AB32

This is an incredibly nerdy story, but one that will effect every single person in California and our environment. LAT:

But by unanimous vote, the California Air Resources Board adopted a number that will ultimately drive the operations and habits of every industry, business, farm, household and automobile in the Golden State.

The board's decision that 427 million metric tons of greenhouse gas were released over California in 1990 effectively launched a massive scientific and regulatory effort aimed at combating climate change that scientists say is threatening the planet.

As board Chairwoman Mary Nichols put it, "This was the crucial first step: Now California can lead the nation in the effort to slash greenhouse gases."

The CARB has been moving forward with all deliberate speed towards implementing AB 32. This was a major step, from which most other decisions will be made.

California's 2006 landmark global warming law, the first in the nation, requires that, 13 years from now, the state reduce its emissions of planet-heating carbon dioxide and other gases to 1990 levels.

But what were those levels? That's the question that scores of state, federal and industry economists and engineers finally determined after a year of feverish data-mining involving 13,000 separate calculations.

There was a massive amount of data that needed to be collected, analyzed and reported. Now that the CARB has accepted those numbers they can move forward on implementing regulations that will move California's greenhouse gas emission back in line with what it was in 1990, not an easy task.

Changing directions won't be easy: Greenhouse emissions have risen an estimated 13% since 1990. The air board figures that if nothing were done, emissions would rise to 600 million metric tons in 13 years. To reach 1990 levels by 2020, the state will have to slash emissions by 30% over projected levels.

And that's only the beginning: Globally, planet-heating gases will have to be cut 80% by mid-century, scientists say, to avoid the worst effects of climate change, including rising sea levels, melting snow caps and glaciers, spreading deserts, water shortages and species extinction.

It is a daunting task, but California is leading the rest of the country on environmental regulation and greenhouse gas emission reductions and that is done through the actions of the CARB.

The Schwarzenegger Administration did an excellent job at damage control over the original dust-up over the politicization of the Air Resources Board, but the issue continues to draw headlines weeks later. Why? Well, there is a real issue of how the ARB implements the new greenhouse gas law AB 32, especially with respects to a cap-and-trade program. So, while the new leader of the ARB is declaring that everything is hunky dory over there (and basically saying that it's ok, because she is happy to play politics), there is this article in the Chron.

The rift between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic lawmakers over how the state should fight global warming can be summed up in two numbers: 24 and two.

Those figures represent new jobs proposed at the California Air Resources Board to carry out the governor's preferred strategy for meeting the state's ambitious goals for curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

Under Schwarzenegger's budget plan, the state would commit 24 positions to the task of creating systems such as allowing high-polluting companies to buy credits from low-polluting ones for their greenhouse gas emissions. But the Democrat-controlled Legislature has stripped that number down to two, moving the other 22 positions to focus on regulations aimed at cutting emissions, which is what Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez favors.

Power of the purse is the most apt phrase to describe the tact of the legislators. They passed the bill and the administration is tasked with implementing it. However, the legislature still maintains some control through the budget as to the direction that takes. The credit scheme is what is known as cap-and-trade. Democrats want to see other steps taken before the government gets in the business of administrating a carbon emissions trading system.

The Democrats are responding to the Schwarzenegger administration's political pressure that that they placed on the ARB by applying a little themselves. Considering their leverage is the budget, this particular dispute with the Schwarzenegger administration will be part of larger negotiations that are going on right now. It will continue to make headlines and create headaches for the Schwarzenegger administration, for every article will go back and mention the original scandal.

This increased attention to the ARB has ramped up the pressure that businesses and environmental groups. They are very much still under the microscope. There is a lot at stake, which is why a few jobs has so much significance.

There are two central themes to Dan Walter's column today, both worth examining: Arnold's team is in damage control mode and that their new Air Resources Board appointee is a politico. Walters points out that while Arnold's reasoning for dumping Robert Sawyer are all over the map, his advisors are "maintaining strict message discipline" over their validity.

Schwarzenegger said such characterizations are "not fair" and refused to allow top aides to testify at a legislative hearing into the firing that his spokesman dismissed as a "political drill." To them, it's water under the bridge and everyone should focus on, as press secretary Aaron McLear said Tuesday, "looking forward."

They're concentrating, instead on promoting Sawyer's successor, veteran environmental bureaucrat Mary Nichols, contending that she's the perfect choice to provide leadership on air quality and bridge the gap between environmental and business interests.

