Sierra Club Hails Obama Plan for Clean Cars Plan Mirrors Landmark California Effort to Slash Oil Dependence, Emissions

Washington, D.C.--President Obama will tomorrow announce a comprehensive national standard addressing fuel economy and global warming emissions from our cars, trucks, and SUVs. Media reports indicate that the new national standard roughly mirrors the proposed California clean car standards—cutting global warming emissions approximately 30 percent by 2016 and significantly increasing fuel economy This is the first national tailpipe standard for global warming emissions. The administration will also reportedly grant California the Clean Air Act waiver for its clean cars program that it has long been seeking and was unlawfully denied by the Bush administration.

Statement of Carl Pope, Sierra Club Executive Director

"President Obama is putting the pedal to the floor when it comes to slashing our dependence on oil and confronting global warming. Last month the administration closed the books on the Bush era of climate denial once and for all by acknowledging the threat of global warming, and now today they moving forward with a plan that will give new life to the American auto industry and ensure that the next generation of clean, efficient autos will be made right here in the U.S.A

"In addition to dramatically reducing the global warming emissions from our vehicles, this move will slash our dependence on oil and make us more energy independent. Congress put us on the road toward more fuel efficient vehicles two years ago when it passed the first increase in fuel economy standards in more than 30 years. Now President Obama is dramatically accelerating our progress.

"In another clean break with the unlawful and irrational policies of its predecessor, the Obama administration will also reportedly grant California its longstanding request for a Clean Air Act waiver for its landmark clean cars program. This is yet another strong example of the new direction President Obama and EPA Administrator Jackson have taken—one based on the rule of law and sound science, not petty politics.

"Today's announcement is one of the most significant efforts undertaken by any president, ever, to end our addiction to oil and seriously slash our global warming emissions. The speed with which the Obama administration is moving to build the clean energy economy has been breathtaking. President Obama clearly sees the big picture when comes to rebuilding our economy, making the clean energy future a reality, and fighting global warming. "

Click here to read a related article from the LA Times.

Getting Clean Power Plugged In

Today’s packed Senate Energy, Utilities and Communications hearing showed just how many people hope to bring more clean power to California.

Right now is our best chance to give California’s clean-energy future a solid foundation. That’s why our state’s renewable portfolio standard should be at least 33 percent by 2020.

We can make that standard even stronger by requiring that newly generated power come from truly clean sources. It just makes sense to consider the potential impacts of building new dams and hydroelectric facilities, or of converting waste into energy. These proposals have a price tag that will be paid not only by ratepayers, but by California’s wild rivers and clean air.

Now is also a great time to start thinking about an enforcement strategy for bringing California into the clean-energy future. As Senator Simitian mentioned while defending the bill, California’s Public Utilities Commission never has issued a single penalty for utilities that fail to meet state standards for new renewable power. Not one.

That’s why it’s a good time to hold those commissioners to a higher standard as well, with regard to conflict-of-interest. We can’t continue the revolving-door policy that encourages the regulated to become the regulators.

Sierra Club California pledges to continue working with Sen. Simitian and the committee to improve SB 14 and to bring cleaner energy to all Californians. Read Sierra Club California's full letter to the committee.

photo courtesy US Dept. of Energy

Sick Trees and Global Warming Science

“We will act, not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. … We'll restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.”

(President Barack Obama’s Inaguration Day Speech, January 20, 2008)

President Obama’s inspiring words about science and green infrastructure have brought new hope to Sierra Club California – even amid bad news today that global warming is decimating western forests.

Our hope? That this Administration will apply science and technology to the problem of global warming – just as his predecessor’s administration disregarded science – in time to turn back the threat to our trees.

Last year, then-President Bush’s U.S. EPA denied California’s automobile greenhouse gas waiver request. The waiver would have allowed California and other states to implement a plan to fight greenhouse gases created by cars, trucks and vehicles – the top source of the pollution that causes global warming in our state, scientific studies have shown.

California Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols has written the Obama Administration a letter requesting that the waiver be granted. Quick action on this matter will allow other states to follow in California’s lead – and perhaps prompt the production of cleaner cars.

