Good article. Brings to light not all things are as they seem.
Environmental Groups Say California's Climate Program Has Not Helped Them
In the Wilmington neighborhood of Los Angeles, residential streets dead end at oil refineries. Diesel trucks crawl through, carrying containers from nearby ports. Longtime resident Magali Sanchez Hall says the pollution from all that has taken a toll, right on the street where she lives.
"The people that live here, the mother died of cancer," she says, pointing to a modest one-story home. "The people that live here, three people died of cancer."
The state's own research finds people in Wilmington are about twice as likely to get cancer as the average person in greater Los Angeles. That's not because of the carbon dioxide coming out of smokestacks. It is mostly due to diesel fumes, but also the toxic chemicals that mix with the greenhouse gas emissions of refineries.
Sanchez Hall wipes her finger across the hood of a car and holds it up. "Black dust," she says.
Given all this, you might think Sanchez Hall would be excited about California's so-called cap-and-trade program, which aims to get polluting companies, like the refineries here, to reduce emissions. But she and others say the state's signature climate change program is failing them.
"When I first heard about cap-and-trade, I couldn't conceive how pollution had become a commodity to profit from," says Alicia Rivera of Communities for a Better Environment.
Under the program, California sets an overall cap on carbon emissions. In order to meet it, companies have three choices: cut their emissions directly; buy and sell permits that allow them to keep emitting; or make up for their emissions by reducing emissions somewhere else. That last option is called an "offset" and environmental justice activists like Rivera hate it the most.
"We don't care if they have a project for tree planting elsewhere," she says. "When are they going to reduce pollution here?" more here:http://www.npr.org/2017/02/24/515379885/environmental-groups-say-californias-climate-program-has-not-helped-them
Environmental Groups Say California's Climate Program Has Not Helped Them
In the Wilmington neighborhood of Los Angeles, residential streets dead end at oil refineries. Diesel trucks crawl through, carrying containers from nearby ports. Longtime resident Magali Sanchez Hall says the pollution from all that has taken a toll, right on the street where she lives.
"The people that live here, the mother died of cancer," she says, pointing to a modest one-story home. "The people that live here, three people died of cancer."
The state's own research finds people in Wilmington are about twice as likely to get cancer as the average person in greater Los Angeles. That's not because of the carbon dioxide coming out of smokestacks. It is mostly due to diesel fumes, but also the toxic chemicals that mix with the greenhouse gas emissions of refineries.
Sanchez Hall wipes her finger across the hood of a car and holds it up. "Black dust," she says.
Given all this, you might think Sanchez Hall would be excited about California's so-called cap-and-trade program, which aims to get polluting companies, like the refineries here, to reduce emissions. But she and others say the state's signature climate change program is failing them.
"When I first heard about cap-and-trade, I couldn't conceive how pollution had become a commodity to profit from," says Alicia Rivera of Communities for a Better Environment.
Under the program, California sets an overall cap on carbon emissions. In order to meet it, companies have three choices: cut their emissions directly; buy and sell permits that allow them to keep emitting; or make up for their emissions by reducing emissions somewhere else. That last option is called an "offset" and environmental justice activists like Rivera hate it the most.
"We don't care if they have a project for tree planting elsewhere," she says. "When are they going to reduce pollution here?" more here:http://www.npr.org/2017/02/24/515379885/environmental-groups-say-californias-climate-program-has-not-helped-them
