Pollution Archives - California Political Review

Tijuana River sewage still pollutes the San Diego Coast. A surfer turned politician is fighting to clean it up

December 7, 2025 By Deborah Brennan 2 Comments

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Hours after a November storm, the Tijuana River flooded a grove of trees in Imperial Beach, gushed through a row of calverts and exploded into mounds of fetid foam.

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This is ground zero for the contaminated river, which sickens thousands of people in southern San Diego County.

“The Tijuana River is one of, if not the most polluted, river in the entire United States,” said San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre, who viewed the overflowing river wearing black rain boots and a hot pink respirator mask. “The river is carrying dangerous chemicals, pollutants, pathogens and toxic gases that are impacting South San Diego communities.”

The site, known as the Saturn Boulevard hot spot, is part of a system of polluted waterways and failed sewage treatment plants in the cross-border region. In the ocean, the contamination leaves swimmers and surfers with breathing problems, digestive illness and rashes. Unsafe conditions have closed parts of the Imperial Beach shoreline for three years.

Last year, researchers discovered that the pollution is airborne as well. Foul-smelling hydrogen sulfide emissions near the river sometimes rise hundreds of times higher than the state’s odor threshold. At those levels the gas triggers headaches, nausea, eye irritation and respiratory distress. And there are other chemicals, viruses and bacteria in the mix.

For children, the effects are worse, said Tom Csanadi, an Imperial Beach physician who has been active in the issue. Their lung surface area to body size is higher, which means they absorb more toxins. Children breathe faster than adults and they’re still growing, so it can affect their body tissues more severely. There are 11 schools within three kilometers of the hot spot.

“It could lower IQ, stunt cognitive development,” Csanadi said.

As a surfer, activist and elected leader, Aguirre has spent two decades tackling this problem, which she considers one of the worst environmental crises in the country.

Click here to read the full article in CalMatters

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Pollution, San Diego, Tijuana RIver

California Regulator Threatens Trump With `Extreme’ Auto Rules

May 19, 2019 By Jennifer A Dlouhy 14 Comments

A top California environmental regulator is threatening to enact tough, new pollution rules — including an unprecedented ban on cars burning petroleum-based fuels — in response to a Trump administration plan to relax vehicle emission standards.

California Air Resources Board Chairman Mary Nichols said the state would be forced to pursue “extreme” requirements to offset the uptick in pollution that would be unleashed if federal vehicle emission and fuel economy standards are weakened.

“If we lose the state vehicle standards, we have to fill up the gap with other measures,” Nichols said at a forum on the issue Thursday. “We will be faced with dramatic alternatives in terms of tighter, stricter controls on everything else, including movement of vehicles and potentially looking at things like fees and taxes and bans on certain types of vehicles and products.”

Nichols did not explicitly outline possible changes at Thursday’s event, which was held to discuss the consequences of the Trump proposals and potential California countermeasures. But in remarks prepared for the meeting, she raised the specter of outlawing conventional vehicles with combustion engines, as well as tougher anti-pollution requirements on everything from fuel to the refineries producing it. …

Click here to read the full article from Bloomberg

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: CARB, Donald Trump, Pollution

How China’s Debt, Slowing Economy and One-Child Policy Will Increase California Emissions

April 9, 2019 By Todd Royal 4 Comments

Nothing will move the world and California emissions negatively or positively more than China. Though China’s economy is 12 percent smaller than previously believed according to the Brookings Institution their research backed up longstanding suspicion that Beijing hasn’t been keeping accurate, publicly reported economic statistics. The study also found “real growth has been overstated by 2 percentage points annually for years.” What likely occurs is China builds the cheapest and most abundant, scalable, efficient and flexible energy they have: COAL. China and the United States (US) “emit more than 40 percent of the world’s carbon.” With continued friction over the trade war this doesn’t bode well for California meeting ambitious emission, environmental and climate goals.

