California Superior Court Rules With Environmentalists Favoring a Carbon Tax Instead of AB32’s Cap and Trade

March 30th, 2011 by Susan Kraemer

Environmental justice groups who believe that a carbon tax will be more effective than cap and trade in lowering pollution sued and won in California’s lower court in February, and the case went to Superior Court in San Francisco.

Now a Superior Court judge has agreed that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) did not adequately review alternatives to cap and trade, halting implementation of AB32, due to begin next January. The Environmental Defense Fund, the Nature Conservancy and the Natural Resources Defense Council have backed the cap-and-trade approach as the more effective in lowering pollution.

Ruling in favor of the Association of Irritated Residents, based in the San Joaquin Valley, and Communities for A Better Environment and four other environmental justice groups, Judge Earnest Goldsmith wrote, CARB “could have, and should have used data from existing programs, studies and reports to analyze the potential impacts of various alternatives.”

However, this objection is fairly easily disproved. If there is one thing that environmental policy wonks excel at, it is undertaking copious research studies and documenting them.

Indeed, “We completed a robust and comprehensive examination of the alternatives to cap and trade with a 500-page environmental analysis that fully addresses the concerns the court raises,” said CARB representative Stanley Young, according to Energy Prospects. “We will rely on this analysis in responding to the court’s decision.”

In fact the cap and trade portion provides only one fifth of the measures in AB32 that move California into the new clean energy economy. Yet the ruling as it stands now, broadly prevents implementation of all the measures in the plan, including new building efficiency standards and low-carbon fuel regulations.

But, reassuringly, CARB Chairwoman Mary Nichols said returning to the scoping-plan process would amount to “a little bit more than a tempest in a teapot.”

“In reality it will have very little impact because the plan itself is not of any legal force,” she stated. “The cap-and-trade rule has already been adopted and in fact is already in effect.”

A cap and trade plan is superior to a carbon tax, for two reasons. Cap, and trade.

Only a cap caps pollution at a set limit, that steadily declines each year. By contrast, a tax merely makes pollution a more expensive activity, turning energy waste into a luxury for the rich, and polluter corporations are rich. So a tax does not limit pollution. Starting over, without the checks and balances of carefully written policy like the cap and trade plan, polluters can also just pass down the costs of a tax to the rest of us.

Secondly, only trade generates the auction funds that states can use to fund the rebates and efficiency measures that lower greenhouse gases. The ten Northeastern member states with RGGI cap and trade auctions have already generated almost three quarters of a billion dollars for investment in solar panel rebates and better boilers and insulation for its residents. RGGI has propelled tiny cloudy New Jersey to compete with huge sunny California in solar roof power generated.

The carbon tax is no alternative for another reason, too. In November, California voters inadvertently passed a cleverly worded voter referendum that now prevents new taxes on polluters – Prop 26.

Susan Kraemer@Twitter

Image: Artwork by Ann Duffy

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Tags: California Air Resources Board, Environmental Defense Fund, Environmental justice, Natural Resources Defense Council, nature conservancy

About the Author

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.

Anonymous

“RGGI has propelled tiny cloudy New Jersey to compete with huge sunny California in solar roof power generated”

And New Jersey has bills before their legislature to get NJ to withdraw from RGGI. I suspect those solar panels are there only thanks to subsidies and that they aren’t viable without it.

The New Hampshire house has already passed a bill to pull out of RGGI. It’s now in the senate.
http://steadystaterevolution.org Joshua Nelson

We should be using a combination of the two systems. Why does everyone seem to think that there is only one solution?

Hell yes we should be taxing pollution – taxes are a deterrent in a free-market economy and should be used on things we want less of. However, because climate change is such a massively important and pressing issue we should also provide a cap and trade system to move towards 90% emission cuts by 2050 (as well as significant intermediate cuts – http://bit.ly/gG3fNh).

Also, we should institute a rationing system to make this a more socially just fight. George Monbiot outlines this in his book Heat – http://bit.ly/ggxeSW

Cover all our bases and reduce the risk of our single “solution” failing. We can’t risk failure when our supporting ecosystem (and thereby civilization) is on the line.

Cheers,
Joshua
http://polizeros.com/ Bob Morris

Gosh, it sounds like you favor ignoring what some silly judge said because you know what is best for everyone and the law should thus be ignored.
TizMiz

What a poorly written article. To say “California Superior Court Rules With Environmentalist Favoring a Carbon Tax” means that you don’t understand the decision at all. Judge Ernest Goldsmith simply state that CARB failed to adequately analyze alternatives- he in no way advocated a tax as your article’s title would suggest. As far as the breakdown of “Cap, and Trade” as superior to a Carbon Tax, you say “Secondly, only trade generates the auction funds that states can use to fund the rebates and efficiency measures that lower greenhouse gases”. Why wouldn’t a Carbon tax be able to generate those funds? I’m in favor of Cap and Trade, but we need logical discussion and analysis of the matter- not the poorly thought-out musings of the ill-informed.
- http://cleantechnica.com/author/susan Susan Kraemer
  
  No, I said the environmentalists sued because they favored a carbon tax, and the judge agreed that CARB did not delve deeply enough into the tax route. I thought I did make that clear.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ron-Kilmartin/1155551944 Ron Kilmartin

The elitists in CARB and the NGOs do not have a lock on carbon ignorance; it extends to our noble court system too. But why not? The Supremes are in on it too and if the Supremes say its bad, its bad! Hallelujah!