This post originally appeared on KQED’s State of Health blog.

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Farming in the Central Valley contributes to the poor air quality there.

As if there wasn’t already enough to worry about, now doctors are predicting that climate change will harm people’s respiratory health. The American Thoracic Society is so concerned it filed a report with two goals. The Society not only wants to raise awareness with doctors so they can take preventive measures with their patients but also is enticing researchers to take on the question for further study. They found that climate change has a direct impact on air quality. A hotter climate, wildfires, more pollen in the air and rates of airborne diseases are worsening respiratory health worldwide.

Climate change will likely affect different places in different ways, but in California it could mean hotter summers and more wildfires. The itchy eyes and sneeze-inducing allergies that plague many people during pollen season could also hang around longer if weather patterns continue to change. All of that is bad for asthmatics, children and the elderly, but also for poor people – as it turns out.

“It was really an eye opener for us,” said Kent Pinkerton, a professor of pediatrics at UC Davis and the lead author on the report. “We were really not aware of the implications of change in temperature on respiratory health. But it really is a global issue. It’s not just a concern for here in our country,” he added. In some parts of Africa and Turkey desertification and increased particulates in the air have already forced people to relocate, often into cramped conditions, which further heightens their risk for respiratory diseases.

In California, wildfires are a blazing example of how increasing dryness and changing weather patterns harm people’s lungs. Pinkerton pointed to the summer of 2008. “We had over 1000 wildfires burning at the same time. And that really had a significant impact on air quality and particle concentration within the atmosphere,” he explained to me. Another big change — doctors are seeing infections from molds not seen before in California. “I think a good example of this has been a fungal type of infection that was only found in Central America, that is now found as far north as British Columbia, in Canada,” said Pinkerton.

So far the people most at risk are those with preexisting lung conditions, the very old and the very young. But in California’s Central Valley some of these affects have gotten so bad that doctors are seeing them in all age groups.

“I’m seeing an increase in the last 19-20 years in the number of patients I’m seeing who are experiencing chronic lung disease,” Kevin Hamilton, deputy chief of programs at Clinica Sierra Vista in Fresno told me. ”If we see continued changes in the climate you will see resulting problems in people’s health,” he continued. Hamilton is a respiratory therapist who treats mostly low-income patients, often Latino farmworkers making their living in the Central Valley. He says in his experience if air pollution is high, people pass a threshold where they keep getting sick. He says the San Joaquin Valley often has more than 150 days a year that break the health statutes for particulate matter, fine particles in the air that can affect people’s lungs. Consistent poor air quality exacerbates — and can cause — illnesses like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In Hamilton’s 34 years of treating lung diseases he says he thinks it’s getting worse. Something else different — he’s seeing problems in all age groups among his low-income patients, something he doesn’t see with wealthier patients.

John Capitman, the Executive Director of the Central Valley Health Policy Institute and a professor of public health at CSU Fresno, says not all lung problems are created equally in the Central Valley. In fact, he’s also done research [PDF] that links the poorest air quality and the poorest health to communities that are low-income and often segregated. “In some of our more affluent communities we have health status outcomes that are similar to anywhere else in the country,” Capitman explained. “But in other communities, particularly low-income communities, places that are racially segregated basically, there is evidence that life expectancy is much lower.” Life expectancy is not linked solely to air quality, but exposure to high levels of particulate matter, ozone and pesticides are a contributing factor to the overall poor health that these communities experience.

That disparity is true around the world. Pinkerton’s report makes clear that many respiratory illnesses linked to a changing climate have a socio-economic component. The people in Africa being forced to relocate are often the poorest, just as the farmworkers in the Central Valley bear the brunt of poor air conditions and increased ozone.

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The most at-risk families are lower-income and live in more urban areas than the less vulnerable familes.

A study by the California Department of Public Health finds that people in poorer areas of Los Angeles and Fresno Counties are more at risk of ill health effects from climate change than those in wealthier neighborhoods. The report found that in LA, neighborhoods on the coast were the most vulnerable, mostly because of sea-level rise, though it also blamed “poor public transit, wildfire risk, and a large proportion of elderly living alone.” In Fresno, there were similar issues (aside from the obvious fact that sea-level rise won’t directly affect the landlocked county).

Our content partner California Watch reported on the study (PDF) today.