The biggest troubles ahead for China, world economies and energy are that China has mounting debt problems. Trillions of dollars in debt has run up for years to gain a debt-fueled prosperity of buildings, infrastructure and exports, which has caused environmental degradation. China’s historically slowing economy has Chinese President Xi clamping down, and these economic problems will further Chinese use of cheaper coal, nuclear and natural gas as their main sources of energy moving forward. This massive scale of borrowing and debt is a looming reason China will increase global emissions: they need cheap energy and electricity to service debt and grow their economy. California will catch rising Chinese emissions in the global jet stream no matter the measures we take for cleaner air and lower emissions.

Other additional woes for China that will directly or indirectly counter the China narrative of being the leader in solar and wind power along with electric vehicles (EV) are: “Wage growth has cooled, surveys show the Chinese manufacturing sector have begun shedding jobs, imports are down, hurting other major exporting economies,” but other issues are more troubling for energy and China’s future. China’s true energy nature is revealed in its “rapidly aging population and a falling birth rate.”

Since China enacted their one-child policy and terminated over 300 million Chinese pregnancies this has decimated their productivity, child replacement rate, and will be a leading reason why they will continue using the dirtiest, cheapest forms of energy. The US has also devastated many parts of their economy – particularly, African-Americans – over using abortion as population and birth control measures. This has deep implications for how energy is extracted, imported, exported, used and the overall wellness for a nation lacking children. Nations that heavily abort their children like the US, Russia and China are usually more combative with neighboring countries and either invade them (think US in Iraq or Russia in Crimea) or take over entire regions (China in the South China Sea) in a quest for resources and workers for their unproductive economies. These could be major reasons why global emissions have begun rising again. Dirtier air is a source of unproductive societies caused by global abortion rates remaining steady; over 42 million abortions took place in 2018.

Beijing has also been globally combative since the Obama administration attempted diplomacy and an open-hand of friendship to China, but was rejected. What you have now is President’ Trump’s US-led trade war and the Europeans confronting China over destructive trade, military, technical and illegal intelligence surveillance coupled with corporate theft that benefits Chinese state-run firms. European diplomats are openly excoriating China’s unsavory advances in the South China Sea and its economic gains that seek to do away with liberal, economic openness and cooperation at Europe’s expense. The Europeans said about the Belt and Road Infrastructure Project Initiative:

“Europe’s Belt and Road sceptics charge that it is opaque, strategically aggressive and can impose crippling debts on recipient states – all allegations that China denies.”

The Europeans though are their own worse enemy with “Eurosceptic remainers,” before, after and during the Brexit debacle. China will exploit this geopolitical weakness to their advantage and their energy usage will become a dirtier commodity under Beijing’s leadership. China is currently building hundreds of new coal-fired power plants throughout their provinces and cities.

Literally, China cannot afford to lose one bit of economic and social productivity and their aging population is what is causing their economy to begin grinding to a halt. The same problems of an aging population over rampant abortion-use are happening in the US, Russia, the entire European Union (EU) and Japan. This isn’t a Chinese phenomenon. What then occurs are other nations reliant on Chinese imports, their economies also slow, and renewable energy, transitioning to a carbon-free or low-carbon society and widespread adoption of electric vehicles all pause going into affect? The Chinese clean energy transition – even in the form of expansive use of natural gas – will fade in importance to debt and economy woes. China’s one-child policy that advanced their aging process decades ahead of time will take energy into a direction none of us can even quantify or imagine.

President Xi’s model for China, moreover doesn’t augur well for efficient Chinese energy usage since Xi made himself dictator-for-life leading to oppression within China, and environmental degradation will continue under his rule. Even US policymakers who hate President Trump are now tired of China’s overbearing style on the world stage. A possible takeover of Taiwan, a global trade war and Chinese pride on full display means more fossil fuels and higher emissions since militaries run on oil, natural gas, refined petroleum, aviation fuel and nuclear power – renewable energy in the form of wind turbines and solar panels – will always take a back seat when a country’s national security and foreign policy are on the line. Each of these geopolitical phenomenon means dirtier air and rising emissions for California – no matter the laws we pass – supposedly combating global warming/climate change (GWCC).

