By Julia Rosen for Yes! Media.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter - California News Service
Reporting for the YES! Media-Public News Service Collaboration

NORTH RICHMOND, Calif. -- Growing up in North Richmond, California, Denny Khamphanthong didn't think much of the siren that wailed once a month, every first Wednesday at 11 a.m. The alarm is a test of the community's emergency warning system, which has alerted residents to numerous incidents over the years at the nearby Chevron oil refinery. One recent accident there, a 2012 fire, sent a cloud of black smoke billowing over San Francisco Bay and left thousands of local residents struggling to breathe.

Now, when Khamphanthong explains the sound to his young nieces, he sees the fear in their eyes. "I forget that this isn't normal," he says. Nor is the fact that Khamphanthong and most of his childhood friends carried inhalers. Richmond, a diverse, industrial city where housing prices and incomes have lagged behind its Bay Area neighbors, has poor air quality and some of the highest rates of respiratory and cardiovascular disease in California.

"There's a lot of beautiful things that happen out of [Richmond]," says Khamphanthong, a community organizer with the Asian Pacific Environmental Network whose family emigrated from Laos in the 1980s. "But at the same time, when you look at the reality of it, it is sad."

Pollution, poverty, and race collide in many other disadvantaged communities across California and the country, and some argue that the state's climate policies haven't helped. While California has already cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 13% since their peak in 2004, many residents still suffer from high levels of air pollution, much of it produced by fossil fuels.

In particular, controversy has dogged California's cap-and-trade policy, which took effect in 2013 and regulates roughly 450 entities accounting for 85% of California's emissions. The system works by setting a limit on the total amount of greenhouse gases released by refineries, power plants, and other large emitters, and requires polluters to obtain permits to cover their share. The overall "cap" lowers every year, forcing polluters to reduce their emissions or purchase allowances from others who do.

Economists, environmentalists, and policymakers-many of them White-tout cap-and-trade as a cost-effective way to cut emissions while generating money for other climate initiatives. But environmental justice activists say the program has not served California's disadvantaged communities, and particularly communities of color, where many facilities operate. In their eyes, it doesn't do enough to address climate change and allows emitters to continue polluting the air in the meantime.

For example, Chevron's Richmond Refinery, one of the state's largest emitters, released more greenhouse gases in 2017 and 2018 - the last years for which data are publicly available - than it has since 2008. And in several recent years, it emitted as much or more of certain air pollutants. It has also dramatically increased the volume of gas flared off as waste, another source of harmful compounds. (Representatives from Chevron did not respond to requests for comment.)

To many, cap-and-trade highlights a contradiction. "You're hearing all this great stuff about how amazing your governor and your state is on climate leadership," says Lucas Zucker, policy and communications director at the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy. But "it doesn't feel like anything is changing."

As the United States reckons with its long legacy of racial injustice and the increasingly devastating consequences of climate change, questions about the efficacy and fairness of cap-and-trade have taken on greater urgency than ever. But seven years on, researchers, regulators, and activists are still arguing about how California's most famous climate policy has impacted its most vulnerable residents-and how to do better.


The Air

Climate change is usually seen as a global problem. But its effects are profoundly local, and often refract through long-standing patterns of inequality and racism.

In the U.S. and elsewhere, low-income residents and people of color shoulder an outsized share of the climate burden. They face greater risks from heat waves, floods, and other climate-related impacts. And they have suffered collateral damage from the harmful pollutants produced by using fossil fuels.

These pollutants, which include particulate matter, nitrogen and sulfur oxides, and toxic substances like benzene, have been linked to health problems ranging from respiratory disorders to reproductive problems to cancer. And numerous studies show that polluting facilities and their emissions tend to concentrate in disadvantaged communities.

"Me and my five cousins, we all have asthma," says Abe Francis, 15, of Sacramento. When Francis was young, doctors prescribed him medication because they feared he might stop breathing in his sleep. He still struggles to catch his breath when he plays basketball at the park. "It's incredibly scary for me," says Francis, who is African American.

According to CalEnviroScreen, the system used by the state to identify at-risk populations, his neighborhood falls in the highest fifth of pollution-impacted communities in California. It ranks in the 94th percentile for poverty and roughly 90% of residents are people of color.