The department examined social and environmental factors ranging from the rising sea level to public transportation access and found that African Americans and Latinos living in these counties are more likely to be exposed to health and safety risks related to poor air quality, heat waves, flooding and wildfires stemming from climate change.

“Clearly, climate change risks are not equal across the state or within individual counties,” according to the report. “Identifying communities at greatest risk is a necessary step in efficiently employing limited resources to protect public health.”

The introduction to the study mentions California’s cap-and-trade program, saying some of the projected $1 billion raised from carbon trading should go to help mitigate effects in vulnerable communities.

Cal-Span

A parade of environmental justice proponents pleaded with officials to abandon cap-and-trade. A woman in the background holds a sign that says: "Keep the cap. Drop the Trade."

Members of the “environmental justice” movement lost a major round to air officials on Wednesday, when the latter voted to keep California’s nascent cap-and-trade plan on track.

The program is a key component of the state’s landmark strategy to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Activists sued to stop the program, claiming it does little to curb toxic emissions from industrial facilities and farming operations.

Environmental justice advocates packed the Sacramento hearing room of the Air Resources Board to fight the state’s plan to allow corporate trading of carbon pollution rights. Marie Harrison of San Francisco’s Bayview district put it succinctly:

“We are relying on you to do what you were put here for and that is to protect us.”

Harrison and others fear that cap-and-trade will not protect them against toxic air pollutants from industrial facilities, which tend to be located in poorer communities.

A court order forced air officials to do more analysis of alternatives like a direct carbon tax. They did — but Wednesday, after six hours of impassioned, sometimes tearful testimony, voted to move ahead with cap & trade, as planned. Brent Newell, a lawyer for the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, called the Board’s court-ordered “expanded” analysis “a sham.”

Officials acknowledged concerns expressed by the speakers but said that other air quality programs, already in place, should prevent levels of local toxic emissions from rising.

Compliance with the cap-and-trade program has been pushed back a year and is now set to begin in 2013.

Note: This post has been corrected. References to “Monday” that appeared in its original form have been changed to “Wednesday.”

In response to a court ruling (which it’s still appealing), the California Air Resources Board today issued a new analysis of its proposed carbon trading program, weighed against several alternative means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The fresh look includes the original five options, including cap & trade and the option of doing nothing at all. It does not add any new options but rather seeks to flesh out the other three. The non-trading options include regulating emissions at the source, implementing a straight-up tax on carbon emissions, and a mixed bag of actions. The reworked analysis expands discussion of those three alternatives from a few pages to more than 60. It will be up to the courts to decide whether the extra paper carries enough substance with it to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act.

Regulators were sent back to the drawing board by a Superior Court ruling in May that favored plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by environmental justice advocates. The groups charged that the state sidestepped its own environmental laws in its original implementation plan for AB 32, stacking the deck toward a cap & trade program, and giving short shrift to other approaches. The judge agreed. The Air Board appealed but went back to work on alternatives, anyway.

The release of today’s “functional equivalent” document starts the clock on a 45-day period for public comment. The Air Board is scheduled to consider those comments at its meeting on August 24.

Friday provided another blip in a confusing court fight over California’s centerpiece climate law, known as AB 32.

A “final” ruling from a Superior Court judge in San Francisco allows most implementation of the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act to go forward, except for the carbon trading plan known widely as “cap & trade.” Regulators at the California Air Resources Board (ARB) will have to flesh out their prior assessment of alternatives to cap & trade that could also result in reducing the state’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

Analysis of those alternatives is required under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). While ARB officials still insist that their original work was adequate under the law, groups representing an “environmental justice” agenda had sued, claiming that alternatives had not been fully explored.

Judge Ernest Goldsmith agreed, and previously issued a preliminary ruling that appeared to shut down all efforts toward implementation of the law. Some observers thought the ruling jeopardized even measures supported by separate legislation, such as the state’s tailpipe emissions standards and renewable energy targets.

So ARB’s reaction to Friday’s ruling was mostly a sigh of relief. According to a written statement from spokesman Stanley Young:

“We are pleased that the court’s decision enables ARB to continue moving forward on implementation of a range of AB 32 measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, drive innovation, improve energy security, and steer California to a clean energy economy.