This reads like Walters tried fishing around for a cogent argument for Sawyer's ouster, but ran up against tight-lipped spokesmen, who only wanted to talk about Nichols, the new appointee. They want to move past last week's story and on to the confirmation hearings. Unfortunately for them, the Senate conformation hearing will rehash what transpired, in an attempt to assess Nichols ability to resist political pressure from the Schwarzenegger administration.

While Nichols was widely praised by the environmental community, it appears that she is much more of a political animal than her predecessor and has a history of bending to her boss's will.

The biggest difference between Sawyer and Nichols, however, isn't so much one of philosophy but of political orientation. He is a veteran energy scientist with scant political experience while Nichols, an attorney by trade, has operated in a political environment for 30 years and accepts that when one serves a governor -- this is her third -- or a president, there is just one ultimate boss.

That was driven home eight years ago, during the first months of Gray Davis' governorship, when Nichols was serving as Resources Agency secretary and unilaterally altered the state's position on a high-profile lawsuit pitting farmers against environmentalists on a major water issue. She dropped the state's support for farmers, which generated howls from agribusiness and earned her a very sharp, semi-public rebuke from Davis, who dressed her down at a Cabinet meeting, reminding her that he and only he would set policy.

Her situation was uncannily similar to the pressure that Sawyer says he was getting from the Governor's Office. He refused to buckle to Schwarzenegger, but Nichols bowed to Davis and kept her job.

Nichols has already indicated her willingness to find common ground with the governor on a cap-and-trade system. That does not mesh with the legislature, or with the wording of AB 32. It will be a topic of discussion at the hearing, and has the potential to derail her appointment. However that seems to be fairly unlikely, considering the support she has received from the environmental community.

It is official, the controversy over the California Air Resources Board has damaged Arnold's international environmentalist reputation, or so says the New York Times. Really, by printing this story they made it come true. It is about time. Those of us who have been paying close attention all a long know that Arnold often will backtrack on his green promises in an effort to protect the corporate interests that bankroll his massive political apparatus. The Times gives us a recitation of his recent magazine covers and big green bus re-election bus, and then gets into the territory we have been covering for the last week here:

But the Governator’s eco-friendly reputation may have taken a dent over the last week in a messy battle over the leadership of the California Air Resources Board, a science-geared agency that has traditionally operated with considerable autonomy, even though its 11 members are political appointees. Its most visible mandate is the nuts and bolts of putting the emissions law, known as AB 32, into effect.

The conflict, which resulted in the top two officials leaving the board, raised some environmental eyebrows, especially among those who have admired Mr. Schwarzenegger’s strong-willed approach.

Messy is the perfect word to describe what has been going on. The discord has become a bigger issue than the particulars of the disagreement. It is more about process than actual policy, though there is a definite difference between the two sides in their approaches. However, that has been significantly muddled. The Times has a good explanation for the lack of clarity.

“We have schizophrenia here,” said James Marston, a lobbyist for Environmental Defense who worked on passing the emissions law. “Even while we were doing AB 32, the Schwarzenegger administration was a little schizophrenic.”

“We’ve got Schwarzenegger and Maria and a few other folks who are very pro-environment,” Mr. Marston said, referring to Maria Shriver, the governor’s wife. “Then we have some folks that are more traditional Republicans in the sense that they see themselves as defenders of the business interests.”

V. John White, the executive director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, echoed that point. “The moves of last week caused damage to the brand of Arnold,” Mr. White said.

That sounds about right. The Schwarzenegger administration has generally done a good job keeping these sorts of disagreements behind closed doors. This was a rare event where the internal squabbling made national news. The media often jokes about Arnold's difficulty in expressing a clear opinion on certain issues. It is most evident in his statements on Iraq. He has been literally all over the map. Pick out any two comments on the subject and more than likely they will be in direct opposition to each other. It is fairly easy to chalk it all up to Arnold being still a political neophyte. He does not have decades of experience being relentlessly "on message", let alone practice defining that message.

One of the biggest sticking points in the negotiations that led up to the passage of the landmark Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) was whether the goals to reducing greenhouse gas emissions were going to be accomplished through a cap and trade system. Governor Schwarzenegger favored that "market based approach", while the Democrats resisted codifying that into law. The compromise reached allowed that cap and trade was to be one potential solution, only after careful study by the California Air Resources Board (CARB).

Part of the recent dust up over the CARB was how it planned on addressing a potential cap and trade system. Arnold was twisting arms to insure that the CARB would take that approach and vowed that his next pick to head the board would support a cap and trade program.

