Annie Notthoff's Blog: Curbing Pollution

Today Earth Day is Family Day for Me

2010-04-23T01:51:52Z

This morning on my way to work in San Francisco, I joined 50 other people on a street corner in Oakland, just around the corner from where both my mother and father grew up and down the street from where both my children were born. So it was a bit of old home week for me. As a fifth generation Californian I’ve always been proud of the way our state has been on the cutting edge of pragmatic and effective environmental policy, but its citizens are facing a dire threat on Earth Day, 2010: an assault by Texas oil refiners on AB 32, the state’s clean energy law.

Valero Energy Corp. and a consortium of Texas-based refiners have pumped more than $2 million into a signature-gathering campaign to place an initiative on the November ballot that would delay or prevent full implementation of AB 32. This landmark legislation is creating thousands of new jobs and stimulating new technologies in the emerging clean energy sector while simultaneously cutting emissions of greenhouse gases.

Valero’s campaign – cynically and inaccurately tagged the California Jobs Initiative -- is a bald-faced ploy to maximize petroleum industry profits by scotching the drive toward cleaner, greener fuels. But Californians are not fooled: they have responded to this stealth campaign by Oil Patch bigwigs with outrage. Earth Day protests were held at Valero gas stations in Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. And this is just the beginning. Clean energy advocates will continue this fight to Election Day.

Make no mistake-- there is no bigger threat to economic growth, job creation and clean air than this effort by Texas oil companies to kill AB 32, our roadmap to a clean energy future. Californians know they can have both a thriving economy and a healthy environment. The protests we saw on Earth Day are telling the company they can’t sneak this ‘Dirty Energy Initiative’ through. We’re ready and eager for battle – and when we get through with these carpet baggers, they’re going to wish they’d stayed in Texas and concentrated on their barbecue recipes.

According to a recent Field Poll, support for AB 32 remains strong, with 58 percent of residents backing the legislation. Many of the state’s major newspapers – including the San Jose Mercury News, the Sacramento Bee and the Santa Rosa Press Democrat – already have run editorials blasting the Valero initiative. There’s a very good reason for this: Valero has a long and lamentable record of pursuing short-term profits over the public good. The Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts deemed the firm one of the worst polluters in the United States, and in 2005 the company was hit with $711 million in fines by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Contrary to Valero’s invidious claims, AB 32 is a boon to California. According to a recent University of California analysis, the legislation will create about 112,000 new jobs and generate $20 billion for the state’s economy. Additionally, the bill sets the standard for the nation in reducing harmful carbon emissions and puts California at the vanguard of energy research and development. AB 32 points the way to the technology we’ll need to meet 21st Century economic and environmental challenges. Valero’s initiative does just the opposite, harkening to bankrupt technologies, shrinking job and energy sectors and a polluted planet. We’re getting the word out—don’t sign this initiative. It’s a stalking horse for Big Oil and expensive, dirty energy. If it does get on the ballot, don’t vote for it.

*Photo credit: Natural Resources Defense Council

Valero: Don’t Fuel Up the Hype Machine about California’s AB 32

2010-04-21T21:59:16Z

Watch out: Big Oil, coal, their polluting friends and their legions of well-paid public relations minions are fueling up the hype machine once again. This time they’re saying AB 32, California’s forward-looking legislation that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote new environmentally-friendly technology, will cost the state jobs. Led by Valero Corp. and a coalition of Texas Oil refiners, they’ve wrapped their spurious claims in something they call the California Jobs Initiative, a referendum they’re attempting to place on the state’s November ballot. If approved, the initiative will delay—and possibly prevent-- implementation of AB32.

It’s time for a bit of a reality check here. First, let’s remember that Texas Oil doesn’t care about California Jobs. Texas Oil cares about Texas Oil’s Profits – profits that are paying professional signature gatherers an unusually high price for every California signature they get on their petitions. They’re out here mucking around in California’s politics because they consider AB 32 – otherwise known as the Global Warming Solutions Act— a threat. They are in the business of purveying high-carbon fossil fuels, and any public health or clean energy program that interferes with that is on their hit list.