Add the takeover of the South China Sea, expanded influence in Asia, and it is not surprising China has increased their use of coal to fuel militarized activities. With China’s debt position wracking nerves globally it is not a far off to postulate the world will become dirtier through increased coal use over its “debt woes,” instead of using cleaner natural gas. Finding technological breakthroughs that are needed for renewable energy and energy battery storage systems to become scalable, reliable, affordable and flexible will not be at the forefront of Chinese forward-thinking. This system Xi ruminates over and contemplates has been tried before with disastrous results because it:

“Has a record of suboptimal performance that features despotic governance, long stagnation of economy, suffocation of science and technology, retardation of spiritual pursuits, irrational allocation of resources (oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear and renewable energy), great depreciation of human dignity and life, low and declining living standards for the masses, and mass death and destruction periodically and frequently.”

Is this the new normal for China or a return to Mao’s destructive big-red-time-machine? No one actually knows, but it likely results in overwhelming use of fossil fuels and higher emissions in Asia, California, and globally.

Countries will always choose their own self-interest rightly understood over energy policies and outcomes that don’t produce abundant, reliable, affordable, scalable and flexible energy results. California should pay attention to the societal, geopolitical rumblings coming from the second largest economy in the world.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: China, Pollution, Todd Royal

California Cities are Banning Plastic Straws and It Sucks

August 8, 2018 By Lindsay Marchello 12 Comments

On July 24, San Francisco city officials unanimously passed an ordinance forbidding the city’s restaurants and bars from giving customers plastic items, including straws, cocktail swords, and takeout containers treated with fluorinated chemicals. The ordinance will have to be voted on a second time and if it passes it’ll go to the mayor for approval.

San Francisco will be the second major city to take steps to ban plastic straws, joining Seattle in spearheading the ever-growing anti-straw crusade. Malibu, Santa Cruz, Manhattan Beach and San Luis Obispo — all in California as well — have also passed plastic straw bans. Santa Barbara not only banned plastic straws, but compostable straws too.

Local governments aren’t alone, as a handful of businesses have taken a stand against plastic straws. Starbucks is perhaps the most high profile company who has decided to ditch straws in exchange for strawless plastic lids. On July 9, Starbucks announced that by 2020 it will eliminate over 1 billion plastic straws from all its stores. Marriott International, Hyatt Hotels Corps and Hilton Hotels all have made similar commitments.

While plastic straw bans may make people feel good and think they’re saving the environment, in reality, they hardly make a dent in overall plastic pollution.

For one, the number of plastic straws used by Americans on a daily basis is in dispute. Like several other ban proposals, the San Francisco ordinance cites a statistic that Americans go through 500 million straws a day. Reason writer Christian Britschgi tracked down the source of that number: a nine-year-old boy.

In 2011, Milo Cress conducted a phone survey of straw manufacturers. Now 16, Cress told Britschgi that the National Restaurant Association has endorsed his estimates in private.

But, as Britschgi points out in his article, the number of straws used each day isn’t as important as knowing how many actually end up in our waterways.

“We don’t know that figure either,” Britschgi writes. “The closest we have is the number of straws collected by the California Coastal Commission during its annual Coastal Cleanup Day: a total of 835,425 straws and stirrers since 1988, or about 4.1 percent of debris collected.”

A 2015 study published in Science calculated out of 275 million metric tons of plastic produced from 192 coastal countries in 2010, anywhere between 4.8 to 12.7 million metric tons entered the ocean. East Asian and Pacific countries were responsible for the majority of plastic pollution with China, Indonesia and the Philippines topped the list of plastic polluters. China contributed 27.7 percent of all mismanaged plastic waste compared to the United States which was responsible for 0.9 percent.

The researchers point to improving waste management as the solution to the environmental problem. Countries like the Philippines and China need to invest in infrastructure to better deal with waste and recyclables. Without these improvements, plastic pollutions will dramatically increase.

Out of the top 20 countries contributing to this problem, 16 are middle income countries “where fast economic growth is probably occurring but waste management infrastructure is lacking.” Addressing those infrastructure problems could make a major difference in plastic pollution in the world’s oceans.

