Streetsblog Los Angeles

Though California Secretary of State Debra Bowen yesterday certified a November ballot measure asking voters to suspend AB 32, a landmark state law requiring a significant cut in greenhouse gas emissions, AB 32 supporters have been organizing for months and have formed a significant coalition to fight the initiative.

In a move usually associated with congressional Republicans, they've also honed their message to clarion simplicity: Support a clean energy future or support Big Oil.

Californians for Clean Energy Jobs, the coalition supporting AB 32, argues the paradigm is no longer about jobs versus the environment, but supporting an innovative economy that benefits the environment .

"It's not a battle between tree huggers and business," said Steve Maviglio, the spokesperson for Californians for Clean Energy Jobs. Maviglio said he was impressed that over 350 supporters had already stepped up, including heavy political hitters like the Association of American Retired Persons (AARP), the American Lung Association, the California Teachers Association, the California League of Women's Voters and the California Nurses Association.

"These are groups the American people trust and they don't trust oil companies," he said.

The poison pill in the ballot measure, according to Maviglio, is the provision that would suspend AB32 until California's unemployment rate falls below 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters, something that has only happened three times in the last 30 years. California's jobless rate is currently at 12.3 percent.

While the bulk of support for the coalition comes from the clean energy sector, Maviglio said Virgin America, deeply reliant on traditional petroleum fuels, was a member because they wanted to be on the right side of the issue. He also noted that Chevron and the California Chamber of Commerce were staying out of the fight because of the significance of AB 32.

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Republican Gubernatorial candidates are only debating how best to delay the implementation of A.B. 32

(This story has been updated to reflect the statement released today by the Governor's Office. - DN)

Proponents of clean energy and environmental laws designed to reduce the amount of Greenhouse Gases from being dumped into the air had best not take lightly the challenge to A.B. 32, the California State Law mandating changes that would reduce the state's emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.  Proponents of a ballot initiative that would "delay" implementation of the law until the state's unemployment level is below 5.5% for a full year submitted hundreds of thousands of signatures for certification to election officials earlier today that would place the decision on whether or not to move forward with the mandates of A.B. 32 in voter hands this fall.   The Sacramento Bee quotes one of the campaign's leaders as exclaiming, "We're headed to the ballot!" They have some momentum, and they know it.

As you can see by the chart below, the state unemployment level is almost triple that number, and hasn't been at 5.5% in years. 

Critics of the "delay" language counter that the proponents know that the unemployment rate is unlikely to dip to that level anytime soon and the ballot measure is just a clever way of defeating the legislation.  Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who's reputation as a "Green" governor rests on this legislation's implementation, released a strong statement slamming the backers of the legislation as "greedy oil companies" and special interests.

The effort to suspend AB 32 is the work of greedy oil companies who want to keep polluting in our state and making profits. AB 32 will add jobs, create savings in energy costs and increase personal incomes. In fact, the highest job creation California is seeing right now is in our green economy. When I ran for Governor, I said if special interests tried to push me around, I would push back. That's exactly what I will do to these greedy oil companies.

However, the coalition pushing the change has many more supporters than just a handful of out-of-state oil companies and conservative activist organizations.  Both major Republican candidates for Governor back some sort of delay for the legislation.  If you watch the video above, both Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman are tripping over each other to be the one to take the "toughest" position on delaying the law.

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Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Lisa Jackson yesterday told House members that she would soon begin work on new auto fuel-efficiency rules for the year 2017 and beyond, responding to calls from carmakers searching for certainty -- and warily eyeing the new fuel standards being crafted in California.

The political and legal jockeying that ultimately led the White House to a deal on higher U.S. auto fuel standards began in California, where stronger efficiency rules were adopted, shut down by the Bush administration, and later embraced by 13 other states. 

Now, as the Golden State sets to work on its fuel standards for the year 2017, the endpoint of the current White House efficiency rules, clean energy advocates are vowing to push California officials for the strongest possible auto emissions limits. If California can set the stage for nationwide progress on fuel-efficiency once, the theory goes, it can easily happen again.

But not every California lawmaker is convinced that the state should be a pioneer. At today's House Energy & Commerce Committee hearing, Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) openly wondered whether California should continue prodding the rest of the nation towards greater energy efficiency -- a question equally applicable to the state's law limiting broader carbon emissions.

After noting that she spoke as "a proud Californian," Bono Mack asked Jackson, "If California changes their standards, are you saying we all have to agree with their standards?"

Choosing her words carefully, Jackson told Bono Mack (one of only eight Republicans to vote in favor of last year's House climate change bill) that the Obama administration's new fuel-efficiency rule "was the way to achieve smart legislation.

"I don't think I can simply say" whether California's environmental moves are certain to pave the way for national action on emissions caps, Jackson added, "because the trick of legislation will be to put [regulatory] authorities together in ways that get you [deals like] the clean car rule."

