Calif. Climate Law Could Help Poor, Minority Areas
















How state regulators design a carbon market to reach California's climate goals will be especially important to low-income and minority communities because they are disproportionately located in industrial areas, the study said.

For example, if oil refineries are allowed to buy carbon permits to avoid cutting emissions, there will few health benefits to the areas that need it most, the authors found. The same would be true if a cement plant paid money to plant trees in a forest hundreds of miles away as a way to continue current emission levels - a scenario envisioned by state regulators.

"Some polluters may maintain or increase their emissions, creating localized dirty-air hotspots even if there are regional greenhouse gas reductions overall," the authors wrote.

The report suggests California could cut harmful pollutants along with greenhouse gas emissions by doing one of the following:

  • Require the plants that release the most greenhouse gases and other pollutants to cut their carbon emissions at that location.

  • Limit trading of so-called carbon credits within certain dirty-air zones and neighborhoods.

  • Impose a higher price for carbon credits in highly polluted neighborhoods so industries located there have more incentive to cut emissions.

  • Give neighborhoods with the dirtiest air or significant socio-economic problems a share of the money generated from carbon fees. In turn, that money could be used to reduce air pollution even further, the report says.

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