In Wilmington, a predominantly Latino community in south Los Angeles, Dulce Altamirano says her children and grandchildren suffer from headaches, rashes, nose bleeds, and respiratory problems caused by pollution. "The air quality is very bad," 45-year-old Altamirano says in Spanish, with a sigh. "I personally have many problems with breathing, with my throat. ... There have been times when my husband wanted to call the paramedics." The city sits between numerous refineries, oil wells and storage facilities, shipping ports, and high-traffic roads, and some neighborhoods rank in the top tenth of CalEnviroScreen scores.

Climate policies present an opportunity to address these issues because greenhouse gases and harmful air pollutants often come from the same sources, like industrial smokestacks and vehicle tailpipes. In fact, when California passed its landmark 2006 climate law-which directed the state to cut greenhouse gas emissions down to 1990 levels by 2020-supporters claimed that it would save thousands of lives through improved air quality alone.

But environmental justice advocates grew concerned that these benefits would not be equally distributed when the California Air Resources Board decided to adopt a cap-and-trade program as part of its strategy to implement the law.

CARB turned to cap-and-trade in part because it had broad support from both environmental groups and industry players, and was already in use by a coalition of East Coast states and the European Union to tackle greenhouse gases. (In 2014, Quebec joined California's market and several other states and countries have considered or adopted their own versions in recent years.) However, community activists worried that the system would allow companies to find ways to keep emitting, particularly in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

"Anytime to you have that kind of pay-to-pollute scheme, the communities that already were being sacrificed-that becomes a business decision," Zucker says. And some evidence suggests that these fears have come true.

A 2018 study led by Lara Cushing, now at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that more than half of the facilities covered under cap-and-trade actually increased their in-state emissions during the first three years of the program. These facilities were also more likely to be located in disadvantaged communities. (In-state emissions were offset by purchasing cleaner power and carbon credits from other projects that reduced emissions elsewhere.)

A 2019 report by the environmental group Food and Water Watch found similar results for the East Coast's Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative-a cap-and-trade program that regulates the power sector.

However, a new analysis by economists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, paints a slightly brighter picture in California. The researchers used a model to simulate how pollution spreads in the atmosphere to study how emissions translate to exposure. Like others, they found glaring disparities between disadvantaged communities and their Whiter, more prosperous neighbors. But while this so-called environmental justice gap increased in the years before cap-and-trade took effect, it fell by 20-30% afterwards in the areas where facilities were covered by the program.

The California studies, which took different approaches, do not offer a clear answer about whether cap-and-trade has helped or harmed disadvantaged communities in the state. Both had to wrestle with outside factors that affected emissions, like the Great Recession and California's other climate policies. But activists say that there is another even more important question that has mostly gone unasked: what would have happened if California had adopted a different policy altogether?

Many feel that their communities would have seen greater progress if the state had regulated emitters directly, says Katie Valenzuela. She grew up in the town of Oildale-in a major oil-producing region in California's Central Valley-and now serves as policy and political director for the California Environmental Justice Alliance.

In recent years, state regulators have made a concerted effort to tackle inequalities in air quality. But Valenzuela says that officials have leaned on cap-and-trade instead of embracing more aggressive climate policies-often at the expense of vulnerable communities. "It's been 14 years, and we've still never had a meaningful discussion about reducing our dependence on fossil fuels."


The Money

By the time California's cap-and-trade program came up for renewal in 2017, environmental justice advocates had united against it. They felt ignored by state officials and abandoned by mainstream environmental groups. The final reauthorization bill, which extended the program until 2030, only compounded their sense of betrayal: among other provisions, it exempted many polluting facilities from additional regulation by local air districts.

This souring of relationships was particularly ironic given that many saw California's original climate law as an explicit effort to advance environmental justice. It was "integral to the design," says Michel Gelobter, a social entrepreneur and environmental justice advocate who helped shape the bill when he was the executive director of Redefining Progress, a sustainability think tank.

The law directed state officials to consider the impacts of climate policies on "communities that are already adversely impacted by air pollution." It also mandated that the state convene an Environmental Justice Advisory Committee to oversee its climate efforts. Even the cap-and-trade program, while far from perfect, had equitable ambitions, Gelobter says.

He and other economists note that traditional environmental regulations often raise the cost of goods and services, which disproportionately harms low-income people. And the extra money that consumers pay goes into the pockets of polluters, Gelobter says. Thus, to him, the most just climate policies are those that impose a price on carbon and use the revenue to blunt the economic blow on the most vulnerable members of society. And California has done exactly that.