But reforming waste management infrastructure in countries halfway across the globe is a massive project requiring far greater effort than banning plastic straws. City officials, like those in San Francisco, are taking a largely symbolic stance when they ban plastic straws. This wouldn’t be an issue if it didn’t mean restaurant or bar owners faced fines or even jail time for providing plastic straws to customers.

First time offenders of the San Francisco ban face a written warning, but after that they can be hit with fines anywhere between $100 for a first offense and up to $500 for repeated offense. In Santa Barbara, a second violation of the code means a $100 fine and a misdemeanor. The misdemeanor is punishable up to a max $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail.

The Santa Barbara City Council is reconsidering the ban to include an exemption for those with disabilities who rely on straws to enjoy their drinks.

There’s a reason most businesses give their customers plastic straws: they’re relatively cheap and people want them. Companies like Starbucks are free to eliminate plastic straws from its stores if it wants to, but imposing that same choice on all businesses, big and small, is wrong.

Wanting to protect the environment is a noble goal, but good intentions don’t always translate to good policy. The market could provide the environmentally friendly goods that consumers want if the government wasn’t busy micromanaging every aspect of it.

Reusable or biodegradable straws — although far from perfect — are increasing in popularity and could prove to be the answer to our plastic straw woes. Or perhaps the plastic straw alternative has yet to be invented, but in any case, providing people with better options instead of depriving them of choice is the key to shaping consumer behavior. It could even make the oceans that much cleaner.

Lindsay Marchello is a Young Voices Advocate and an Associate Editor with the Carolina Journal. Follow her on Twitter @LynnMarch007.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Pollution, regulation, san francisco, Starbucks, Straws

Cap-and-Trade Math Not Adding Up

May 24, 2018 By Julie Cart 4 Comments

As California accelerates its efforts to reduce greenhouses gases over the next decade, experts are pointing to vulnerabilities in its celebrated cap-and-trade system, weaknesses that could make the state’s goals difficult — even impossible — to reach.

Cap and trade, featuring a market where permission to pollute is bought and sold, is a key mechanism California uses to lower the volume of harmful discharges by industries that are subject to state emissions caps. But as the California Air Resources Board ponders a major retrofitting of the highly complex program, state analysts say that in a little over a decade emissions could soar much higher than the legally binding level.

Checking the math on cap and trade has taken on urgency this year because the state is leaning more heavily on the system to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The air board projects the program will account for about 46 percent of annual reductions in coming years, a figure that has surprised many experts.

One calculation is out of California’s control: a possible political shift in Ontario, Canada, after provincial elections there next month. One leading candidate has vowed to dismantle the province’s cap-and-trade system, which participates in California’s emissions-trading market. A Canadian withdrawal could undermine California officials’ message about its stability and growth as they recruit other states and nations to join.

Far more troubling are red flags highlighted in reports from academia, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, independent market experts and other major carbon markets, all concluding that California has a serious problem with too many unused pollution credits.

In the cap-and-trade system, major polluters must either produce fewer greenhouse gases to comply with California’s emissions caps or buy credits to offset their excess emissions from companies that pollute less. Credits are traded at state-sanctioned auctions and on secondary markets. And the state gives some free to utilities, natural-gas suppliers and industries that are vulnerable to out-of-state competition.

Some companies have not yet needed to use up the allowances to stay within state emissions limits and probably won’t have to in the next couple of years, according to some analysts, who estimate there are hundreds of millions of unused credits in the system.

The result is a glut of credits that could allow businesses to keep polluting past state limits in later years, after the overall cap becomes more restrictive. Unless the oversupply is addressed, experts say, polluters will have no incentive to cut emissions to required levels by 2030; instead, industries could continue polluting and use banked allowances to offset their emissions and technically keep them under the cap.

The state Legislative Analyst’s Office foresees a reckoning, estimating that because of excess allowances, actual emissions could be as much as 30 percent over the statewide target by 2030.