But the order expressly prohibits the Air Board from “engaging in any cap and trade-related project activity that could result in an adverse change to the physical environment,” until ARB fully complies with CEQA. ARB says it will continue its fight on the cap & trade front:

“We respectfully disagree with the court’s determination that ARB did not adequately analyze alternatives to cap and trade program in the Scoping Plan, and will file a notice of appeal on Monday.”

In their own statement, plaintiffs in the case celebrated putting the brakes on cap & trade, at least temporarily:

“We are encouraged that the Judge is now requiring CARB to take a hard and honest look at cap and trade,” said Bill Gallegos, Executive Director of Communities for a Better Environment, one of the environmental justice plaintiffs in the lawsuit.  “We have even more evidence now that cap and trade does not work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the European Union, emissions have increased by 3% in the past year under their program, and we also know that cap and trade has the worst impact on health in low income communities and communities of color,” Gallegos added.

The first auctions of emissions permits under the cap & trade program are scheduled to start early next year. “That’s eminently doable,” says David Pettit, a Santa Monica-based senior attorney with the Natural Resource Defense Council. Pettit said that ARB analysts went back to work on alternatives when the first preliminary court decision came out, months ago, so the additional “homework” required by the court is well underway.

As to the many other provisions under the law, Pettit said “The vast majority of the essential programs needed to meet AB 32′s GHG limit are unaffected by this ruling.” NRDC is a supporter of cap & trade.

Photo: Craig Miller

Suspend cap-and-trade, or stop the whole show.

Those are the options offered by the environmental justice groups who won a court ruling against the California Air Resources Board (CARB) in March. The groups were seeking to halt cap-and-trade over health concerns for communities located near industrial polluters. A California Superior Court judge ruled that CARB had violated state environmental law by not adequately considering alternatives to cap-and-trade, and suspended all 68 regulations that implement California’s global warming law, AB 32, until the board complies.

The two sides entered negotiations to find ways for the state to move forward with parts of AB 32 other than cap-and-trade, but those talks broke down on March 30.

Today, the environmental justice groups submitted their final documentation to the court, proposing two options. The first stops the implementation of all measures in CARB’s Scoping Plan for implementing AB 32. The other stops only the development of the cap-and-trade program, until an environmental review is completed.

“Our preference is that the focus be on cap-and-trade,” said Bill Gallegos, the executive director of Communities for a Better Environment, one of the plaintiffs. “We mainly just want to make AB 32 stronger.  There are very positive things in that law and we don’t want to see them all on hold.”

CARB has said that it will appeal the court’s decision. Should that happen, the appeals court could stay the recent order and allow implementation of AB 32 and cap-and-trade to continue.

California’s cap-and-trade program, which is scheduled to launch in January of 2012, represents about 20% of the total emissions reductions called for under AB 32.

Trees killed by acid rain. (Photo: bdk)

In response to a court order, California regulators say they are working up a “very robust analysis” of alternatives to cap & trade, a critical part of the state’s AB 32 climate law.

Right now, the entire implementation plan is on hold, after environmental justice groups sued the Air Resources Board.

A lower court ruling has forced state officials to reexamine the carbon trading program, on the grounds that alternative ways of controlling emissions were not adequately considered.

The activists’ concern is that a market-based system of emission reductions will create “hot spots” in low-income communities of color as industrial polluters buy the rights (called allowances, or carbon credits) to emit more greenhouse gases, and potentially bring other more toxic forms of pollution into nearby communities.

But will that happen? Since carbon trading won’t start until at least next year, the argument is hypothetical. But another example of emissions trading has been well tested.

In 1990 the nation enacted a similar system of emissions trading for sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxides, pollutants released by power plants and industrial sources that create fine soot particles linked to breathing problems and heart attacks. The main concern at the time was controlling acid rain.

Environmental justice advocates at the time argued low-income communities of color would be harmed by the program. But a study out of Indiana University claims that hasn’t happened.

Author Evan Ringquist of Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs examined sulfur dioxide trading activity across the country between 1995 and 2009, to find out where the pollution allowances ended up. Surprisingly, he found that low-income neighborhoods with high percentages of black and Hispanic residents were unharmed by the program. In other words, sulfur dioxide did not concentrate in these communities.