Every quarter, the state auctions off emissions allowances to polluters (some are also distributed directly to industries) and by law, 35% of the money raised must be spent in disadvantaged communities. In practice, however, the state has delegated far more, almost 60%, or roughly $3 billion in total since the first funds were released in 2014.

Phil Serna, a member of the California Air Resources Board, sees this as a powerful counterpoint to critiques that cap-and-trade is unjust. "How we invest our resources is really a reflection of our priorities," says Serna, who is also a Sacramento County Supervisor.

Some cap-and-trade revenue goes directly to California residents, to offset the increased cost of electricity and natural gas caused by the state's climate initiatives. The rest of the money goes toward projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions or improve water quality. In disadvantaged neighborhoods, that might mean expanding public transit, increasing access to renewable energy, and building efficient, affordable housing.

Some feel uncomfortable about the source of these funds, since they often come at a cost to community health. "We would prefer it if there was no money coming from the cap-and-trade system because there was no pollution coming from our economy," says Alvaro Sanchez, director of environmental equity at the nonprofit Greenlining Institute. But from an investment point of view, he says, "the money picture feels fairly positive."

In the San Joaquin Valley, cap-and-trade funds have helped low-income residents purchase clean cars. Most of the valley ranks in the upper third of CalEnviroScreen scores. And the region has the worst air quality in the nation; Bakersfield leads the country in particulate pollution, and Fresno ranks second. But here, the leading culprits are agriculture and traffic-not the large industrial facilities covered under cap-and-trade. (The program regulates transportation indirectly by forcing fuel distributors to purchase emission allowances.)

Under an initiative called Drive Clean in the San Joaquin, residents can get up to $9,500 to trade in their old car for a hybrid or electric vehicle. So far, Drive Clean has replaced 3,000 cars and saved customers hundreds of dollars a month in gas and maintenance costs, says Tom Knox, the executive director of Valley Clean Air Now, which runs the program.

One of those vehicles went to Sokunrith Nop, who emigrated to the U.S. from Cambodia 41 years ago and now lives in Stockton. He replaced his 1995 Honda Civic with a fully electric 2017 Fiat 500e. "I love it. It suits me perfectly," says Nop, who needed something reliable to drive his child to school.

He likes saving money on gas. And he wants to help the environment. "Everybody should drive a car like that where we don't pollute," Nop says. He only wishes the program could help more people like him. "Those cars are expensive."


The Rub

Cap-and-trade isn't the only way to put a price on carbon and it's not the only one that raises environmental justice concerns. Such issues arise whenever policies rely on market forces to drive down emissions-because markets are famously unconcerned with equity. "It's all about finding efficiencies," says Kyle Meng, an economist at UCSB and a coauthor of the study on the environmental justice gap.

Still, activists and researchers have proposed numerous ways to make California's program fairer. For instance, regulators could require that emissions in disadvantaged communities decline at least at the same rate as the overall cap, rather than setting a statewide goal, says James Boyce, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Officials could also impose geographic restrictions on trading to ensure that the pollution benefits accrue more locally, or force emitters to go through local air permitting processes.

California's Environmental Justice Advisory Committee has repeatedly called on regulators to reduce the number of available allowances and do away with offsets-a cost-containment measure that allows polluters to purchase additional emissions credits from outside projects that reduce carbon emissions, like planting trees or protecting them from logging, often in other states.

Alicia Rivera, a community organizer for Communities for a Better Environment in Wilmington, says that she struggles to explain the concept of offsets to residents breathing unhealthy air. "The refinery gets credit, but in Wilmington, they haven't reduced anything," she says. (CARB has not banned offsets, however, starting in 2021, companies won't be able to use as many, and at least half must benefit the state.)

Some say that California's program would produce more equitable results if it had a more ambitious emissions target, and thus, higher carbon prices. (By the state's own assessment, cap-and-trade deserves little credit for its progress so far.) Others say that it has received too much attention. Danny Cullenward, a climate policy expert at Stanford University, argues that cap-and-trade "claims to be able to do anything you want ... while the politics frustrate any efforts to dial it up to do that."