One analyst likened the problem to a game of musical chairs that starts with too many chairs and allows participants to save seats for later. The issue has plagued both the European Union’s carbon-trading system and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a consortium of nine eastern U.S. states that sells credits for the electricity sector. Both markets have put policies in place to limit surpluses.

In California, lawmakers instructed the air board to examine the issue last year, and the agency has steadfastly maintained that the surplus of credits will not imperil California’s fight against climate change.

Rajinder Sahota, who oversees much of the cap-and-trade program for the air board, has testified numerous times before the Legislature on this topic. On each occasion she has assured lawmakers that the system is working.

“We do not believe that there are unused allowances in the system that will hinder our goals for 2020,” she told CALmatters.

She didn’t address how allowances might play out in subsequent years. But the agency forecasts that the state will also meet its 2030 target, when emissions limits will tighten dramatically, the number of free allowances will come down and the cap-and-trade program will expire.

Among the skeptics is Ontario’s environmental oversight agency. The commission’s annual report in January stated flatly that California has an oversupply of allowances that could last for the life of the program.

“We understand that the board believes…they don’t have an oversupply problem,” said Dianne Saxe, the environmental commissioner of Ontario. “Frankly, we don’t understand it.”

The disconnect will be addressed this week in a hearing before the newly formed Joint Legislative Committee on Climate Change Policies. The committee chairman, Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia, a Democrat from Coachella, said the air board will be grilled on how it intends to manage allowances.

“Our numbers don’t pencil out to be the same numbers they propose,” Garcia said. “We will go back and reexamine the numbers they are projecting. We have some questions about how they got there.”

Danny Cullenward is an energy economist with the climate-change think tank Near Zero and teaches environmental law at Stanford University. He’s also a member of the newly established Independent Emissions Market Advisory Committee that is charged with reviewing the mechanics of cap and trade. He says the air board not only got its projections wrong but also used an incorrect model for its calculations. The board’s most recent estimates are off by 10 percent and used a model that the agency identified in 2010 as problematic, he said in an interview.

“I can’t emphasize enough, this is a basic question of scientific integrity,” Cullenward said. The board has been reluctant to engage outside experts on the issue of allowances, “in a rush to justify that this is not a problem,” he said.

Sahota said external studies have not taken into account that allowances are set aside if they have gone unsold for 24 months—a “self-ratcheting mechanism,” she said, that prevents a glut on the market. The Canadian study, she said, relied on a flawed analysis conducted by Chris Busch, research director at Energy Innovation, a San Francisco-based climate-change and clean-energy think tank.

Saxe, the environment commissioner, stood behind the report’s conclusions, saying, “We did our own analysis.”

Busch, who was among the first researchers to identify the oversupply problem, is a longtime supporter of California’s cap-and-trade system, which he calls the best designed in the world. Busch said he used the air board’s own data to reach his conclusions about allowances, which he said were conservative.

“I sought to engage the air board to evaluate what they thought of the numbers,” he said. “They didn’t want to engage.”

Sahota said she had not read all of the recent reports, but the air board is taking all the research and criticisms seriously.

Julie Cart is a reporter for CALmatters

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Cap and trade, CARB, Pollution

EPA Could Limit California’s Unique Role in Shaping Air Pollution Rules

April 3, 2018 By Chris Reed 6 Comments

The Trump administration is on the brink of what could prove its most consequential legal battle with the state of California, with EPA chief Scott Pruitt expected this week to take aim at the autonomy that state leaders were given in the 1970 Clean Air Act to establish pollution standards for vehicles that are more far-reaching than the federal government’s. This autonomy is widely credited with the Golden State’s emergence as a world leader in environmental regulation.

Last week saw confirmation of months of White House and EPA leaks that President Donald Trump would throw out a 2012 Obama administration edict that required average miles per gallon to nearly double to 54.5 for automakers’ fleets of new cars and trucks by 2025. Trump’s skepticism about climate change made him particularly open to the argument from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler that out-of-touch regulators under the previous president were trying to force them to sell vehicles that U.S. consumers didn’t want to buy.

But as The New York Times reported over the weekend, Trump and Pruitt went further than automakers wanted both by rolling back mileage standards more than expected and by signalling their readiness for a court fight over the deference that federal regulators have traditionally shown to the California Air Resources Board.

