Ruling for clean air and renewable energy offer hope

In an excellent ruling in LA the judge took the health interest in the community, not to have asthma and cancer from high flow users, to say that new gas fired powered plants need to show their clean their clean air merits before the permit is issued.

Naturally high flow users, in Orange County which would benefit, rather than paying their way, are warning of blackouts. But the low flow users are hip to the tradeoffs: "Many of the plants, such as a 914-megawatt generator sponsored by the small industrial city of Vernon, would be in low-income, crowded areas that have high rates of asthma and other pollution-related diseases. Though they would be outfitted with the latest in pollution-control technology, the gas-fired generators would emit thousands of tons of fine soot particles, which are linked to cancer, heart disease and other illnesses.

Years ago, the air district set aside what it called Priority Reserve credits so that projects such as hospitals and police stations could be built even if they added to the region's pollution. Last year, the district, lobbied by a host of former politicians, decided to sell the credits to energy companies for $420 million: about half the market value, according to environmentalists' calculations.

Environmental and community groups said Wednesday that they would sue in federal court to nullify such credits.

The decision, meanwhile, left air regulators perplexed at their next move."

Why now? The CAA has been around since the seventies. The Times writes "Under the federal Clean Air Act, no polluting facilities can be built unless soot and chemicals are reduced elsewhere in the region through a complex system of pollution credits, also known as offsets."

Renewable energy benefits. " Under California law, private utilities, which produce 11% of their power from renewable sources, must boost their so-called "green" portfolio to 20% by 2010. But a recent plan released by the state Air Resources Board said the amount must increase to a third by 2020 for all utilities, if the state is to meet its goal of reducing greenhouse gases that are causing global warming.

Aides to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger are negotiating with legislators to put the 33% requirement into law this year, a measure that could alter plans for many of the new gas-fired plants."

The Times writes: The 32-page decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council, Communities for a Better Environment and other groups. In it, Judge Ann I. Jones told the air district it could not sell offsets to the plants without a fuller analysis under California's Environmental Quality Act. In particular, the judge said, the district needed to analyze exactly how many tons of pollutants, including health-damaging soot and planet-heating greenhouse gases, that each proposed plant would emit.

Use a gas price ladder.

Like a pair of murderous thieves the Governornator seems stuck in the same financial meltdown of the Bush Administration. His proposal slash and burn everything could use a little forethought; the thinking he left out when he created this morass with the vehicle registration fee cut on becoming governor. Imagine responding to an emergency with laid off and minimum waged workers?

Rather than cut all all transport spending look at the benefits derived from high gas prices. Less driving means less needs for roads. Take that portion of the transport budget out completely. Add clean air and traffic calming fees to gasoline large enough to continue raising the price to offset the budget deficit. Take the resulting revenue and use it to meet the demand for transit and a walkable infrastructure.

Higher gas prices have reduced congestion, decreasing the needs for new roads, and meeting many government goals on higher transit usage, more carpooling, reduced air pollution, lower highway fatalities, ag land conservaton, wildfire awareness, and reduced gas usage. All these goals cost a lot in lives and money to implement and the later goal has major national security implications. The reduced need for roads means less spending on one of the larger program in the federal budget that has major negative ramifications for the environment with expensive mitigation in wetland, ag land protection, wildfires, water conservation, and wildlife protection.

Instead of expanding all the benefits of reduced driving from higher gas prices government is bemoaning the loss of revenue for their pork projects. This is because road building has become ingrained as the economic spur for local development based on timber, water, and land exploitation. The resulting rise in land prices drives out farmers and local business who can't compete without labor that can afford to live locally. Our lifestyle is exported to China for cheap trinkets at the local Walmart dragged in by GATT, an undemocratic organization.

The government should see that higher gas prices takes away the need for congestion management agencies and metropolitan transportation authorities. We should be talking like this so that policy makers can make the right choices. We should be doing more than just filling up the coffers in Riyadh and Tehran. We should use a ladder that increments the price of gas every year to a set goal of $16/- by 2012 to meet all our GHG requirements. If gas simultaneously rises in price on the world market the gas ladder should step down to keep the average increase per month as the same price. Not keeping gas at high levels will let motorists savings go up in fumes.