Stanley Young, director of communications at CARB, says that cap-and-trade serves as a backstop for the state's other climate policies, like efforts to increase renewable energy use and clean up traffic pollution. And he says that it functions as intended-first, as one of several tools to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and second, to raise money.

California has made good on its obligation to invest the resulting funds in hard-hit communities, but some say it could still do better. Certain programs that ostensibly benefit disadvantaged communities may not actually do so; for example, a recent study by Cushing and others found that some of the state's clean vehicle rebate programs serve more well-off Californians than low-income residents.

Sanchez, of the Greenlining Institute, says that the most disadvantaged communities often lack the means to access cap-and-trade revenue. And when they do, state agencies are sometimes reluctant to give community-based organizations control, says Simeon Gant, executive director of GreenTech, a workforce training program in Sacramento whose students include Abe Francis. As a result, he says, "they never get to the people they're targeting."

Indeed, many Californians have never heard of cap-and-trade and remain unaware that it produces money for their benefit. Khamphanthong and others say the state should do a better job of engaging with community members to figure out what they need most. In Richmond, Khamphanthong would like to see support for green jobs that treat employees well and benefit the community. "Why not just work with us to figure out a solution?" he asks.


The Future

In recent months, California's cap-and-trade program has hit road bumps. At the beginning of the pandemic, the spring auction brought in a fraction of the expected revenue. And over the summer, the head of California's Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees CARB, released a letter stating that he would work with the board to re-evaluate the state's dependence on cap-and-trade going forward.

Whatever California decides, it has to put equity first, says Jackie Cole of Veritable Good, a consulting firm that specializes in environmental justice. "If that is not the central lens through which you are developing solutions, then those communities will always be left out," she says.

New York may offer an interesting model. Last year, activists celebrated the passage of a new climate law that sets even more aggressive emissions reductions goals than California. Environmental justice groups championed the bill, and they are hopeful that the state will steer clear of cap-and-trade policies (they have long fought the East Coast's regional market). Instead, activists support imposing a polluter fee to raise money, on top of strict mandates to cut emissions.

Back in California, CARB recently passed a resolution, "almost a constitution," says Serna-reaffirming its commitment to social and racial justice after Black employees raised concerns about agency culture. "I have every expectation that that will eventually find its place into everything that we continue to do at CARB," he says, including managing cap-and-trade.

The state has already taken steps to address air pollution in disadvantaged communities, including issuing new regulations for vehicles-a major contributor. After Abe Francis participated in a recent CARB panel on environmental justice, the agency offered to install low-cost air monitors at his home as part of a pilot program. Francis said they have already helped his family members stay safe on unhealthy days.

The state has also begun implementing a 2017 law, passed alongside the cap-and-trade extension, that creates a community-focused system for tackling harmful emissions in the most impacted neighborhoods. Along with Richmond, one of the first cities to participate is Wilmington, together with neighboring Carson and West Long Beach. After a long negotiation between community members, local officials, and industry representatives, refinery managers agreed to cut emissions of several key pollutants by 50% by 2030. The final plan, released last year, also includes provisions to reduce pollution from traffic and oil wells.

Alicia Rivera says the refinery agreement represents a victory-albeit hard-won and too late for many. But Dulce Altamirano, who served as a member of the community steering committee in the negotiations, isn't quite as hopeful.

She lives close enough to a refinery to hear valves pop open and to smell the noxious fumes that seep out. Sometimes, flares illuminate the night sky above her house. And she says she's still waiting to see change.

"Solo hablan, pero no se hace nada," she says. "Just talking and then doing nothing."

This story was funded in part by the Society for Environmental Journalists' Fund for Environmental Journalism.

Julia Rosen wrote this article for YES! Magazine.

Rosen is an award-winning journalist who covers science and the environment. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, High Country News, TheAtlantic.com, NationalGeographic.com, and The Los Angeles Times, where she was formerly a climate reporter. A member of SEJ, NASW, and SPJ, she is based in Portland, Oregon. Follow her on Twitter @1juliarosen



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Three environmental nonprofits filed suit Wednesday against the California Air Resources Board to oppose the expansion of a program allowing oil and gas companies to offset their pollution by buying credits from huge farms producing natural gas from animal waste.

Last month, the state amended the low carbon fuel standard to expand credits favoring biogas, arguing it removes methane from the waste stream and creates renewable power.