At the same time, we need to keep in mind that harm to our forests has already begun, and is unlikely to stop even if we begin to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That’s why Sierra Club California started working with state officials to craft a plan to lessen the inevitable effects of global warming on habitats and wildlife.

Obama’s Administration can also follow California’s path in this – or work with our state’s leaders to ensure that science and protection prevails. As our new President said during his inauguration, “With old friends and former foes, we'll work tirelessly to .. roll back the specter of a warming planet.”

Let that work begin now.

Feed In Tariffs – The Right Idea, Right Now

Sierra Club California just submitted a letter urging California’s energy officials to embrace “feed-in tariffs” in a big way.

Feed-in tariffs are incentive structures used to encourage generation of renewable energy by compensating for price differences between renewable power and fossil fuel electricity. As applied in Germany, this system sets a fair price for renewable power, encouraging widespread generation and use.

Not only would feed-in tariffs encourage cleaner power production, they also represent a good way for the state to take on climate change. Sierra Club California has urged the California Air Resources Board to consider this powerful economic tool as it considers the Climate Change Scoping Plan today and tomorrow.

But for now, the state has proposed a limited version of feed-in tariffs, limiting them to smaller plants (less than 20 megawatts in size). We are telling the air board and the energy commission to raise that limit, and to give feed in tariffs more power to increase the amount of renewable energy generated in the state.

We’re also working with lawmakers to generate measures that would encourage California to embrace this powerful new philosophy – and that encourage the state to raise its clean power production goal to 33% by 2020.

Read Sierra Club California’s Dec 10 comments to the California Energy Commission

The Cost Of Bad Air

Two California State University professors, Jane V. Hall and Victor Brajer, just released a study that proves what we have all known for a long time: Dirty air has a high cost.

Nearly every resident of the Central Valley and South Coast region suffers from exposure to dirty air, and too many pay a tragic price: as many as 3,860 adults die prematurely each year due to air pollution in those two areas of the state, according to the study. (The South Coast region includes Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Orange counties; the Central Valley region stretches across Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera, Merced, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, and Tulare counties).

Because the pollution concentrations are highest in African American and Latino neighborhoods, those families suffer the most exposure to harmful air pollution particles, the findings show.

Meeting federal air quality standards would prevent those deaths, the study finds, and would result in:

• 1,950 fewer new cases of adult onset chronic bronchitis
• 3,517,720 fewer days of reduced activity in adults
• 2,760 fewer hospital admissions
• 141,370 fewer asthma attacks
• 1,259,840 fewer days of school absence
• 16,110 fewer cases of acute bronchitis in children
• 466,880 fewer lost days of work
• 2,078,300 fewer days of respiratory symptoms in children
• 2,800 fewer emergency room visits


Between the cost of medical care and the dollars spent on lost productivity, California spends nearly $28 billion in those two regions, the CSU Fullerton professors reported.

The study was released just as California air regulators begin discussing key air quality rules, including rules that would help clean up diesel exhaust from trucks and a plan to deal with climate change.

Recent Coverage:

Study: Calif. Dirty Air Kills More Than Car Crashes (AP)

Human cost of valley's dirty air: $6.3 billion (The Sacramento Bee)

Bad air costing state's economy billions (SF Chronicle)

More than 400 related stories (Google News)

And The Winner Is...

Grassroots lobbying is more important than ever.

That's what Senate President Pro Tempore Don Perata, D-Oakland, told a group of volunteer lobbyists who donated their Sunday and Monday to assist Sierra Club California's senior staff in advocating key legislation.

Perata, who won Sierra Club California's first-ever Byron Sher Award for Outstanding Environmental Achievement by a Public Official in recognition of his tireless efforts on behalf of the environment, encouraged these volunteers to continue to maintain their presence in the State Capitol. Because of term limits, he said, California's legislative leaders won't have the experience to push forward major pieces of legislation like the Global Warming Solutions Act - unless the people in their district hold them to it.

"If you can talk to someone where they live, where they shop, that's going to be how we get these bills passed," he said. "[You must] maintain your vigilance, and maintain the priority you place on the environment in your daily lives."