Before I get ahead of myself here, I want to be clear about we are talking about. Cap and trade systems are basically emission trading programs. They encourage controlling pollution by providing economic incentives for reducing pollution emissions. Participating entities may trade carbon credits. Wikipedia is our friend:

In such a plan, a central authority (usually a government agency) sets a limit or cap on the amount of a pollutant that can be emitted. Companies or other groups that emit the pollutant are given credits or allowances which represent the right to emit a specific amount. The total amount of credits cannot exceed the cap, limiting total emissions to that level. Companies that pollute beyond their allowances must buy credits from those who pollute less than their allowances or face heavy penalties. This transfer is referred to as a trade. In effect, the buyer is being fined for polluting, while the seller is being rewarded for having reduced emissions. Thus companies that can easily reduce emissions will do so and those for which it is harder will buy credits which reduces greenhouse gasses at the lowest possible cost to society.

The environmental community is a bit split on the issue. Nunez has stated that he prefers the ARB meets the "emission-reduction goals with regulations and energy efficiency before a market system such as cap-and-trade is put into place." He is holding a hearing tomorrow on the governor's attempts to influence the ARB.

The Senate will take its turn investigating this issue when Arnold's pick for the new chairmanship of the ARB, Mary Nichols, comes up for her confirmation hearing. Perata writes letters, like this one to Arnold earlier this week:

As you know, you and I have not always agreed on the implementation of the state’s greenhouse gas law.

Specifically, I have taken issue with your preference for market-mechanisms – a.k.a., “cap and trade” – over strong regulation. Last October, I sent you the attached letter, opposing your broadly-drafted executive order directing the ARB to adopt market mechanisms concurrent with the adoption of regulations. I believed your executive order conflicted with AB 32. The law requires that the ARB adopt “early action” emission reduction regulations prior to the use of any market-based compliance mechanisms [Health and Safety Code Section 38560.5]. What’s more, AB 32 specifies that regulations are mandatory, while market-based mechanisms are elective – and, in fact, permitted only after extensive evaluation and a public process.

It's a little more wonky than the above, but you get the picture. There are some pretty high hurdles before a cap and trade system can be put into place under AB 32. Arnold has been working since day one to try and game the system. Trouble is that the language of AB 32 is pretty clear on the subject and it is what Arnold personally signed into law, following intense legilative negotiations.

As for Mary Nichols, she is getting widespread praise as an excellent choice for the chair of the ARB. However, note that she does have experience with running a cap and trade system, thus pleasing Arnold. AP:

Nichols said she supported market-based mechanisms as part of a broader effort that includes regulation. She said she already ran a cap-and-trade program on acid rain when she was at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"I think I can speak with some authority," she said. "It takes a strong regulatory backdrop. It takes good measurement and monitoring. It also takes a recognition that trading is just one tool. The key is the cap."

Expect Nichols to face some pointed questions by Perata about cap and trade during next week's hearing. He promised as much in the letter.

The Senate will determine the extent to which she is both knowledgeable about the law – and the law’s emphasis on strong regulation over market mechanisms – as well as independent, even if given a directive to take an action in conflict with AB 32.

We will establish a bona fide understanding of the law and its enforcement priorities.

The law is the law, not whatever Arnold says it is.

Our fair governor has been lionized by the press and feted around the world for his leadership on global warming. He is the green Republican who worked in a bipartisan manner to pass landmark global warming legislation (AB32). Too bad he has consistently worked to undermine that legislation from the very moment he signed it into law. Finally, his efforts to protect corporations by watering down the implementation of the law are getting some public and legislative attention.

It took the governor firing the chair of the Air Resources Board (ARB), which is tasked with implementing the law to pull the cover off of what has been going on behind the scenes. Even more information came out yesterday when the board's chief executive quit and took the opportunity to air out her grievances with the Schwarzenegger administration. SFChron:

The executive director of the California Air Resources Board, Catherine Witherspoon, resigned Monday -- three days after Schwarzenegger fired the board's chairman, Robert Sawyer, who had said he wanted to be more aggressive in curbing pollution that causes global warming than does the Republican governor, who signed the state's landmark bill last year.

Sawyer, a 72-year-old engineer, made public on Monday a transcript of a voice mail, left on his phone by one of Schwarzenegger's aides before the air board's meeting last month, urging the chairman to adopt only the three rules acceptable to the governor.

The voice mail directly refuted the claims last week by Arnold's communication director, Adam Mendelsohn, who said the governor "wanted to adopt more tan the three items last month". Yesterday, Mendelsohn attacked the board in response to the airing of the voicemail, saying what they wanted to do "neither made sense nor would have an impact." Mendelsohn and the governor are lacking some serious credibility on the issue.

