On June 19, 2012, in Association of Irritated Residents v. California Air Resources Board, the court of appeal in San Francisco upheld the Climate Change Scoping Plan adopted by the Air Board in December 2008. The court rejected claims by environmental groups that the plan violated the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, commonly known as AB 32.
News
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A controversial cap-and-trade program for California complies with the Global Warming Act, a state appeals court ruled.
Adopted by the state Legislature in 2006, the Global Warming Solutions Act tasked the California Air Resources Board with creating a scoping plan to curb and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
CLCV is thrilled to honor Martha Guzman-Aceves at this week’s Environmental Leadership Awardsin San Francisco.
Guzman-Aceves was appointed deputy legislative secretary for Environment, Energy, Water, and Agriculture by Governor Jerry Brown in 2011. Previously she was an advocate with the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, a nonprofit legal services and advocacy organization founded in 1981 to improve rights and opportunities for California’s immigrants, their families and communities.
A number of California-based environmental justice groups, while supportive of the goals of California’s landmark greenhouse gas reduction law, AB 32, filed suit 3 years ago against the agency administering AB 32, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), claiming that CARB’s scoping plan is inconsistent with AB 32. The scoping plan is CARB’s roadmap for carrying out AB32. A particular concern of the environmental justice groups is CARB’s decision to use a cap and trade system to obtain about 16% of the GHG reductions required under AB 32.
Community health centers in two South Valley counties have received almost $1.5 million in federal grants to expand services, including the opening of a clinic in Kettleman City.
The grants through the Affordable Care Act were among 25 awarded to California health centers for a total of $15 million announced this week.
Tales of environmental injustices around the country provide strong evidence that chemical-by-chemical and facility-by-facility regulation is inadequate to protect public health.
Even today, 30 years after the birth of the environmental justice movement, the burden of proof still is placed on communities to demonstrate hazards and push for action. This needs to change. A more proactive and holistic regulatory approach would remove this burden from low-income communities of color, which often do not have the capacity to organize and demand attention. Social equity concerns should be incorporated into environmental policies and regulation.
Heated moments in Kettlemen City as residents demanded answers from state leaders.
A new report by the California Department of Public Health says the rate of birth defects in the Central Valley community of Kettleman City has declined to normal. But local residents and environmental justice activists called the report inaccurate and accused state officials of issuing it without talking to them. Kettleman City sits in the midst of farmland, near the largest hazardous waste disposal site in the Western United States.
A 2008-2009 spike in Kettleman City birth defects has diminished to more normal levels, state health officials said in an update released Tuesday.
The 2009-2011 report found 1.79 birth defects per 100 live births from Kettleman City mothers in 2010-2011, down from 8.51 in 2008-2009. There were five birth-defect cases in Kettleman City in 2009-2011.