He also warned that some Republican representatives of the Legislature want to build more dams and roll back environmental protections.

But it wasn't all seriousness. After warning the Club members to stay aware of legislation, he brought warm laughter with an aside:

"Of course, asking Sierra Club members to be more vigilant is crazy," he joked.

Carl Pope On The Colbert Report

(Caution: Contains mature content)

Stephen Colbert tries to rattle Sierra Club Director Carl Pope -- as he takes a strong stand against drilling off California's coasts, and in other protected areas!

Another Bush Administration Global Warming Delay?

As California takes on global warming by setting real targets for pollution reduction, the Bush administration continues to drag its feet.

Remember how the U.S. Supreme Court told the federal government it must act to stop the pollution that causes climate change? Well, as predicted earlier this week by the San Francisco Chronicle, the Bush administration will continue to defy the Court today by issuing a request for additional comments — an "Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking"— on global warming regulations, rather than the so-called "endangerment determination" that the Court's ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA compelled and that senior Environmental Protection Agency officials had argued for.

Today's Washington Post details the tireless efforts of senior political appointees in the administration to prevent global warming regulations from being in put in place under President Bush... the same President Bush who this week called global warming a "serious problem."

David Bookbinder, Sierra Club's Chief Climate Counsel and the attorney who's defending California's Clean Car Law, had this to say about the Bush administration's latest delay in addressing global warming:

"Today's action caps off eight years of catastrophic negligence on the part
of an increasingly irrelevant administration, and removes whatever shadow of a
doubt that may have existed about whether it was going to fail to live up to its
obligations to the American public, the law, and the Supreme Court to do
something real on global warming.

"The American public, Congress, world leaders, and even career government
officials are counting down the days until this administration leaves town and a
new president undoes the damage done by President Bush and makes up for nearly a decade of lost time — time we didn't have to waste in the first place. And the
first thing the next administration will do is toss the Advanced Notice of
Proposed Rulemaking into the circular file.

"Stephen Johnson should have left his post long ago, but today's action underscores his complete and utter lack of credibility. Johnson will be remembered not for his decades of public service, but rather for his unswerving fealty to the misguided policies of a failed administration.

"This global warming melodrama has all the set pieces of classic Bush administration political theater: politics coming before science, outright deception of the American public and Congressional investigators, willful disregard for the law and courts, and political meddling at the highest levels to protect favored special interests--with the dark hand of the Vice President visible throughout. Thankfully this drama is near the end of its final act."

Read The News Today? Oh Boy!

California’s budget deadline passed over the weekend, but today’s newspaper brought worse budget news.

Republican lawmakers told the Los Angeles Times they want to put off California’s efforts to control the pollution that causes global warming, and to stop harmful diesel emissions from choking Californians, Times reporter Evan Halper wrote today. Because California must obtain GOP votes to pass the annual budget, this proposal must be dealt with before our state’s financial plan can move forward.

None of these proposed rollbacks will have an immediate effect on the more-than-$15-billion revenue gap faced by the state, Halper’s story states.

These regulations don’t just mean cleaner air, they also save lives. Air pollution causes some 24,000 early deaths each year in California, and particulate matter from diesel emissions contributes to those deaths.

California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, on the other hand, stimulates our state’s economic survival. For Californians affected by the recent economic downturn, the Global Warming Solutions Act also could mean new jobs. Venture capitalists poured $1.79 billion into the Golden State's green companies last year, accounting for 45 percent of all green investments in North America.

If this proposal sounds familiar, it’s something the Republicans first proposed in April, and we’ve been speaking out about it all this spring. Our allies in the health and labor communities have joined us in a simple message to the Legislature and governor: Don't allow our quality of life to be held hostage or traded away in budget negotiations.

-Bill Magavern, Director, Sierra Club California


See what Sierra Club California had to say about the budget plan in May

Read the California Air Resources Board’s report on the early deaths

Your donation provides a voice for clean air in California’s Capitol

Banding Together To Protect The Budget

Remember last year’s budget debacle?

California’s legislative Republicans held up the budget for more than a month as they tried to roll back environmental protections – and as everyday Californians rolled their eyes at the lack of leadership they exhibited.