To the contrary, a 10% increase in the percentage of Hispanic households in a zip code was associated with a 4.1% decrease in the likelihood that a facility in the neighborhood would buy permits to emit sulfur dioxide.

“If there is an equity effect from allowance trading in this model, it works to the advantage of communities of color,” Riingquist wrote in the paper, which appears in the academic journal, Social Science Quarterly.

The communities impacted the most were those with high numbers of high school dropouts. It appears that education — but not income or color — was linked to where industrial polluters expanded their operations.

I contacted Ringquist to explain his results. He said he was surprised, too, given how strong opposition had been over “toxic hot spots” in minority communities. But here’s what he found: Older facilities are the ones that tend to buy more sulfur dioxide allowances to meet the requirements of the program.

“Poor and minority residents don’t tend to be concentrated around the oldest sources of sulfur dioxide pollution,” Ringquist wrote in an email.

As for lesser educated communities, a 10% increase in adult residents without a high school diploma was associated with a 5.6% increase in the likelihood that a facility will buy sulfur dioxide allowances. Why?

“It may be that there is less local opposition to purchasing large numbers of pollution allowances,” Ringquist said. Locals could also have less ability to monitor increases in pollution allowances, although he couldn’t say that for certain. “That’s a much tougher story to tell,” Ringquist said.

He also he couldn’t explain why facilities in Hispanic communities tended to sell more allowances, although the data confirms that.

Will California’s carbon trading program be similarly benign to communities of color, counter to environmental justice claims?

If the results of this sulfur dioxide trading study are any indication, California’s cap & trade program may be less harmful than some fear.

2011 Prize winner Ursula Sladek (Photo: Goldman Environmental Prize)

The 2011 Goldman Environmental Prize winners were honored in San Francisco last night. In a ceremony at the Opera House, they were each awarded $150,000 for their grassroots work addressing pressing environmental issues around the world.

Environmental degradation from energy production is a common theme in the work of at least half the winners: Dmitry Lisitsyn, who’s worked to protect the ecosystems of Sakhalin Island from rapid destruction caused by companies exploiting the region’s petroleum reserves; Hilton Kelley, for environmental justice work on the Texas Gulf Coast, a region plagued with air-quality-related health problems due to emissions from the major refineries and petrochemical plants in the area; and Ursula Sladek, who created Germany’s first cooperatively-owned renewable power company.

This The New York Times story describes Sladek’s journey from homemaker disturbed by the effects on her own community from the Chernobyl disaster, to clean-energy activist.  As Felicity Barringer notes in the story, Marin County has had its own battles surrounding the creation of a local utility, the Marin Energy Authority, which has a goal of providing 100% renewable energy by 2020.  Currently, the company serves 9,000 customers in Marin with an energy mix containing 27% renewables (the state requires 20% currently), according to project coordinator Jamie Tuckey.

Sladek’s cooperatively-owned company aims to provide its 100,000 customers with 100% renewable energy by 2015.

“Climate change continues to be one of the world’s greatest challenges,” Sladek told a packed house, just before she accepted her award. “We all have to solve this problem, but not at the cost of nuclear pollution.”

Invoking the legacy of Russia’s nuclear disaster at Chernobyl and fresh images from Japan, Sladek’s call for the US to lead a global clean energy revolution was met with wild applause from the audience.

“Once again we are shown that the uncalculated risks of nuclear energy are too great to bear, especially as true alternatives exist today,” she said. “Germany’s transition from fossil fuels to clean energy sources has created enormous benefits. The United has even more superior green energy resources.  The United States has far greater financial infrastructure.  The United States should be the global leader in clean energy.”

Another common theme among the award winners this year is water.  Prigi Arisandi of Indonesia was recognized for his efforts to stop industrial pollution of a river that provides drinking water for three million people, and Francisco Pineda of El Salvador won for his work (in the face of death threats) that has stopped or delayed a Canadian gold mining development from devastating a major source of the country’s water supply.

Pineda said that 90% of El Salvador’s surface water is contaminated.  Through a translator, he told the audience, “We can live without gold, but we cannot live without water.”

Two of this year’s winners, Hilton Kelley and Raoul du Toit, were guests on KQED’s Forum program yesterday. You can listen to the interviews online.