Tyler Lobdell, staff attorney for the nonprofit co-plaintiff Food and Water Watch, said the program is actually a perverse incentive for factory farms to get bigger.

"The biggest operators, the biggest polluters, are the most rewarded," Lobdell pointed out. "That is the incentive structure here. Go out and be as big and as polluting as possible, and you will see the largest reward from our program."

The low carbon fuel standard is intended to reduce carbon pollution by incentivizing the transition to clean cars. The lawsuit argued the credit program prioritizes pollution-heavy practices over sustainable solutions.

Lobdell noted manure only produces methane when large quantities are liquefied at concentrated animal feeding operations. He suggested the state require factory farms to manage their manure in ways which do not rely on anaerobic environments emitting methane.

"The real solution to addressing pollution is to reduce the pollution, not to monetize it and lock it in for generations," Lobdell contended. "We should be requiring these facilities to more sustainably manage their waste. That would have climate benefits, that would also have benefits to local air quality and to local water quality."

The lawsuit asks the court to require the California Air Resources Board to disclose, analyze and mitigate the environmental impact caused by the change to the low-carbon fuel standard. The other two plaintiffs include the nonprofits Defensores del Valle Central para el Aire y Agua Limpio, and the Animal Legal Defense Fund.


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Business leaders, clean transportation advocates and other experts say new technologies are helping to accelerate the transition to clean trucks and sustainable freight across Pennsylvania. Members of the Clean Trucks Pennsylvania Coalition are calling on federal and state leaders to back programs that support the deployment of clean-power trucks across the Commonwealth.

Jordan Stutt, senior director, northeast region with CALSTART, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing clean transportation solutions, said the goal is to get gas and diesel-powered trucks off the road.

"We are going to take one of the busiest freight corridors in the country, I-95, and turn it into one of the first zero-emission freight corridors in the U.S. That investment and the jobs that it will bring underscore that this transition to clean trucks is all about opportunity," he said.

The coalition is urging Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and state and local leaders to adopt the Advanced Clean Trucks Act. Advocates say the act would reduce emissions by 50% by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2050.

Brooke Petry, field organizer with Moms Clean Air Force of Pennsylvania, said zero-emission trucks are the key to cleaning up the air Pennsylvania families breathe. When residents of South Philadelphia step outside in the morning, the air often has a distinct toxic smell, and she added that toxic air pollution doesn't harm everyone equally.

"Here in Philadelphia, children of color are hospitalized for asthma complications at five times the rate of their white peers. Reducing harmful diesel pollution from trucks is a key component to address climate justice in our city and beyond," she explained.

Erin Johnson, Registered Nurse with the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, said diesel exhaust is responsible for multiple types of respiratory illnesses and cancers in the region.

"The trucks, buses, trains and port operations that keep goods and services moving through our region also contribute to deadly air pollution. Diesel exhaust contains more than 40 known cancer-causing organic substances. The good news is that we have solutions to this diesel pollution problem," she said.


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Members of the environmental nonprofit GreenLatinos are involved in a push to get more Latinos across Texas involved in the fight against methane gas. Texas is one of the largest producers of the hazardous chemical.

Rogelio Meixueiro, Texas community advocate with GreenLatinos, said a large part of the campaign is educating the community.

"They tell me all the problems that they're experiencing, and the moment I connect with them the fact that there's a fracking site less than a mile away, they start seeing how, 'yeah ever since we moved to this area, we started having breathing problems.' The one that hurts me the most is really the birth defects. Learning that Latino women are some of the most impacted with birth defects is heartening," he explained.

He added that meetings will be held across the state over the next six months, culminating with a final day of action in Austin before the state Legislature.

The organization is forming what they call the Latino Methane Table, to make sure everyone has a seat at the table. Meixueiro said elected officials are passing laws that directly impact the immigrant population, and they hope to give them a voice before the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

"We're seeing how Latinos are constantly affected the most in the agriculture fields, construction. It's so hot, often we don't associate 'oh, methane' - the thing that we are getting out of the Permian - is actually the one that is creating some of the conditions," he explained.

He added the state has a history of being unfair to minorities.

"For Dallas and Fort Worth, what we're noticing is that there's a long history that is tied with redlining. And we notice how often the communities with the most amount of permits approved for fracking - fracking near day-care centers, fracking near homes - it's usually areas where particularly Latino and Black communities live," he continued.