Now, they’re at it again. They’ve already said they plan to postpone implementation of California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, roll back diesel pollution reductions and undermine the 8-hour work day. These proposals probably will become a big part of the negotiations surrounding California’s 2008-2009 budget.

So this year, Sierra Club California and its environmental, health and labor allies have taken an early, unified stand against the efforts to undermine our environmental and worker protections.
California needs solid proposals to close a budgetary gap that’s yawned to more than $15 billion.

That’s why the Republican proposals are so shaky: they actually pile on more potential costs. For example, the Republicans want the Legislature to extend deadlines for cleaning up dangerous emissions from the diesel trucks responsible for nearly 40 percent of California’s most toxic diesel pollution.

At what cost? Diesel pollution annually leads to 1,500 early deaths annually, and causes about $12 billion in costs associated with premature death, health care, lost productivity and lost school attendance each year.

There’s even more potential expense associated with a delay in the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act. If we don’t immediately address the pollution that causes global warming, we won’t benefit from the measures taken to reduce that pollution: cleaner air and energy, more efficient cars and appliances and protected coastal areas.

And we might not take in as big a share of the $1.79 billion that venture capitalists poured into California’s green economy last year.

Despite the clear benefits provided by the environmental rules, Sierra Club California advocates fully expect this year’s budget negotiations to once again include a battle to protect our air and atmosphere.

As the minority party, Republicans have the most power during the budget process, since they can withhold the few Republican votes needed to reach the 2/3 super-majority required to adopt the budget. Last year, they tried (and mostly failed) to block the use of the California Environmental Quality Act to address global warming.

Even as the Republicans gear up to attack these critical protections, the state’s most important Republican, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger indicated this month that he wants to keep the Global Warming Solutions Act safe from attack. He’s also made it easier to implement the diesel truck rule, by providing nearly $50 million to assist low-income truckers in complying with the new rules. Legislative Democrats, most notably Senator Alan Lowenthal and Assemblymember Mark DeSaulnier also stand with us. Like us, they’re taking a stand against the potential hijacking of the state’s budget.

Hopefully, when the budget negotiations begin in earnest, California’s working families won’t be rolling their eyes at another Republican tantrum. They’ll be looking forward to cleaner air, cleaner energy and a new, greener future.

See What Sierra Club California Advocates Have To Say About The Budget

Your Donation Helps Us Safeguard The Budget

Make The May Revise More Sustainable

Every May, California's governors release a "May Revise," a revamped version of the budget that reflects the latest budget projections.

This May, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget reminds us of the importance of all types of sustainability.

In his May Revise, the governor proposed several one-time fixes, including borrowing money from the Public Transit Fund.

That brand of unsustainable borrowing could keep Californians from enjoying safe, clean public transportation. Increasing public transit ridership improves air quality – and lowers commuters’ gas costs.

The May Revise offers no sustainable source of funding for AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act. True solutions to our state’s global warming emissions will emerge when polluters pay for the cost of cleaning up the emissions they create.We’d also like to see the Resources Agency gain a more permanent source of funding, since it’s one of the first agencies to suffer the pinch of budget cuts.

Many bright ideas shine through the smog of today’s tight fiscal times. For example, the governor’s revised budget provides $50 million to help low-income truckers meet state diesel standards early. And our state parks will stay open, following tremendous pressure from outdoors-loving Californians.

Sierra Club California will sustain its efforts to negotiate a budget that protects our air, water, natural resources and communities.

Our advocates comment on the specifics of the May Revise

See what the governor had to say about the May Revise

Automakers: Don't Be "Climate Chickens"

Today, members of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers met with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, as part of their campaign to thwart our state’s pioneering greenhouse gas emissions standards.

Sierra Club California thanks Governor Schwarzenegger, Attorney General Brown and Air Resources Board Chair Nichols for bravely and staunchly upholding California’s clean car rules. Sierra Club California's "Climate Chicken" made a brief appearance at the Capitol, urging the automakers to cross the road to better

Putting the brakes on California’s Clean Car Law AB 1493 (Pavley) rules won't lower the price that families pay at the pump, and it won't reduce global warming pollution. Only cleaner, more efficient cars will.



