From the LA Times, some “climate justice” for the poor:
…
The California lawsuit was filed by six environmental groups that represent low-income communities, including the Association of Irritated Residents, based in the San Joaquin Valley, and Communities for A Better Environment, which fights pollution around the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
The groups contend that a cap-and-trade program would allow refineries, power plants and other big facilities in poor neighborhoods to avoid cutting emissions of both greenhouse gases and traditional air pollutants.
Full story here
h/t to WUWT readers Duke C. and Jeremy
Welcome to the “Hotel California”!
M.A.De.
Au contraire.
Warming has a pretty much 100% correlation with boom times for humanity and every other species. Cooling, the reverse. Warming is a feature, not a bug.
Brian H says on March 22, 2011 at 10:37 pm:
We are (demonstrably) helping plants thrive by bringing levels up slightly. They’d actually prefer about 2,000 ppm, but even if we burned all the fossil fuel known to exist, all at once, we wouldn’t even get back to 1,000. Too bad!
No problem. We just brew more beer, ferment more grapes and vent the CO2 to the air.
From Harold Pierce Jr on March 23, 2011 at 1:00 am:
Great, now someone in Kalifornia is wondering how to (carbon) tax breweries and wineries. To be fair, they’ll also go after all those snooty micro-breweries and small pricey “family-owned” wineries. Then there’s all those many people making beer and wine at home. At least that segment is easy to take care of, they’ll just ban it outright by citing possible bacterial contamination thus an unacceptable health risk.
Oh, and then there are the bakeries! Lots of yeast used, lots of CO2 released. They’ll have to insist on proper venting and continuous monitoring of the dangerous carbon pollution as it’s released. And what of homemade bread? Will they tax individual packets of yeast? What of the popular electric bread makers, just a one-time charge at purchase based of estimated usage, or expected lifetime of the unit? Of course, the Smart Grid is coming. They’ll be able to track their usage by the unit’s ID# and bill accordingly based on estimated CO2 emissions that can be blamed on it, same for all your modern appliances.
Yup, Kalifornia’s future sure is bright (when the skies are clear during the daytime).
This is good. The judge pointed out that a fossil carbon fee has merits but that those merits were not considered. We are all agreed that carbon trading is much less than perfect. If one agrees that too much fossil CO2 is a problem, then a phased-in fossil fee returned as a universal tax cut is the most efficient way to fix it.
And fossil CO2 is a problem [because too much of any CO2 is a problem and] because all other CO2 emissions are automatically offset. That is, fossil carbon was captured at least thousands of years ago, where as non-fossil sources like breathing, burning wood, burning cow farts, what have you, release carbon that was captured recently. Therefore, the hard circumstances of non-fossil CO2 sources ensure that concentrations do not change abruptly.
Constant and atmosphere-wide increased warming from abruptly-increased CO2 with tell tale fossil isotope signatures causes a positive feedback from water to cause even more warming. Warming leads to decreased crop yields due to high temperatures. Warming leads to more droughts, punctuated by flood, which also decrease harvests and cause economic damage to property.
Fossil energy is old technology. The government should promote newer, better technology. Because we learn more about science as time goes by, and because earlier unforeseen results of any given technology build up over time, technology cannot be allowed to stand still, though it would disrupt institutional corporations.
The best way for the government to promote non-fossil technology is to lower costs on every other activity (a universal tax cut, except on fossils). It makes no sense to pay for this universal cut with a universal increase. It makes sense to pay for it with an increase on fossils. And the most direct route, with least overhead and shirking, is via production and import.
Fossil production and import costs effect most of the entire economy at the moment. That is, they ripple through most of the economy. But if the tax burden were shifted strongly toward fossils, the economy would begin disconnecting from fossils. Arguing that we cannot ever leave fossils is sad and defeatist. It is worshiping a coal calf, covered in oil, with fossil methane coming out its backside.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is that implementation of a straight carbon tax (which the law suit suggests is preferred by the Irritated Ones over a cap-and-trade system) paves the way for government to quite literally tax us for breathing…
CO2 is an essential component in the life cycle of phytoplankton and landbased plants, O2 is a waste product (one that animals tend to like I might add). California Man, in his limitless wisdom is out to make-like a lemming. Who will same him? (Kind’a sounds like Simon LaGree is back in the picture again. Can’t Hollywood write anything NEW?)
Anderlan;
So much error and blown logic in one place! But let’s focus on one instance: your assertion that warming hurts crops and leads to more droughts. Neither is true. Cooling messes up the hydrological cycle far more, leading to droughts. Crop yields have increased steadily with increased CO2 and warming.
You are attempting to tax and suppress a benefit. Not smart.
I keep reading that a carbon tax on fossil fuels off set by a return or reduction of other taxes is acceptable.
Possibly true–if you really believe taxes are ever returned or off set. I don’t ;>
To M.A.DeLuca:
My apologies. I read your your post as carbon dioxide. I guess what threw me was the comment that it was naturally occurring. Since any incomplete oxidation of carbon will produce CO, I suppose forest fires produce some CO. But most atmospheric chemists don’t consider CO part of the natural atmosphere.
But now I see your point. What is air pollution? A broad definition might be: anything we humans don’t want in the air. The definition the Clean Air Act uses is things in the air that are harmful to human health and welfare. This leads to some problems. Particulate matter, such as soot from coal fired furnaces has been a known health hazard for years. However, when EPA established particulate matter standards it didn’t specify what kinds particulates. Any particles that got into your lungs were bad. Therefore they set a standard for particles less than 2.5 microns in size. Guess what area will never meet that standard? In Arizona, the county that Phoenix is in is one of the counties that is not in compliance with the standard. Probably never will be, because of blowing desert dust. Is the naturally occurring desert dust a pollutant?
Another example. As I said in my earlier post, the photochemical reaction between NO and hydrocarbons produces ozone. Ozone has also has been shown to be health hazard. Ozone also has a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS). In L.A. Motor vehicles are the primary cause. But photochemical smog also occurs over rural portions of Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee. Turns out that the pine trees in these areas give off hydrocarbon gases that also form photochemical smog. The Smokey Mountains are so named because of this smog. Are the pine trees polluting the air? They are the reason some areas in the South don’t meet the NAAQS for ozone.
So, I agree with you, it all depends on how you want to define pollution. But in the two examples, the regulated things in the air are known health hazards, whether they are produced naturally or by man.
CO2 is different. It is not a health hazard. It may be harmful to human welfare, IF , not only the IPPC models are correct, but also all the computer studies that assume they are correct and then go on to predict some dire consequence of this warming. That is what the skepticism is about. The models and computer studies don’t stand up to rigorous scrutiny.
old geezeer — your post has an error!
There; all fiksed!
😉