California Air Resources Board forced to revisit alternatives to unjust pollution trading system

By Communities for a Better Environment

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA – On April 22, 2011, environmental justice groups that succeeded in its lawsuit against the California Air Resources Board for its failure to consider alternatives to protect the public health and the environment during the implementation of the California Global Warming Solutions Act— popularly known as AB 32—submitted its final documentation to the Court that will determine the impact of the Court’s March 17, 2011 on the program’s implementation.

Judge Ernest Goldsmith, of the San Francisco Superior Court, has already ruled that the California Air Resources Board violated the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) when, among other things, it failed to properly consider alternatives to a “cap and trade” program in its plan to implement AB 32. The Court ordered Petitioners to submit proposed documents – Writ of Mandate – consistent with its Decision, to finalize the Court’s order. In the documents submitted to the Court, Petitioners offered two options for moving forward. The first option, which most closely tracks the Court’s language, enjoins, or stops, all implementation of all of the measures described in Scoping Plan adopted by CARB. The Scoping Plan is CARB’s blueprint for how it plans to implement AB 32. The second option narrows the Court’s proposed Decision to enjoin, or stop, only further implementation and development of the cap and trade program, until CARB completes a lawfully adequate CEQA review.

“We want to strengthen AB 32 and ensure that it is effective; a hard and honest look at cap and trade is critical to getting there,” said Bill Gallegos, Executive Director of Communities for a Better Environment, one of the environmental justice plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “Our communities demand real solutions for reducing pollution emissions, not another scheme that makes market traders rich at the expense of our health,” Gallegos added.

Jesse Marquez of Wilmington, a community that is among the worst polluted by oil refineries and other industrial sources of air pollution in the state, explained that “Cap and trade schemes don’t work. The court is right that CARB should not continue implementing cap and trade until it has considered other options.” In offering the Court a more limited option to that included in the Court’s order, “we recognize that some of the implementation measures provide important benefits to our community and all of California, sadly it seems that CARB unwilling to recognize that pollution trading isn’t the same thing as pollution reduction,” Marquez added.

Communities for a Better Environment represented itself and its members; the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment (CRPE) represented Association of Irritated Residents, Coalition for a Safe Environment, Society for Positive Action, West County Toxics Coalition, Angela Johnson Meszaros, Dr. Henry Clark, Jesse Marquez, Shabaka Heru, and Tom Frantz; Angela Johnson Meszaros represented Martha Dina Arguello, Caroline Farrell, and California Communities Against Toxics.