Here's why even Climate Chickens should support the Clean Car Law:

• Climate Chickens Are Larger Than Life, and California’s plan creates even bigger reductions in greenhouse gases than the Bush Administration’s proposed fuel economy standards. If all 50 states were to take on the greenhouse gas goals, 1,323 million metric tons of greenhouse gas would be removed by 2020.
  
• California’s Climate Plan Saves More Than A Little Chicken Scratch. The greenhouse gas standards may mean consumers must pay a little more up front for their cars, but they’ll get their money back within about 1-3.5 years, according to California Air Resources Board estimates. The upgrades actually will reduce these vehicles’ operating costs, resulting in savings to drivers.
  
  
• Climate Chickens Crave The Easy Life. And the greenhouse gas standards start out easy too. In fact, the first phase can be met using technology that’s already in some of today’s cars. Not just hybrids, either – some advanced starter technology, idle-stop technology, upgrades to the electrical system and other smart moves would make cars cleaner.
  
• Climate Chickens Get All The Chicks. The new rules are popular too: A 2004 Public Policy Institute of California poll found a whopping 81 percent of Californians support the vehicle greenhouse gas standards, and more than 112,000 of us sent letters supporting adoption of the rules. Climate Chickens breathe easier knowing their hatchlings will enjoy a clean atmosphere.
  
• Climate Chickens Like Choices. Our climate chicken just can’t be cowed. And the greenhouse gas rules don’t tell him what kind of car he can buy, how fast he can drive it or that he has to pay a tax. Automakers say the law will limit Californians’ choices, but simple modifications such as stop-start technology, continuously variable transmission systems and even better A/C equipment will go a long way toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions from every vehicle.
  
• Climate Chickens Have Feather Brains, but even Chester here can see what’s coming. Sales of the hybrid, fuel-miser Toyota Prius have risen more than 50 percent since April, while SUV sales plummeted by 25 percent. And California drivers bought 4 percent less gas in January than they did the year before (see May 2 New York Times article, “As Gas Costs Soar, Buyers Flock to Small Cars”).

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger telling the automakers he'll stick to his guns on global warming

Read what Sierra Club California Director Bill Magavern has to say about the hard work ahead on climate change

Your donation helps us protect our air and atmosphere

Weak Green Building "Rules" Make A Bad Foundation

Sierra Club California is seeing red over new green building “rules” currently under consideration.

The California Building Standards Commission meets Tuesday, May 6 to decide whether to adopt weak, voluntary green building standards. Sierra Club California, along with a number of key legislative leaders and environmental groups, opposes the rules.

For years, California builders and architects have led the nation in designing safe, inspiring buildings. Now we have a chance to tower over the rest of the world in sustainable design as well. We're urging commissioners to reverse their current course and begin to engage in continued discussions of meaningful, enforceable standards.

Reasons Not To Like The New Standards

• Through their use of energy, residential and commercial buildings in California produce about 30 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in the state. Increased energy efficiencies in buildings could cut a minimum of 3 million metric tons of emissions by 2020 -- if the changes are done right.

• As a sector, commercial and residential buildings account for more greenhouse gas emissions than industry or transportation, according to a report by the federal Energy Information Administration. Spiking energy use by U.S. buildings accounted for 48 percent of the nation’s total increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

• The standards use the term “bio-based," which isn’t reality-based. Simply because a product comes from biologically based sources doesn’t make it sustainable. For example, the Chinook salmon is “biologically based,” yet harvest of the population wouldn’t be sustainable because its numbers are so low. You won't find this term used anywhere else, including EPA's “Terminology Reference System,” the US Green Building Council’s LEED rating system, the Build It Green “GreenPoint Rated” system, or The Construction Specifications Institute “GreenFormat” sustainable product reporting form.

• Widespread clear cutting, logging in endangered species habitat, conversion of forests to plantations and other harmful forest practices aren’t “green” by anyone’s definition. Wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), a certification approved by the U.S. Green Building Council, cannot be harvested in those ways. But the Building Standards Commission’s voluntary rules would allow the use of wood certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI), Canadian Standards Association (CSA), the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes (PEFC), or American Tree Farm – none of which have the same, strict certification standards.