Environmental justice groups say California's carbon trading program would make pollution worse for communities near major polluters. (Photo: Alison Hawkes)

Prospects for full implementation of California’s 2006 climate change law turned a darker shade of gray this week. Environmental justice groups walked away from negotiations with state officials. The talks were intended to allow certain portions of the plan to move forward even as the carbon trading program remained tied up in litigation.

That means implementation of AB 32 is effectively at a standstill.

“At this point my clients consider negotiations over,” said Brent Newell, a lead attorney in the case representing a dozen environmental justice groups and individuals.

Newell declined to explain the points of contention with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) during negotiations, which ended on March 30, citing legal confidentiality.

The environmental justice groups won a court ruling against the board in mid-March, seeking to halt cap-and-trade because of concerns the market-based system would harm the public health of communities living near industrial polluters. A California Superior Court judge ruled that CARB had violated state environmental law by not adequately considering alternatives to cap-and-trade, and suspended all the other 68 regulations that implement AB 32 until the board complies.

The negotiations might have created room for some aspects of the far-reaching plan to move forward, such as the renewable energy and clean vehicle provisions. The environmental justice groups have repeatedly stressed that they support major aspects of the climate change law and don’t want to see it fail. But their latest move may derail, or at least delay, the nation’s first major test case in climate change policy, a plan that has spurred a big growth in green industry in California.

Newell blamed the fallout in negotiations on state regulators. “Unfortunately, the ARB, through its own choices, is driving AB 32 off a cliff,” he said.

CARB Spokesman Stanley Young offered little clarity on the issue. In an email, he said:

“We take the court’s decision seriously. We have already indicated that we intend to more fully consider alternatives to cap-and-trade regulation … before the program goes into effect.”

Young said the Air Board still plans to appeal the order by a state superior court judge. He did not say whether the board will also file objections to the writ of mandate that environmental justice groups must submit to the judge outlining how they believe CARB must comply. The judge can decide whether to make changes based on the state’s objections, Newell said.

The appeals court could also stay the judge’s order, meaning implementation of AB 32 could proceed. In any case, it seems certain that the fate of California’s climate change law is, for the foreseeable future, in the hands of lawyers and judges.

Environmental justice advocates will tell you they never intended to shut down the state’s whole climate law, when they filed suit against it. But a broadly-worded court decision could put some or all implementation of AB 32 on hold.

Waste gases are burned off at the ConocoPhillips refinery in Rodeo. (Photo: Craig Miller)

The ruling, which was rendered last Friday by a state superior court in San Francisco and made public yesterday, finds that in putting together its implementation (scoping) plan, the California Air Resources Board failed to give adequate weight to potential alternatives to cap & trade.

Judge Ernest Goldsmith issued the ruling:

“…enjoining any further implementation of the measures contained in the scoping plan until after (the Air Board) has come into complete compliance with its obligations under its certified regulatory programs and CEQA (the California Environmental Quality Act).

The broad wording of that would seem at odds with the assessment of CARB chair Mary Nichols, who, in an interview on Friday, described the likely ruling to me as “a tempest in a teapot.”

Today in its official response, the Air Board wrote: “We disagree with the court’s decision and intend to appeal.”

Regulators are also downplaying the sweep of the decision, insisting it applies narrowly to the cap & trade plan. According to the Air Board’s response, issued by email on Monday:

“We believe plaintiffs did not intend to put on hold efforts to improve energy efficiency, establish clean car standards and develop low carbon fuel regulations. A broadly worded writ puts at risk a range of efforts to move California to a clean energy economy and improve the environment and public health.”

But plaintiffs’ attorney Alegria De La Cruz told Climate Watch today that the ruling means “Cap and trade must stop.” De La Cruz, legal director for the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, said: “The judge’s order makes that clear because ARB really needs to look at alternatives to that program before it can move forward with it’s larger plan.”

As far as the ruling that CARB didn’t do its homework on cap and trade, the Air Board statement goes on:

“Last year, as part of the cap and trade rulemaking process, 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. We will rely on this analysis in responding to the court’s decision.“

Meanwhile a statement from the Environmental Defense Fund, an ardent supporter of cap & trade, said the organization “expects that the parties will work to narrow the remedy so that CARB can proceed with some or most of the work to implement AB 32 while a new analysis is finalized and approved by the Court.”

The cap & trade program represents about 20% of the total emissions reductions called for under AB 32.