This way the government will get the money to realize its goals and meet national security goals.

Good transit helps the biggest nest egg

Good transit plus good jobs really does equal a strong housing market says the SF Chronicle in a piece on corporate shuttle services and property prices. They go on to say that "with Apple, Yahoo, eBay and VMware also starting employee shuttle services in the Bay Area (and Microsoft recently launching one in Seattle), there may soon be more transit-specific real estate formulations to measure."

Density with corridor transit is a solution to many problems including gasoline useage and global warming. The Urban Land Institute lists it as one of the regional solution in Growing Cooler- what they call compact, transit served areas.

The state instead is moving ahead with a small partial solution with future demand management. AB3021 would allow the MPOs and local jurisdictions to build a toll road to bypass a problem.

As stated in the MN this "little-known piece of legislation working its way through Sacramento would create a new transportation board to oversee the financing of toll roads and give local and regional agencies the authority to impose tolls on projects in their jurisdictions."

This is the wrong solution since all it will do is induce more driving (also in Growing Cooler) which today we know leads to more pollution, deaths, congestion, property price declines in far away suburbs, environmental damage from restricted wildlife corridors and stormwater flows, and fires. Instead the toll authority should be allowed local jurisdiction to charge tolls to manage existing lanes and roadways.

Why $16/g would be a solution

At every income level the economy redefines its stragglers and the price points are where people drop off with alternatives like car sharing, biking, etc. Turkey for example where the price of burros is up 7X in rural area is one such price point.

The resource depleting economy and its peak everything consequence provides high return on investment for increasing fossil fuel consumption, low ROI for reducing fossil fuel consumption.

Consumption patterns for some are changing under duress which leaves the underlying problem intact. In other words those who can afford will still toast the biosphere and we are not going to get to 350 ppm of CO2. Oil is off ~$5/bbl today and if the risk premium is further reduced it could fall back to ~$100 and oil consumption with Sacramento SUVs would resume its growth path.

We need to be at $16, relative to how prices changed in the mid seventies, so the Sacramento ped friendly vision can be realized. Economic changes that, more than incentives, will institutionalized low resource consumption, are no where in sight. The weak blueprint submitted by the California Air Resource Board for implementing AB32 is an example. The carbon trading CARB wants to implement is just a new market in polluting our lungs.

All we have today at $4/- a gallon is some good discussion at the policy level as mayors etc look for alternatives to city budget shortfalls. Much better would be policy that took into account resource conservation based on built in incentives.

> [planning]
>
>
> Sacramento Area Council of Governments, Urban Advantage
>
>
> Sacramento officials used photo imagery to show how different parts of the
> city could be brought in line with their pedestrian-friendly vision.

The Truth About ANWR

There is an email going around called "the truth with ANWR" which expresses three fallacies-

-- that the only problem is energy dependence and consequently independence is a public good.
- that the planet is huge relative to where we live and we can exploit remote areas without consequence.
- that barren areas are not worth protection.

The problem of today is peak everything, a resource limited world. Hello that's why remote areas like ANWR are relevant. More than: after this what? questions should be asked like: why are we in this pickle and what can we do differently today to not need ANWR? Is drilling pollution neutral? Why did we get rid of coastal drilling in California? Is oil transportation pollution neutral? Would we want to live in Benitia or Martinez? Do we like living downwind from B&M?

Energy independence is not a pubic good for the same reason we are not clamoring for banana independence or coffee independence. Its only a public concept to get public resources expended to destroy wilderness (places where we can't live) for corporations who cannot see the big picture because of their structure and time lines.

We may not live in ANWR and thus its remote but others do- the Gwitchen Indians and the Inupiat Eskimos. For the same reasons that we don't want a prison or a water tank in our back yard they shouldn't have oil drilling in their front yard. The ANWR is the calving ground of their porcupine Caribou herds.