• Currently, tens of thousands of acres of FSC-certified forest in California and many hundreds of California-based distributors, manufacturers, retailers and other companies that service the building industry. Integration of FSC certification into the state’s standards could drive the industry to embrace these attainable, sustainable practices.

• During a contentious March meeting, the BSC removed all talk of sustainable land use from even these voluntary green building standards – even though it’s universally acknowledged that infill development is “greener” because it lessens commute time. This further weakened these already watered-down voluntary “rules.”

Your Secure Donation Helps Us Build Our Resistance To Soft Standards

Halting The Republican Rollback

Sierra Club California responded with outrage today to Senate Republicans’ proposal to delay important measures that will protect California’s air and atmosphere.
Sierra Club California Director Bill Magavern made the following statement:

"Once again, these Senate Republicans are showing why they’re a minority party -- they’re so desperate to please their corporate contributors that they’re trying to roll back vital protections for our air and atmosphere that most Californians strongly support. Their proposal would further delay our state’s achieving healthy air quality by extending deadlines for cleaning up dirty diesel engines. They also propose to delay for a year the implementation of California’s Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32), even though that law already is driving technological innovation that will fuel California’s economy. Furthermore, we are highly suspicious that when they say 'Streamline the building permitting process,' Republican leaders mean weakening safeguards that protect our quality of life from rampant over-development.

"These same reactionary senators held last year’s budget hostage in a futile attempt to roll back California’s Environmental Quality Act. They are out of touch with the governor and with the voters of all parties, who understand that cleaning up our air and water helps California’s economy."

Sierra Club California calls on both Democratic and Republican elected officials to oppose any proposals to weaken protections for public health and the environment.

Read an April 30 Sacramento Bee story about the Republicans' dangerous budget demands

Your Donation Helps Us Hold Firm On California's Environmental Laws

Bush Administration Sets Global Warming Roadblock

Sierra Club California Director Bill Magavern speaks out on the Bush administration’s illegal proposed roadblock for California’s greenhouse gas tailpipe emissions rule:

Yesterday was Earth Day. Unfortunately, President George W. Bush’s administration chose the occasion to give a present to the auto companies by rolling out an illegal proposal – buried in federal gas mileage regulations – that would bar California from enforcing its greenhouse gas vehicle emissions standards.

This proposed rule would damage California’s ability to protect our health and safety and our climate by reducing emissions from personal vehicles. Sierra Club has fought along with Attorney General Jerry Brown, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California Legislature to protect California’s Clean Cars law (AB 1493 – Pavley), since it’s such an important part of our efforts to roll back greenhouse gas pollution in our state and in the 17 other states that seek to follow our standards.

It seems like the Bush Administration treats California the way Lucy treats Charlie Brown in the comic strip “Peanuts.” Every time we try to move the ball forward, to protect our climate and our air, the administration snatches it away with another dishonest act.

Read more about the proposed national fuel standards here.

Sierra Club California 2008 Priority Bills

Smart Growth/Global Warming. SB 375 (Steinberg) would require certain regional transportation plans to include a sustainable communities strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Would provide incentives for more compact development, reduced driving, greater housing choices and conservation of farmland and habitat.

Clean Energy. SB 411 (Simitian and Perata) would require investor-owned utilities to meet a Renewables Portfolio Standard of at least 33 percent by 2020.

Cleaner Air at Ports. SB 974 (Lowenthal) would charge containers shipped through the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland in order to raise money for air quality and transportation improvements.

Land Use/Fire Protection. SB 1500 (Kehoe) would allow the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to require local governments to guarantee adequate structural fire protection before approving development in high-fire-hazard State Responsibility Areas.

Fire Protection. SB 1617 (Kehoe) would establish a fair and equitable new fee on homes in State Responsibility Areas to fund some of the costs of their fire protection. The fee would be tiered to give incentives for reducing fire risks, and would also fund proactive prevention activities.

