Jerry Brown and the Western States Petroleum Association’s terrible cap-and-trade bill, AB 398, will arrive with the speed of a bullet train to the Senate floor for a vote at 2pm Monday, followed by a 4pm Assembly vote.
The bill is literally a wish list come true for the oil industry. It’s riddled with offsets, allowances, and substanntial tax breaks, and would even prevent local Air Districts from regulating carbon pollution. Over 50 groups, representing climate and environmental justice groups throughout the state, have announced their opposition to AB 398. You can read the bill here.
Please call your senator and assembly representative now.
RALLY AND PRESS CONFERENCE: 11AM – 1PM, NORTH STEPS OF THE CAPITOL BUILDING, 1315-10th St., Sacramento
We have joined our environmental justice allies in opposing the continued reliance on offsets, which allow polluters to support things like forest preservation while they continue to spew greenhouse gases and the associated pollutants into frontline communities. Ditto for the allowances that give polluting industry the right to pollute freely—a give-away of billions of dollars. They were worth $3.1 billion to Big Oil from 2013 through 2016.
We are alarmed by the “preemption” of local Air Districts (yes, our own BAAQMD) and the Air Resources Board from exercising their authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Brown’s (and Big Oil’s) current cap-and-trade proposal leaves all greenhouse gas regulation to an intentionally weak market mechanism. This is the oil industry’s counter-move to our almost-successful four-year effort to get BAAQMD to cap local refinery emissions. Regional air districts are the lead agencies for controlling stationary source pollution, and the only organizations with the decades of experience and resources to successfully monitor and regulate the local and global pollutants that are released together from refinery smokestacks.
Please call your representatives in the remaining hours before the vote and ask them to muster the political courage to oppose this ill-conceived bill.