Jackson's cautious response came as she continues to beat back bipartisan efforts in both chambers of Congress to block the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas pollution in the absence of legislative progress on the issue. Yanking the EPA's formal "endangerment finding" on the public health effects of the changing climate, Jackson told the House panel, "would forfeit one quarter of the combined EPA-DOT program’s [auto] fuel savings and one third of its greenhouse gas emissions."

In financial reports that publicly traded companies file to their investors and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the words "material adverse effect" are often found.

Put simply, the phrase is a red flag for any factor that could significantly hurt a firm's profits or condition. But "material adverse change" clauses can also be written into deals to give businesses an escape hatch if disaster strikes, as the public learned during the congressional probe of the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch merger.

So with Congress weighing national emissions limits -- and potential fuel taxes -- as part of a climate change bill, and the Obama administration vowing to step in via new regulations if lawmakers do not act, it's worth asking which of the country's top carbon-generating companies are truly concerned that pollution caps would hurt their business.

Automakers, for the most part, foresee problems if the administration's recent move to raise U.S. fuel-efficiency standards is not extended beyond its current 2016 expiration date. Ford's year-end financial report openly fretted about the consequences of individual states, such as California, acting on their own to hike fuel standards in 2017 in the absence of another national agreement:

Compliance with [multiple fuel-efficiency] regimes would at best add enormous complexity to our planning processes, and at worst be virtually impossible.  If any of one these regulatory regimes, or a combination of them, impose and enforce extreme fuel economy or GHG standards, we likely would be forced to take various actions that could have substantial adverse effects on our sales volume and profits.

General Motors released its financial report today, declaring itself "committed to meeting or exceeding" the new fuel-efficiency minimums but warning that adverse consequences could result if consumers fail to embrace electric cars:

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Government subsidies for hybrid and electric cars, while
"politically seductive," will fail to achieve the Obama
administration’s national pollution-reduction goals if they are not
coupled with a significant increase in fuel prices, according to a new study by Harvard University researchers.

The
team at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
used U.S. Department of Energy economic models to evaluate six possible
outcomes for Washington’s newly reinvigorated push for a 17-percent cut in U.S. emissions by 2020, in keeping with President Obama’s pledge at the global Copenhagen climate talks.

Five
of the Harvard team’s six outcomes assumed a future carbon price of $30
per ton (higher than the price envisioned in the House-passed climate
bill) that rises over time, with other tweaks added to the system,
including continued government tax credits for hybrid and electric
vehicles, an immediate 50-cent hike in the gas tax, and more increases
in auto fuel-efficiency standards.

The researchers
concluded that taxpayer-funded clean-vehicle credits "are expensive and
not particularly effective at reducing CO2 emissions, at least in the
near term." In order to trim transportation’s 30-percent contribution
to total U.S. emissions, the Harvard team recommended an
all-of-the-above approach:

[O]ptions now being
discussed in Congress cannot by themselves achieve the significant
reductions in the transportation sector needed to meet the Obama
administration’s targets for total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by
2020. The most effective policy for reducing CO2 emissions and oil
imports from transportation is to spur the development and sale of more
efficient vehicles with strict efficiency standards while increasing
the cost of driving with strong fuel taxes. Without addressing both,
CO2 emissions from the U.S. transportation sector will continue to grow.

Of course, higher gas taxes are as anathema to politicians as clean-car
subsidies are alluring — which is leaving green groups wary of a
bipartisan Senate proposal
to include a new motor-fuel fee in climate legislation. The oil
industry has said it prefers a new carbon tax on fuel because companies
can more easily pass on the costs to consumers, attributing the resulting gas-price hikes to congressional climate action.

From the Harvard researchers’ perspective, however, expensive fuel is merely a means to an end.

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Last week, the New York Times broke the news that Texas based oil companies were funding the ballot initiative that would "temporarily" place the Greenhouse Gas reforms required by A.B. 32 on hold until California's unemployment rate reached 5.5%.  When discussing the news with some of my friends, it was greeted with a yawn.  After all, this is hardly the first time an out-of-state interest has placed a lot of money behind a ballot proposition, and A.B. 32 spends a lot more time promoting clean fuel than it does human powered transportation or transit.

At first glance, their lack of concern has some validity.  The California Legislative Analyst's Office doesn't even mention impacts to Smart Growth, transit, bikeways, Fix-It-First, or pedestrian improvements when discussing the impacts "postponing" the legislation would have.  It does mention vehicle emission standards, "cap and trade," programs, and green jobs.  In fact, when the state set targets for Land Use reductions in the Greenhouse Gas plan mandated by A.B. 32; it only plans for 1% of those reductions to come from land use.