The Golden State’s problems with smog in the Los Angeles Basin – visible in the 1973 EPA photo shown above – led to the first state law in the U.S. targeting air pollution being adopted in 1947, among many other precedent-setting regulations. The air board continued California’s role as a pioneer in setting vehicle emission standards after it was launched in 1968 under then-Gov. Ronald Reagan. Its vehicle emission and safety rules often end up being copied by Congress and federal regulators and by nations around the world. The state’s present rules are followed by 12 other states, including New York and Pennsylvania – meaning the Golden State dictates what automakers must provide in about one-third of all new cars sold in the U.S. each year.

California’s special status may be only state carve-out in federal law

But with California’s pollution problems beginning to look more like the rest of the nation’s in recent decades, Republicans have increasingly chafed at the idea that CARB and not the EPA should have the dominant policy-making role on vehicle fuel and emissions standards.

An analysis in The Atlantic laid out how unusual the state’s status is:

“California is written into the Clean Air Act by name: At any time, it can ask the EPA administrator for a waiver to restrict tailpipe pollution more stringently than the federal government. If its proposed rules are ‘at least as protective of public health and welfare’ as the EPA’s, then the administrator must grant the waiver.

“This power is reserved alone for California, and it only covers pollution from cars. No other state can ask for a waiver. (In all of federal law, this might be the only time that a specific state is given special authority under such a major statute.)”

The administration of President George W. Bush became the first to challenge California’s special status when it rejected the state’s request to expand its definition of what substances in the atmosphere it could regulate to include non-polluting greenhouse gases. That prompted the filing of a lawsuit in January 2008 by then-Attorney General Jerry Brown that was backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. But it became moot after Barack Obama succeeded Bush in the White House and the EPA resumed treating California’s proposals with deference.

Over the past 14 months, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has filed 28 lawsuits against the Trump administration, according to a tally kept by the Washington Post. But even before Becerra began his litigation, Gov. Brown anticipated the upcoming CARB-EPA fight and emphasized its importance. In comments made in December 2016 – a month after Trump’s election – Brown framed the dispute as having consequences for the “survivability of our world” because of the threat posed by global warming.

At an American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco, according to a Sacramento Bee account, the governor said, “We’ve got the scientists, we’ve got the lawyers and we’re ready to fight. We’re ready to defend. …. And, if Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite. We’re going to collect that data.”

This article was originally published by CalWatchdog.com

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: CARB, Clean Air Act, Donald Trump, EPA, Pollution, Scott Pruitt

California Wants to Ban the Internal Combustion Engine

March 5, 2018 By Ronald Stein 14 Comments

California’s relentless crusade against emissions effectively camouflages its voracious need for revenues.

AB32, the original landmark bill was signed into law in 2006 when California contributed one percent to the world’s greenhouse gases. While the cap and trade program has been a cost effective method of reducing CA’s greenhouse gas emissions, the program does next to nothing to reducing global emissions. A decade later, in 2016, the California Energy Commission said we still contributed a minuscule one percent to the world’s greenhouse gases, but it has successfully extracted more than $7 billion dollars of revenue from our citizens to fund a multitude of governmental pet projects.

California’s elected officials must be in La La Land when they state that California’s economy is thriving in large part because of its emphasis on enacting sweeping environmental legislation. California’s economy, like the rest of the nation, has been booming ever since the recession, but California is ranking up where the state is not proud of. The California go-it-alone crusade to reduce emissions regressively impacts consumers. Today the California energy portfolio, the environment, and climate change are always discussed together. Here’s what’s really up – energy costs, poverty, homelessness, welfare and unfunded pension liabilities.

California taxes and cost of living are higher than most other states.
California’s energy costs are as much as 50 percent higher than the national average.
Nearly 20 percent of California’s 38 million residents live below the poverty line.
California has more than 33 percent of the nation’s welfare recipients.
California is home to 12 percent of the nation’s population, but startlingly 22 percent of the nation’s homeless population.
Roughly 1.5 million households pay more than 50 percent of their income toward rent.
Unfunded pension liabilities.

