministers or mayors of dozens of cities and countries – in person, on stage and at times angry enough to spit. And between these luminaries a steady stream of CEOs, corporate sustainability officers, and pension fund managers promising percentages of renewables and profits in their portfolios dedicated to the climate cause by 2020-2050.
I tried to give every speaker my full attention: the young man of Vuntut Gwichin heritage from the edge of the Yukon’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge who pleaded with us not to enter his sacred lands with our drills and dependencies; all the women – swathed in bright patterns and head-scarfs – who kept punching their hearts. “My uncle in Uganda would take 129 years to emit the same amount of carbon as an American would in one year,” said Oxfam’s Winnie Byanyima.
“Our janitors are shutting off the lights you leave on,” said Aida Cardenas, speaking about the frontline workers she trains, mostly immigrants, who are excited to be part of climate change solutions in their new country.
The men on the stage, strutting about in feathers and pinstripes, spoke of hopes and dreams, money and power. “The notion that you can either do good or do well is a myth we have to collectively bust,” said New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy whose state is investing heavily in offshore wind farms.
“Climate change isn’t just about risks, it’s about opportunities,” said Blackrock sustainable investment manager Brian Deese.
But it wasn’t all these fine speeches that started the butterflies. Halfway through the second day of testimonials, it was a slight white-haired woman wrapped in an azure pashmina that pricked my tears. One minute she was on the silver screen with Alec Baldwin and the next she taking a seat on stage. She talked about trees. How trees can solve 30% of our carbon reduction problem. How we have to stop whacking them back in the Amazon and start planting them everywhere else. I couldn’t help thinking of Dr. Seuss and his truffala trees. Jane Goodall, over 80, is as fierce as my Lorax. Or my daughter’s Avatar.
Analyzing my take home feeling from the event I realized it wasn’t the usual fear – killer storms, tidal waves, no food for my kids to eat on a half-baked planet – nor a newfound sense of hope – I’ve always thought nature will get along just fine without us. What I felt was relief. People were actually doing something. Doing a lot. And there was so much more we could do.
As we all pumped fists in the dark, as the presentations went on and on and on because so many people and businesses and countries wanted to STEP UP, I realized how swayed I had let myself be by the doomsday news mill.
“We must be like the river, “ said a boy from Bangladesh named Risalat Khan, who had noticed our Sierra watersheds from the plane. “We must cut through the mountain of obstacles. Let’s be the river!”
Or as Harrison Ford less poetically put it: “Let’s turn off our phones and roll up our sleeves and kick this monster’s ass.”
by Isaac Pearlman
Since California’s last state-led climate change assessment in 2012, the Golden State has experienced a litany of natural disasters. This includes four years of severe drought from 2012 to 2016, an almost non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpack in 2014-2015 costing $2.1 billion in economic losses, widespread Bay Area flooding from winter 2017 storms, and extremely large and damaging wildfires culminating with this year’s Mendocino Complex fire achieving the dubious distinction of the largest in state history. California’s most recent climate assessment, released August 27th, predicts that for the state and the Bay Area, we can expect even more in the future.
The California state government first began assessing climate impacts formally in 2006, due to an executive order by Governor Schwarzenegger. California’s latest iteration and its fourth overall, includes a dizzying array of 44 technical reports; three topical studies on climate justice, tribal and indigenous communities, and the coast and ocean; as well as nine region-specific analyses.
The results are alarming for our state’s future: an estimated four to five feet of sea level rise and loss of one to two-thirds of Southern California beaches by 2100, a 50 percent increase in wildfires over 25,000 acres, stronger and longer heat waves, and infrastructure like airports, wastewater treatment plants, rail and roadways increasingly likely to suffer flooding.
For the first time, California’s latest assessment dives into climate consequences on a regional level. Academics representing nine California regions spearheaded research and summarized the best available science on the variable heat, rain, flooding and extreme event consequences for their areas. For example, the highest local rate of sea level rise in the state is at the rapidly subsiding Humboldt Bay. In San Diego county, the most biodiverse in all of California, preserving its many fragile and endangered species is an urgent priority. Francesca Hopkins from UC Riverside found that the highest rate of childhood asthma in the state isn’t an urban smog-filled city but in the Imperial Valley, where toxic dust from Salton Sea disaster chokes communities – and will only become worse as higher temperatures and less water due to climate change dry and brittle the area.
According to the Bay Area Regional Report, since 1950 the Bay Area has already increased in temperature by 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit and local sea level is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago. Future climate will render the Bay Area less suitable for our evergreen redwood and fir forests, and more favorable for tolerant chaparral shrub land. The region’s seven million people and $750 billion economy (almost one-third of California’s total) is predicted to be increasingly beset by more “boom and bust” irregular wet and very dry years, punctuated by increasingly intense and damaging storms.
Unsurprisingly, according to the report the Bay Area’s intensifying housing and equity problems have a multiplier affect with climate change. As Bay Area housing spreads further north, south, and inland the result is higher transportation and energy needs for those with the fewest resources available to afford them; and acute disparity in climate vulnerability across Bay Area communities and populations.
“All Californians will likely endure more illness and be at greater risk of early death because of climate change,” bluntly states the statewide summary brochure for California’s climate assessment. “[However] vulnerable populations that already experience the greatest adverse health impacts will be disproportionately affected.”
“We’re much better at being reactive to a disaster than planning ahead,” said UC Berkeley professor and contributing author David Ackerly at a California Adaptation Forum panel in Sacramento on August 27th. “And it is vulnerable communities that suffer from those disasters. How much human suffering has to happen before it triggers the next round of activity?”
The assessment’s data is publicly available online at “Cal-adapt,” where Californians can explore projected impacts for their neighborhoods, towns, and regions.