"Every signal the board got from the governor's office staff was, 'Slow down, don't hurt industry, don't get ahead of us on greenhouse gases,' " Witherspoon said in an interview on Monday.

The ARB is a governor appointed board, but they have traditionally operated in an very independent manner. That has clearly not been the case with respect to AB32. Arnold failed to get all of the corporate protections he wanted in the original negotiations with the legislature. He decided to sign the bill anyways, eager to get the international praise and have a huge victory he could use in his re-election campaign. His staff moved to try and manage how the ARB implemented the law and this is the result.

The Democratic leadership is speaking out and Speaker Nunez has called for hearings on Friday, where he will call in Sawyer and Witherspoon to testify. SacBee:

"The only reason (Sawyer and Witherspoon) are gone is because clearly the administration was tying their hands behind their backs in not allowing them to do the job that they needed to do in order to begin the implementation phase of AB 32," Núñez states in a recording released by the speaker's office.

Meanwhile, Arnold has encouraged a further politicization of the ARB.

The governor stepped further into the political fray when he said Monday that the next ARB chief must support a market-based system that allows companies to emit more greenhouse gases in California if they buy credits from clean firms elsewhere in the world. Schwarzenegger has signed agreements to link California to other states and nations under such a "cap-and-trade" system.

But Perata and Núñez expressed concern with the governor's use of that criterion as a prerequisite. Democrats assert that AB 32 never mandates cap-and-trade and includes it only as one option to be studied.

Arnold desperately wanted to include cap and trade in AB32, but was only able to convince the Democrats to add it as a potential consideration. We knew Arnold was going to push hard to ensure it was put in to place. Indeed all of this squabbling seems like the opening battles over this particular decision, which is much larger in scope than most of the other decisions the ARB has and will be making. The Democrats are taking steps to ensure their voice is heard on cap and trade.

Environmental groups, backed by Democratic legislators, have denounced the administration's cap-and-trade policy as beyond the intent of AB 32, however, favoring a more direct regulatory mechanism on emissions. The Democratic version of the state budget, in fact, seeks to deny funds for any development of cap-and-trade policy until broader studies are completed.

We are still waiting on the budget, as negotiations take place behind closed doors. It is unclear if that will survive the process, given Arnold's support for cap and trade. It may be a casualty of the process, but here is to hoping the Democrats stick to their guns.

The LAT today uses another one of the ARB's decisions to use as an example for Arnold's negative interference and attempts to undermine his own law.

As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger travels the world exhorting countries to act quickly to reduce harmful gas emissions, his administration is helping California's construction industry stall tough new air quality rules at home.

In public hearings and private negotiations, administration transportation officials are working to slow a planned crackdown by regulators on aging diesel construction equipment — among the state's most noxious machinery and a major source of greenhouse gases.

The officials successfully lobbied a board appointed by the governor to delay voting on draft regulations for dealing with the polluters. The officials argued that the new rules, years in the making, were too tough on the construction industry — which is a major Schwarzenegger donor.

Sawyer, the recently fired ARB chair pushed forward with much more aggressive pollution controls than Arnold wanted. Schwarzenegger tried to claim that it was because he was not being stringent enough, a laughable contention, given all of the above.

This is what the ARB wanted to cut down on emissions from:

Fumes from heavy diesel construction equipment are linked to tens of thousands of cases of asthma and 1,100 deaths annually, state studies show. Scientists and economists say staying in compliance with the federal Clean Air Act would cost the industry more than $3 billion over the next two decades. Construction companies say it could be at least three times that amount.

This is not just about state law, but ensuring that the construction industry complies with federal law. California dragging its feet could jeopardize $1.2 billion in federal transportation funding. There will be a considerable cost to the construction industry, but they are about to see a huge influx in new revenue due to all of the new construction from the infrastructure bonds.

The construction industry donated at least $1.3 billion in direct contributions to Arnold's re-election campaign and footed a good chunk of the bill for his inauguration bonanza. They are getting their payback for all of those donations with Arnold ARB actions. If they could afford all of those contributions, they can find the cash to pay for cleaner equipment.

The Democrats have been moving on legislation to ensure the adoption of the cleaner machines and have now included the issue in budget negotiations. However, like the cap and trade issue, it will have a hard time getting past Arnold veto pen.

I am looking forward to the hearings on Friday. Hopefully, they will be able to shed a little more light on what really went on behind the scenes. The local California media has sunk its teeth into the issue, but it would be impressive to see the national/international media pick up this story-line. It is time for the world to see that green Arnold is only skin deep, just like the paint on his re-election bus.