The Mojave, Death Valley, Trinity Wilderness, and coastal areas are not really barren. They have local life forms that have adapted to niches in the food chain. ANWR's coastal plain sustains not only the Gwitchen and the Inupiat but also the Caribou and the polar bear. Its a large food trough where the Aboriginal peoples have learned to live sustainably. Our inability to do so where we live despite huge resource exploitation everywhere is what threatens their world just like it destroyed the aboriginal peoples in our world. It shouldn't be sacrificed because the governor needs another hummer or to express our sexuality in our automobiles. Why destroy another wilderness to pollute the air and water in the Bay Area?

More fundamentally there is not enough oil there to meet even five years of consumption at present rates assuming we really go independent.

Policy makers at CCAG seem stuck in providing the wrong infrastructure. That's why in "emergencies," like the present search for energy independence, people are in this pickle of not having enough train cars at CALTRAIN and buses at SAMTRANS, and missing connections and no bikeways, when they have happily given the thumbs up to SUVs for the past forty years after the "era of limits" proclaimed by Jerry Brown.

Fortunately people have always felt unempowered and distrusting of government...

because they have no say over fundamental decision making around them, like the quality of water they are forced to drink or air they have to breathe or the toxins in the food they have to eat or the quality of paint allowed in the school the kids have to go to or the lunch they have to eat. So people take the political compromise from non participation and turn it into a general conspiracy of a criminal government against the individual. Second timeliness is a problem that extends this conspiracy when getting something done, like a traffic signal or a stop sign, takes forever.

People are stressed by the golden handcuffs and distances over which they transact their lives (i.e the importance of energy cost) and there is a xenophobia here, which is also taken out against the government, which is that living in isolation wouldn't be so bad if the government stopped allowing more people to come live near me.

Finally how difficult can life be? Breathing dirty air, eating tainted food, and living in traffic toxic neighborhoods can't be that difficult. So politicians at CCAG must be stupid is the assumption.

So companies can exploit this distrust by taking a common bad like the problem with energy usage and its cost, and instead of arriving at a common good like transit or compact neighborhoods that don't need huge energy inputs, the very decisions that average Americans make when gas prices are high, politicians and publicist for corporations assume that the common bad must be a good, since we are doing it, and want to deplete the resources without verifying the actual amount or understanding the cost of making it happen, and of course given the unempowerment, timeliness, stress, and xenophobia peoples distrust of government is verified.

Failed Politics and Congestion Pricing

From Today's New York Times the numbers presented by the Deputy Transportation Commissioner show that $15/gal will get a 10% reduction in Manhattan traffic which Mayor Bloomberg intended with congestion pricing. The Port Authority estimates that there is a crossover point when the cost to transit will not be offset by the rising price.

The disadvantage of not raising gas prices with taxes is that the Saubies (Saudis and Bushes) make the money instead of society and transit. The impact is spread out instead of localized to the congestion zone according to the DTC. The advantage is the meshing with "goals of cutting traffic and as a consequence lowering pollution."

The decrease in demand for parking was double that of the decrease in bridge traffic, probably because people were trying to scrounge more, and similarly an increase in neighborhood traffic around entry points with no toll. So parking cost rises can offset a need to raise gas to $15/-

A federal policy that gives cities a roads and transit funding bonus for parking management through pricing would be immensely useful here, and CCAG should ask our representatives for this in the Green TEA. James Kunstler says that all the talk of technology and alternate fuels are delusional, and will make it that much more difficult to achieve our goal of 350 ppm of CO2, from the present of level of 384 increasing at slightly more than 1 ppm per year. The good news is that demand, 1/3rd from China, will continue to increase which means rising prices. The bad news for policy makers is that they are unprepared with the infrastructure for a transit ready society and the public distrust in them is justified.

Just going along with the ride and monkeying with the goals via hydrogen shuttles and smart corridors to barely achieve congestion management goals is not just bad policy- data shows that it will be catastrophic.