The fact is that AB 32 gives California a competitive advantage by positioning us as a leader in the growing clean tech sector of the 21st Century. It will stimulate new technologies and create thousands of new jobs – indeed, just by providing certainty, it’s already helped create an investment environment to do just that. Projects totaling 10,000 megawatts of renewable energy are now competing for federal dollars in California.

More and more there are projects and payrolls that would not exist without the stability that AB 32 provides. We all know that we need plenty of jobs and abundant energy in California. We also know that we can’t go around producing them in the old way. AB 32 confronts the inevitability of change, and ensures that California will profit, not suffer, from it. We cannot let a gang of self-interested Texas oil refiners to drag us back to primitive energy sources and primitive economic models.

Hey, Valero: take a page from the game plan of your competitors. Just because you pump dead dinosaurs doesn’t mean you have to think like one.

Powering California’s Clean Energy Job Mill

2010-01-13T18:36:52Z

Whoever claims that jobs and the environment don’t go hand in hand has never been to California. As our state, the eighth largest economy in the world, continues to face a tailspin of budget woes, reports continue to show that the largest job gains are in the clean energy field. This is a state that has transformed the national clean energy economy and is a historic leader in advancing energy efficiency, renewable energy development and manufacturing, yet lately whenever we find ourselves in a budget crunch, the very environmental protection laws that have contributed to our State’s success are among the first things Sacramento considers sacrificing.

It’s a false sacrifice usually masked by the promise of “shovel-ready” jobs. I made this same argument last year when the Governor proposed to exempt eight infrastructure projects from California’s Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) in an effort to get people to work during the first months of the recession. It’s a false and ultimately fruitless choice to give any project immunity from our state’s bedrock environmental law and excuse any environmental fallout from the projects that ultimately aren’t job creators, at least certainly not for the long-haul.

Now there’s another budget proposal to exempt more projects from CEQA to solve the current budget battle and another separate effort is underway to “suspend” California’s landmark global warming law enacted in 2006 in a thinly veiled attempt by industry to derail the monumental progress California has made in adopting a path to clean energy. Both attempts characterize economic growth as distinct from environmental protection, which cannot be further from the truth.

State Senator Steinberg addressed that falsehood earlier this week: “the notion that we can revitalize our economy by making it easier to decimate our environment is simply false. I don’t know any Californian who wants to live, work, and raise their family in a state where we make it easier to pollute the air that we breathe and the water that we drink.”

Here are a few stats we should keep in mind from a recent Next 10 report on California’s clean energy job force. These are local, good-paying, real jobs that invest in American ingenuity and retain homegrown technology advances as we move our country beyond our addiction to oil.

Between 2007-2008, clean jobs in California grew 5% while total jobs dropped 1%.
Between 1995-2008, green businesses increased 45%, green jobs grew 36% while total jobs in the state grew only 13%.
Employment in Energy Efficiency increased 63% from 1995-2008.
Employment in Green Transportation has increased 152% since 1995.

While we all know that global economic conditions have taken a toll on our national and state economies, here in California, we have an unparalleled record of generating economic profit while controlling pollution because we have been doing both for the last 35 years. State energy policies have also saved California households $56 billion from 1972-2006.

California has much at stake when politics dictates our job growth, but we also have much to gain by sticking to solutions that have added to our economy over the years and created thousands of jobs in a sector that is expected to continue advancing across the country.

While California found religion in the clean tech industry decades ago, many states are just recently following our example. We continue to outpace other states in their investments in the clean energy industry as our state strives to attain a third of our power from renewable energy by 2020. No other state can match the scope of that goal and our determination and yet there are efforts to roll back our investments in the clean tech field in favor of subsidies for dirty industries that continue to drag their heels when it comes to supporting California’s pioneering clean energy standards.

We must tell our leaders not to sacrifice our environment, where we live and work, for short-sighted gains that will only delay California’s progress in becoming the world leader for the clean energy economy.