Safer Products. AB 1879 (Feuer and Huffman) would give the Department of Toxic Substances Control the authority to establish safeguards to protect people and the environment from consumer products containing known toxins like lead, mercury and arsenic.

Recycling Mercury Thermostats. AB 2347 (Ruskin) would require manufacturers to establish a program for recycling thermostats containing mercury, a potent neurotoxin.

Water Conservation. AB 2175 (Laird and Feuer) would establish numeric water savings targets for urban and agricultural water use and require a 20% reduction in statewide urban per capita water use by 2020.

Outdoor Education. AB 2989 (Fuentes) would create a permanent program in the Department of Parks and Recreation that would award grants to schools and non-profit groups that provide outdoor education and recreational opportunities for youth.

Make Polluters Pay for Greenhouse Gas Emissions

As California's Air Resources Board studies various options for reducing our state's greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, with an 80% reduction by 2050, Sierra Club California and 5 other environmental groups have offered our suggestions on how best to design a system that caps emissions and requires big polluters to pay a price, set by an auction, for their emissions.

You can read our Cap and Auction Design Position Paper.

On Sierra Club California's home page, national executive director Carl Pope explains cap-and-auction in 45 seconds.

Californians Advised on Mercury Risks from Compact Fluorescent Lamp Breakage

Recently released results of tests conducted by the State of Maine suggest that under certain conditions mercury vapor released from a broken compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) can pose a health risk. A new report prepared for the Mercury Policy Project and co-released by Sierra Club California concludes that, while sensitive populations should take extra precautions to reduce risks associated with breakage, CFLs can and should still be used in everyone’s homes until a nontoxic light bulb becomes available.

People should feel perfectly comfortable buying and using compact fluorescent lamps in their homes. CFLs play an important role in increasing efficiency, cutting home energy costs and curbing global warming. Just as with many other household products, consumers should take some precautions if a bulb happens to break or when it's time to recycle one.

For specific recommendations, see my article in California Progress Report.

By Bill Magavern
Director
Sierra Club California

Environmental Justice and Carbon Trading

Several of California's leading environmental justice advocates on February 19 released a Declaration Against Carbon Trading. The Los Angeles Times mistakenly reported that Sierra Club declined to comment on the announcement. Here is the letter we sent the LA Times correcting the mistake and making clear our position.

To the editor:

Re: “Groups to fight plan for trading carbon emissions,” Feb 20. Sierra Club California did provide a comment on the declaration by environmental justice groups against trading greenhouse gas emissions, but technological problems may have prevented it from reaching your reporter.

We share many of the concerns of the environmental justice groups regarding pollution trading, like possible hot spots, loopholes and windfall profits. For these reasons we worked with those groups to successfully keep mandatory trading out of California’s Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32. We have advocated that AB 32's implementation focus primarily on direct emission reductions, not trading, and we have repeatedly pushed California’s Air Resources Board to implement the community-protection provisions of the law. We are also open to using well-designed market compliance mechanisms to achieve some of the emission reductions necessary, as long as big polluters have to pay for their emissions and local air quality is protected.

Bill Magavern
Director, Sierra Club California

Plug-in Hybrids Can Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Transportation

Zack Subin spoke yesterday at the Air Resources Board’s seminar series of his efforts to catalogue and analyze the various opportunities to reduce air pollution in California transportation. A Ph.D. candidate at UC Berkeley, Subin’s main work involved the collection and categorization of dozens of studies and their data sets. Subin presented his many conclusions about possible ways to reduce emissions from personal and commercial road travel.

Always keeping in mind the marketability of each technology, Subin thinks that Plug-in Hybrid Energy Vehicles offer the best available route to reduce our carbon emissions, eliminate our need for foreign oil, and save consumers money. What plug-ins offer now is the ability to drive an average sedan or SUV 15 to 40 miles on a single charge. After commuting to and from work the consumer would plug a hybrid into a normal electric socket and by the next morning have the vehicle fully charged and ready to drive. Even if you exhaust the battery there is still the gasoline available to power the engine and recharge the battery. This is what he thinks is applicable in the short-term only. After the year 2020 we will have even more technologies available to further reduce greenhouse gases and help alleviate global climate change.