December 28, 2009
As the world focuses on the Stockholm Climate Change Conference, how California is addressing climate change is generating conflict. In late November the California Air Resources Board (CARB) issued a draft of what are likely to be the first government regulations in the nation for carbon trading.
Two environmental justice organizations - Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) and California Communities Against Toxics - filed a lawsuit earlier this year to block the cap-and-trade option California's CARB has proposed. The groups alleges that California’s cap and trade plan will allow the most entrenched polluters, including oil refineries, to continue emitting toxic and smog-forming pollutants, which are associated with carbon emissions. Here's a link to how an anti-environmental web-site views that lawsuit.
The environmental community is split over whether or not to support California’s cap and trade climate plan. The Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council support carbon trading which seeks to use market forces to achieve reductions in carbon emissions. Many other environmental organizations think carbon trading lets polluting industries off the hook and instead advocate for a tax on carbon emissions with the proceeds used to develop green energy.
One of the most contentious issues in the California, national and international climate debate is the “off-set" issue. Under off-set schemes polluters can buy carbon off-set credits rather than reduce their own emissions. Forestry and agriculture are two industries which can generate off-sets; carbon is stored as trees grow and agricultural practices can lock-up carbon in the soil. But some experts and many climate activists believe it will prove difficult to impossible to verify that off-sets are actually occurring as claimed. They say carbon trading will not result in reduced emissions and cite Europe’s recent experience with carbon trading to prove their point. The most skeptical observes think carbon off-set schemes will prove a source of proliferating climate boondoggles.
Closer to home, carbon off-set skeptics point to a recent deal involving Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI), California’s largest timber company, which they say illustrates what will take place if forest carbon off-set schemes are embraced. Under the deal SPI will continue to clearcut - replacing natural forests with tree plantations. According to Brian Nowiski of the Tuscon-based Center for Biological Diversity: “This looks a whole lot like a giant timber company getting paid millions of dollars to do business-as-usual, and destroying our forests, water quality, and wildlife in the process…..Giving carbon credits for logging operations is a shell game where timber companies win, and the forest, the climate, and everyone else loses.” More
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