California must adjust Cap-and-Trade to protect residents’ health | Opinion
Last month, Congress overturned California’s ability to phase out gasoline-powered cars and gave oil companies a huge gift. If upheld in court, it will seriously impair our ability to protect people from pollution and eliminate the single largest source of emissions causing the climate crisis.
Gov. Gavin Newsom responded with outrage. Yet, state lawmakers are considering a multi-billion dollar giveaway to Big Oil he proposed last month when announcing plans to extend the state’s Cap-and-Trade Program for 20 years.
When releasing his proposal, Newsom said: “California won’t bend the knee to a federal administration hellbent on making America polluted again.”
Strong words. If California is going to live up to them, then Cap-and-Trade needs reform to ground our future in affordability, health, and equity. That is why community organizations across the state are urging the Legislature to reject the governor’s proposal and do better.
Instead of requiring major polluters to cut climate-warming emissions, Cap-and-Trade allows them to pay for the pollution they emit under a cap that declines over time. Operating since 2012, this revenue has supported $12.8 billion in projects such as providing safe and affordable drinking water, offsetting costs for home energy efficiency upgrades, funding grassroots-led community development initiatives, and utility bills credits.
But Cap-and-Trade has a dirty secret. Since 2017, it’s handed out pollution freebies worth billions of dollars to oil and gas giants – nearly $890 million in the last year alone. That means billions of dollars padding corporate profits instead of supporting state affordability and climate resiliency efforts. Worst of all, these subsidies absolve polluters of achieving actual emission reductions. And these giveaways don’t even come with any requirement for lower gas prices.
As taxpayers, we’re left with the cost of more pollution – higher rates of asthma, heart disease, and cancer, missed work and school days, and mounting medical bills in communities near polluters.
California is home to many of the nation’s most polluted areas, from Los Angeles to Long Beach, Bakersfield to Delano, and Fresno to Hanford to Corcoran. In the San Joaquin Valley where Leadership Counsel centers most of its work, poor air quality costs $700 million annually in emergency room visits and hospitalizations.
Yet, the governor’s proposal does nothing to address pollution in the hardest-hit communities – or the worsening climate impacts threatening both health and economic security.
With poverty rates soaring and inequality expanding, the administration’s proposal – offering giveaways to industry while redirecting Cap-and-Trade funds away from programs serving frontline communities – abandons California’s most vulnerable people. It withholds support for clean drinking water during worsening droughts, protections from extreme heat, and access to clean energy upgrades – critical tools for climate resilience and equity.
Lawmakers must lead on Cap-and-Trade reform. It’s time to make polluters pay their fair share for their pollution, cut pollution in the real world and not just on paper, support lower income Californians struggling with an affordability crisis, and invest in climate solutions that protect health, lives, and jobs in disadvantaged communities.
The stakes for our success have never been higher. As the federal government abandons climate action and grants polluters a pass to dodge all regulations, it is up to us as Californians to succeed and lead: to create effective and equitable climate policy, and not cozy up to polluters who harm public health while gouging us at the pump.
If we don’t make the state’s transition to clean energy affordable and accessible to all Californians, we fail. If we don’t help our most vulnerable communities adapt to a future of climate extremes, we fail. If we don’t take meaningful action to curb pollution and hold polluters accountable, we fail.
Let’s show the world another, better way is possible.