While it's true that A.B. 32 has a lot more to do with bringing more clean cars to California than bringing Livable Streets, the legislation has also been the backbone of other major pieces of transportation reform.  Among them, S.B. 375, is the much heralded "Anti-Sprawl" Bill passed last year.  In a lengthy interview last May, Los Angeles City Planning Commissioner and Member of the Air Resource Board Michael Woo explained how S.B. 375 was reliant on a strong commitment to removing Greenhouse Gasses from our air:

SB 375 tackles a separate problem.  Pavley’s landmark climate law AB 32 committed California to the goal of rolling back greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020, but it didn’t really spell out how California is going to achieve that goal.  SB 375 authored by Senator Steinberg is the next step in terms of addressing one of the major causes of Greenhouse Gas emissions related to transportation and land use.

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(editor's note: This is Part I of a two part series.  Next week we'll look specifically at how the repeal or delaying of this legislation would effect transportation and Livable Streets. - DN)

In 2006, the California Legislature passed, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed, A.B. 32, landmark legislation that would require the state to reduce its Greenhouse Gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. 

The legislation was the first of its kind in the United States, and while there has certainly been some eye rolling at the Governor’s jet-setting lifestyle; there’s almost no debate that reducing Greenhouse Gases is considered the central plank of the Governor's term in office. For transportation reformers and environmentalists, A.B. 32 is important legislation that could still be a “game changer” in the way California thinks about transportation.

However, thanks to a coalition of pro-business Republicans and the oil industry there is a strong push to place a measure on this fall’s ballot to “delay” the measure, citing the current economic client as a valid reason to delay trying to clean California’s air.  The measure would "delay" the implementation of A.B. 32 until the state unemployment level dips below 5.5%.

While the people officially pushing the ballot measure, former Gubernatorial candidate and current Congressman Tom McClintock and Assemblyman Dan Logue aren’t officially members of the oil lobby; a recent New York Times article revealed that oil giants Tesoro and Valero have funded the effort to get A.B. 32 on the ballot.  Neither firm will either confirm or deny their involvement.

Steven Maviglio, of Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs took exception to the idea that A.B. 32 is bad for the economy, "First of all, this initiative would destroy the clean energy economy.  There's more than $5 billion in venture capital, 3,000 businesses and 45,000 people employed in clean tech.  This would take a wrecking ball to the only flourishing part of the economy."

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Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Lisa Jackson extended an olive branch
this week to lawmakers who are pushing to block her from regulating
carbon emissions in the absence of a congressional climate bill, but
Jackson’s promise to delay action until next year appears to have made no headway with Republicans and coal-state Democrats. 

If Congress succeeds in blocking the EPA from following through on a Supreme Court mandate
to regulate emissions, a legislative path to nationwide pollution
limits would effectively become the sole means for the Obama
administration to follow through on commitments it made at last year’s Copenhagen climate summit.

But White House climate adviser Carol Browner
noted today that a congressional block on the EPA’s authority would
have a second wave of consequences for transportation policy — it
would jettison the Obama administration’s much-heralded deal to raise auto fuel-efficiency standards to 35.5 mile per gallon by 2016.

"I
don’t know why members [of Congress] would want to go out and vote
against the science of climate change," Browner told attendees at a
climate conference sponsored by The New Republic.

Without EPA
authority to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act, she explained,
"there is no car rule" — referring to the agreement to adopt
California’s landmark efficiency standards as a national model.

"If
the car rule were not to go forward, California would still have all
its authorities," Browner added, meaning that the auto industry’s fears
of compliance with a "patchwork" of regional fuel standards would become a reality.

Browner’s
comments came as climate legislation continues to lose momentum in the
Senate, giving more political ammunition to lawmakers and industry
representatives who seek to stall the process.

Yet Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), one of three negotiators working on a "tri-partisan" climate deal in the upper chamber, took a notably upbeat tone today on the prospects for action this year, and Browner concurred with Kerry’s sentiment.

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Pensacola, Florida. Springfield, Missouri. Fort Wayne, Indiana. All
three of those metropolitan areas have populations between 350,000 and
500,000, and all three would have been required to install nitrogen
dioxide monitoring stations near major roadways under a new
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule cracking down on the pollutant.

But as the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) noted
soon after the EPA unveiled its rule, an initial draft setting the
minimum population for local air-quality monitoring at 350,000 was
changed to 500,000, leaving out cities such as Fort Wayne and
effectively weakening the nitrogen dioxide rule’s accountability.

Another watchdog group traced the change to the White House
Office of Management and Budget, which evaluates new agency regulations
through a smaller arm called OIRA (short for the Office of Information
and Regulatory Affairs). The president’s nominee to lead OIRA, Cass
Sunstein, has taken heat from green groups for his past criticism of government’s role in the rule-making process.

What’s
the significance of the OMB’s change to the EPA rule? "The fewer the
monitors, the more likely it is that many metropolitan
areas will be able to exceed EPA’s limits without detection or
correction," CPR president and law professor Rena Steinzor wrote on the
group’s blog in late January.

Steinzor’s
post also addressed the significance of the new nitrogen dioxide rule,
noting that the pollutant tends to be especially common, and dangerous,
in lower-income neighborhoods located near busy roads:

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