Now compounding these problems is a bill currently under consideration in the Legislature, Assembly Bill 1745, that would outlaw the sale and registration of new light-duty vehicles powered by internal combustion engines beginning in 2040. The unintended consequence for those existing internal combustion engines after 2040 would be that people would drive their internal combustion engines for 50 years, like they did in Cuba, and adversely affect air pollution, and not take advantage of technology improvements. The sheer scope of the proposed mandate is staggering. According to the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, of the 35 million registered vehicles in CA there are over 26 million passenger vehicles registered in California. Of these, only about three percent are personal electric vehicles. Limiting the types of new cars Californians could buy would disproportionately punish working families already struggling to make ends meet.

It appears that governments, worldwide, in pursuit of the current EV crusade, may be overlooking the fact that an essential ingredient that lithium-ion batteries are dependent on is cobalt which is already in limited supply worldwide to manufacture IPhones, IPads, and car batteries. Without the element’s energy density, batteries without cobalt tend to perform worse. Currently about a quarter of global production of cobalt winds up in smartphones. In the expected event that cobalt supply does not meet the EV needs in the decades ahead, the impact on the local and international economies could be devastating. Environmentally, it’s also harder to recycle lithium-ion batteries with cobalt than lead-acid batteries used in gasoline powered vehicles.

Finally, AB1745 fails the cost-benefit test. California accounts for less than one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, so even if every gasoline-powered car in our state were taken off the road tomorrow there would be zero impact on climate change.

Our elected leaders need to address the very real challenges facing California, rather than touting misguided new policies like AB 1745 that will only make our problems worse.

Ronald Stein is the founder of PTS Staffing Solutions, a technical staffing agency headquartered in Irvine

This article was originally published by Fox and Hounds Daily

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: AB32, Cars, Engine, environment, Pollution

After $1 Billion in Govt. Subsidies ‘Green’ Tesla Fined $139K for Air Pollution

March 4, 2018 By Chriss W. Street 4 Comments

Tesla’s factory was fined $139,000 for emitting the same type of toxic NOx into the atmosphere that their electric-vehicles are supposed to eliminate.

Tesla has been fined $139,500 by Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) for emitting nitrogen oxides (NOx) air pollution inside its factory. Although Tesla told the San Francisco Chronicle that the sanction was due to a malfunctioning furnace, the company was fined $1,000 for the same issue in 2013.

Nitrogen oxides known as NOx, are poisonous gases often emitted by fossil-fuel burning cars, trucks, tractors and boats or industrial processes like power generation. NOx human health impacts include breathing problems, headaches, chronically reduced lung function, eye irritation, loss of appetite, and corroded teeth.

To supposedly reduce nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions, California-based Tesla receives government subsidies of $2,500 Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) tax credit for every all-electric Model S, Model X and Model 3 purchased in the state. Combined with federal ZEV subsidies of $7,500 per vehicle, Tesla has received about $1 billion in ZEV credits.

Tesla has tried to blame the issue on the NUMMI, a joint venture between General Motors and Toyota Motor Corp. The joint-venture sold their Fremont plant and equipment to Tesla for $42 million in 2010.

A Tesla spokesman emailed reporters claiming the company inherited the problems from GM: “The majority of these violations were resolved by Tesla four years ago when we proactively brought the issue to the attention of the District.” But despite a complete rehabilitation, Tesla was fined $1,000 for the same NOx issue in 2013.

But the BAAQMD release claims the $139,500 fine and settlement covers a series of violations from 2013 through 2016. Tesla also agreed to install about $93,000 worth of solar panels at the Silicon Valley Boys and Girls Club in San Jose.

“Although Tesla develops electric vehicles and related technologies that California needs to address global climate change, the company still must comply with all their permit conditions,” said Jack Broadbent, executive officer of the Air District. “Air quality improves when industries abide by their emissions limits and the public does their part to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.”