Using Faux Scandals to Delay Progress

2009-12-08T21:20:50Z

The role of science in curbing harmful pollution has received significant play recently. A series of stolen emails has been the subject of climate change debates just as the international community is gearing up for negotiations in Copenhagen despite the vast majority of international governments agreeing that action must be taken to reduce lethal climate change pollution. Despite the attention the science behind climate change has received recently, the global community is in agreement that our climate is changing and that it is human caused.

A similar thinly veiled attempt to derail the most significant public health regulation to come through California in decades is also brewing at California’s Air Resources Board (CARB). Chaired by Mary Nichols, CARB has been a leader in battling harmful air pollution for decades. This agency is also charged with implementing California’s landmark climate change legislation, AB 32. Fearful of the progress in cleaning up some of dirtiest air in the nation in the San Joaquin Valley and Los Angeles region, trucking lobbyists have started to complain about a recently passed and long overdue regulation aimed at modernizing our decrepit fleet of large trucks traveling throughout the state.

CARB is holding a hearing in Sacramento tomorrow to provide updates on several issues, including the economic implications of diesel regulations planned to take effect over the upcoming years. The CARB regulations will require roughly one million existing diesel vehicles to be upgraded with exhaust retrofits or cleaner engines beginning in 2010 and phasing in through 2022 to reduce diesel soot and smog-forming gases. Most long distance trucks and trailers will also have to use EPA-approved efficient tires and aerodynamic fittings, both of which are expected to save billions of gallons of fuel. School buses are included in these regulations, but would generally be required only to add exhaust retrofits, for which there is ample public funding available. To be honest, this is an expensive rule, but the trucking industry has benefited for decades by not having programs in place to clean up its aging fleet of trucks. Thousands of respiratory illnesses and premature deaths were caused by this lack of progress.

The link between diesel pollution and an array of potentially lethal respiratory diseases is founded in a plethora of independent and peer-reviewed findings. However, opponents of clean air programs are spinning tales of corruption that are simply unfounded. Lacking real grounds to oppose this regulation, which is slated to save thousands of lives each year from premature death due to air pollution, the opponents of clean air progress have latched onto an episode where a person that worked for CARB lied about their credentials. Conveniently, these opponents of clean air have left out critical facts like the fact that the report on the impacts of the diesel pollution was peer reviewed and the science behind the impacts of diesel is long-standing and exceptionally compelling. Obviously, these clean air opponents prefer ignoring science.

Heavy-duty trucks in California are the largest single source of diesel pollution, leading to thousands of illnesses and deaths each year. Pollution from diesel trucks in California is responsible for roughly 4,500 premature deaths each year, which is more than the number of deaths from auto accidents. The cost of this loss of life in addition to disease, lost work days, and school absences adds up to $40 billion per year. However, diesel pollution could easily be prevented through upgrades to the existing truck fleet. While truck owners may be wary of the added costs of upgrades that will be required, $1 billion funding has been made available by the state to offset those costs.

Individuals calling for a suspension of the diesel rule until a reexamination of the science behind diesel and adverse public health problems are simply deluding themselves. They need to wake up to the reality that we need to clean up the decrepit trucks to clean California’s air, reduce global warming pollution, and protect the health of millions of California’s residents.

California’s 2009 Legislative Session Ends with a Whimper

2009-10-13T23:47:38Z

Ending one of the most contentious legislative sessions in California's history, Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed dozens of environmental bills and signed several others over the weekend that will add tons of air pollution to our environment, delay our freedom from fossil fuel dependency and put people at risk to preventable toxics exposure. The legislative session was mired in stalemates over the state budget, economic downturn, water woes and industry-led midnight deals.

Polluters used economy scare tactics to attack public health protections, environmental progress and existing laws this legislative session. For the first time in years bills that hurt the environment managed to pass the legislature and were signed by the Governor and too many of the bills that would have provided true environmental and public health protections for Californians were held over until next year.

Good news was hard to come by this session, as the Governor's veto pen fell hard on environmental bills this year - a notable departure from his previous record.

A package of bills (SB 14 and AB 64) that would set the most aggressive renewable energy targets in the country were vetoed by the Governor, as was a bill that would have ensured that the state's green building standard is rigorous and leads to buildings of superior environmental performance.

