CARB

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.

It know it's not a thrilling story, but the plans the California Air Resource Board is putting together is one of the biggest environmental stories in the country. California has huge ambitious goals to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and the CARB is tasked with figuring out how we get there and issuing regulations to ensure it happens. SacBee:

The state Air Resources Board will launch into a yearlong planning effort today that it hopes will yield a workable plan for slashing California's annual greenhouse gas emissions by 100 million metric tons in just 12 years.

That goal – the equivalent of cutting the state's gasoline use almost 70 percent – represents most of the reductions mandated under Assembly Bill 32, passed last year. The specific regulations enacted to meet it likely will affect virtually every sector of the California economy, from how electricity is generated to how new communities are planned.

Many of the emissions reductions will be straightforward expansions of energy-efficiency programs that the state already has pursued for years. But others – like rules that could affect land use – will put the agency in unfamiliar regulatory territory.

At today's public meeting in Diamond Bar, the agency will consider how to divide the state's greenhouse-gas sources into six economic sectors: electricity; local initiatives and land use; transportation; business and industry; agriculture; and forestry.

It is an enormous task, with huge implications.

California's sunshine laws are really valuable in letting us track the CARB's process. We may have a decimated newspaper staff, but they have been paying a lot of attention to these meetings, especially given the vest interest in corporations influencing this process. Not only is there a lot at stake for the environment, but the regulations will have potentially large fiscal impacts on various corporate sectors. So let the sunlight shine.

The California Air Resources Board is set today to propose new measures to cut our state's global warming emissions. These have been in the works for a while and will be a significant step towards reaching the goals of AB 32. LAT:

The proposals include retrofitting trucks, reducing pollution in computer manufacturing and requiring car owners to keep their tires properly inflated. Altogether, they would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2.8 million metric tons a year, an early dent in the 174 million metric tons that must be slashed by the year 2020.

"None of these are huge measures," board Chairman Mary Nichols said in an interview. "But added together, they are quite significant. . . . Every single action we take -- government, businesses, municipalities and individuals alike -- makes a difference toward ultimately cooling our planet."

California's landmark global warming law requires that emissions be reduced to 1990 levels over the next 13 years, a challenge that will require massive changes in many industries, including automotive and electrical power.

The CARB will continue rolling out these types of regulations in the years and months to come. These regulations bring us more than 1/5 of the way to the goal set by AB 32, so there is a lot more to do. It is a great start.

The California Air Board is back to making regulations, a welcome sign after quite a bit of controversy. They ruled yesterday that construction equipment that belches pollution be replaced with ones that emit less emissions. This ruling has been eagerly awaited for three years. LAT:

California's diesel-powered bulldozers, scrapers and other heavy construction equipment must be retrofitted or replaced over the next 13 years to reduce the air pollution that sickens tens of thousands of residents every year, state regulators decided Thursday.

Under tough new rules adopted by the Air Resources Board, California is the first state to make construction companies fix existing diesel-powered machines. Heavy equipment can last 30 years or more, so without the new mandate, it would take decades for fleets to upgrade to cleaner equipment.

Although the fumes are most often associated with big trucks and buses, 20% of California's diesel pollution comes from the construction industry. Building, mining and airport vehicles are responsible for an estimated 1,100 premature deaths statewide every year and more than 1,000 hospitalizations for heart and lung disease, along with tens of thousands of asthma attacks, scientists say.

This ruling gives the company enough time to become compliant, and by 2010 we should be breathing in cleaner air. The CARB also passed a provision that lets particularly polluted regions like Los Angeles and the Central Valley to "accelerate the diesel equipment schedule in their districts". The board has also moved to clean up garbage trucks, ships and buses. Heavy duty trucks are next on the docket.

"It's a good day for clean air," said Barry Wallerstein, executive officer of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Wallerstein said the region must achieve twice the amount of construction pollution cuts as the overall state goal in order to meet federal standards. The region, one of the dirtiest in the country, is under a strict mandate to improve its air by 2015. The AQMD will offer construction companies $120 million in incentives to purchase particulate filters or buy new machines.

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.

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.