Tesla has long been under fire by conservatives for mining government subsidies for the rich that can afford the $90,000 price tag for a new Model S sedan or Model X SUV.

But progressives are increasingly complaining that its vehicle’s so-called embodied carbon, which is a measure of the energy needed to build its vehicles, is too high.

Salon argued last year that Tesla’s still has significant carbon emissions with its “extraction and processing of raw materials, and shipping parts and vehicles across oceans in filthy bunker-fuel burning cargo ships. Every time you roll off the dealer’s lot in a new set of wheels — electrified or not — your personal carbon footprint grows immensely.”

It is estimated that the manufacture of a U.S. standard midsize sedan generates 17 metric tons of carbon dioxide, about the equivalent of 3-years of electricity consumed per household. But the U.S. Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that it takes about 15 percent more embodied carbon to produce an electric vehicle, due to the materials and fabrication processes used to make very large battery packs.

This article was originally published by Breitbart.com/California

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: AQMD, environment, Pollution, Telsa

Let’s Pump the Brakes on Cap-and-Trade

August 19, 2016 By George Runner 4 Comments

In 2006, elected officials gave the California Air Resources Board virtually unchecked authority to implement AB32, which aims to reduce carbon emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020. The legislation, including the controversial cap-and-trade program, expires in four years.

Some lawmakers have already introduced legislation, such as SB32, to extend CARB’s authority. However, instead of rushing to renew this controversial and expensive program, we should slow down and come up with a more affordable solution that benefits all of California.

Cap-and-trade limits carbon emissions by energy producers and raises money through the sale of carbon credits. It’s supposed to fight global warming by making it more expensive to use carbon-based fuels. But that’s not the only thing it does.

It turns out the program has made life more expensive for Californians as well.

Since being given the authority, CARB has implemented a steady stream of costly regulations, such as the “hidden gas tax.” Experts agree that this hidden tax costs California drivers at least 10 cents more in added cost per gallon of gasoline. They also acknowledge CARB’s “low-carbon fuel standard” could add another 13 cents per gallon by 2020.

Motorists might be open to paying these costs if the money actually went towards repairing our crumbling roads. Instead it seems the cap-and-trade program has become a multi-billion dollar slush fund for politicians’ pet projects.

Perhaps intentionally, CARB still hasn’t come up with a systematic way to determine if cap-and-trade dollars are really doing anything to help lower emissions levels.

There is little consensus on what constitutes a “green project.” When pushed for answers, CARB officials deflect. This obscurity allows the governor to direct cap-and-trade funds towards his $71 billion high-speed rail project, which is actually increasing the state’s carbon emissions.

Some cap-and-trade funds were supposed to go towards programs for low-income communities that want to invest in renewable energy. Because CARB is largely free to do as it wishes, there’s no real way of knowing if these grants are reaching their intended targets. That’s a kick in a gut to the less fortunate who supported AB32.

Like you, I want breathable air and clean parks for our children and grandchildren. But do CARB’s unelected bureaucrats really need this much power? Government mandates can be very expensive and inevitably the costs are passed down to consumers. Not everyone can afford a Tesla.

Why can’t we use cap-and-trade funds to solve real problems like emission-causing traffic congestion? Think about it: What pollutes more, a car that reaches its destination quickly or one that’s stuck idling on a freeway for an extra 20 minutes?

A state appeals court has already put the future of cap-and-trade in doubt. And many questions remain, such as how to spend the billions collected and whether or not the program is really an illegal tax. Some doubt CARB has the right to collect the money at all.

There’s also a fierce debate over whether or not regulators can extend the program without the Legislature’s permission. The Legislature’s chief counsel doesn’t think so.

California is already a leader on climate change, and our current law doesn’t expire until 2020. Perhaps we should leave lawmaking to our elected officials, not abdicate power to unelected regulators. Rather than rush an extension, let’s invite the public to join the discussion. Californians deserve clean air, but they also deserve affordable energy—and to know how their dollars are being spent.

George Runner is an elected member of the California State Board of Equalization.

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: AB32, Air Resources Board, Cap and trade, CARB, Carbon, George Runner, Pollution, SB32