In signing AB 1318 (Perez) and SB 827 (Wright), the Governor allows the South Coast Air Quality Management District to dismantle landmark environmental court victories blocking the sale and distribution of unsubstantiated air emission credits to power plant developers in Southern California. These bills have nothing to do with job creation and everything to do with AQMD trying to make an end run around landmark environmental laws and the federal Clean Air Act.

More progress was made in implementing California's existing landmark environmental laws. California's Global Warming Solutions Act's (AB 32) scoping plan was adopted early in 2009 by the California Air Resources Board, California's climate and land use planning law's (SB 375) regional target reductions plan was developed and CARB is set to vote on the plan this month. The California Fish and Game Commission also adopted measures within the Marine Life Protection Act to create 24 marine protected areas and ban or restrict fishing in nearly 20 percent of coastal waters between the North and Central California Coast, a similar effort is underway in Southern California.

The package of water bills currently under consideration in a special session called by the Governor this week is still in flux, but initially represents a real breakthrough among environmental groups, major utilities, business and agricultural interests. The package consists of policies to require the State Water Board to develop public trust flow determinations to restore and sustain the Delta estuary and our salmon fisheries, a comprehensive and enforceable water conservation program that addresses industrial, agricultural and urban water use, and a Delta Stewardship Council, a groundwater monitoring program and enhanced enforcement capacity at the State Board to address the problem of illegal diversions and permit violations.

California Budget Is Painful to All – Especially Breathers

2009-02-21T01:28:47Z

The California Air Resources Board ("CARB") recently enacted rules to fight air pollution from off-road diesel vehicles such as construction equipment and tractors. Emissions of nitrogen oxides (precursors of ozone) and diesel particulates (known carcinogens) were specifically targeted. CARB staff estimates that approximately 4,000 premature deaths will be avoided statewide by the year 2030 due to the off-road rules, as well as 680,000 work loss days. CARB enacted this rule in public session after several years of public input, including public hearings in which the heavy equipment industry had a chance to make their case. The final rule requires owners of fleets of off-road vehicles to modernize (on a fleet average basis) the vehicles' engines, over a period of years.

These rules are important not just for the public health impacts, but because California needs them to be in compliance with the federal Clean Air Act. Because the air in our state is so bad, CARB has to give the federal EPA a written plan, called a State Implementation Plan or SIP, that shows how we will clean up the air to federal standards. Part of the SIP requirement is that CARB show EPA how California will make progress towards our clean air goals. If California can't show we're making progress, federal highway and other funds could be pulled.

CARB relied on the pollution reductions that the off-road diesel rules will bring in showing the EPA how it will make yearly progress towards the required goal and the progress needed to show that it will ultimately meet the clean air standards on time. Now, Legislative Republicans forced a back room budget deal to cut the legs out from under CARB. This means that, as of this writing, California is violating the Clean Air Act because it cannot show that it will meet the air pollution reduction requirements that the Act demands.

CARB has been whistling past the graveyard, saying publicly that it can find enough pollution reductions elsewhere to make up the difference. But if extra reductions were so easy to find, CARB would have already found them and put them into the SIP. The truth is that air pollution reductions lost in the budget compromise will be very difficult to make up, putting California's physical and economic health in danger. As long as California's budget process allows a handful of legislators to hold the state hostage, our environmental and public health programs are at risk. It's time for reform.

California Keeps Moving Towards Solving Global Warming

2008-06-18T23:51:29Z

As a continuation of my first video blog, here I talk about two pieces of solutions-based legislation in California aimed at combatting global warming.

The first is AB 32, The Global Warming Solutions Act, a landmark law that NRDC helped pass in 2006 and now we're working hard to make sure it makes a difference as it is implemented.

The second, SB 375 - by Senator Darrell Steinberg, the incoming Pro Tem of the California State Senate - is another vehicle (pun intended) to reduce emissions of heat-trapping pollution by getting people out of their cars through better planning.

Check out this editorial in the Sacramento Bee for more background.