When Even CARB Can’t Clear the Air
By Jock O’Connell
For some time now, West Coast port officials have feigned a positive, we’re-nothing-if-not-eager-to-cooperate demeanor in their dealings with state and local air quality regulators, even as their smiles mask the assiduous grinding of teeth. No gesture of good will from the ports seems sufficient to forestall regulators and not a few op-ed writers from regularly using the ports as public policy piñatas, labeling them as scourges on the environment and befoulers of the public health.
Leaving each port’s accomplishments (sharp reductions in SOx and NOx, DPM, and CO2) as benchmarks seemingly unworthy of public acknowledgment, let alone celebration, the air quality sheriffs in the environmental lobby would have us believe that ports up and down the West Coast have been criminally slow in slashing toxic emissions, leaving many members of the public and more than a handful of public officials to conclude that ports are more trouble than they are worth.
It is safe to say that exceedingly few members of the general public are aware that the nation’s largest maritime gateway – the neighboring Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach – has seen diesel particulate emissions cut by over 87%, SOx emissions by over 97%, and NOx emissions by more than 56%. Still, so much is made of the oft-repeated claim that ports are the single largest stationary source of air pollution that one easily overlooks the word stationary in concluding that port operations are the primary cause of foul air in regions where ships call.
Well now, along comes a new (November) report in which the California Air Resources Board (CARB), in reviewing progress in achieving the goals of Senate Bill 375, has essentially given itself -- as well as regional air quality boards – a failing or (at best) an incomplete grade. (We’ll pass over the irony that the report was issued just after wildfires – inherently beyond even the most accomplished regulator’s ability to regulate – had pushed air quality in much of California down to Beijing standards.)
SB 375, formally known as the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008, was a truly pioneering measure that recognized the need to integrate transportation, land-use, and housing decisions in meeting state climate goals. The aim was to enlist California’s 18 Metropolitan Planning Organizations in devising long-term strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by encouraging more compact development so that people could live closer to their jobs and could enjoy a diversity of low-carbon mobility options. For a state whose residents have long been wedded to the automobile and where the chief symbol of the California Dream was a single-family home with a front lawn and backyard pool, SB 375 faced huge challenges in persuading (or otherwise incentivizing) Californians to fundamentally change the ways they wanted to live.
Without saying as much, the legislation aspired to behavior modification on a grand scale.
In 2017, the California legislature tasked CARB to produce periodic reports on progress being made to fulfill SB 375 objectives. Last month, CARB released the first of these reports. The most discouraging or, depending on your point of view, embarrassing take-away? How about: “California is not on track to meet greenhouse gas reductions expected under SB 375.”
What the report more specifically found was that emissions from passenger vehicle travel is increasing and going in the wrong direction. As the report observed: “California will not achieve the necessary greenhouse gas emissions reductions to meet mandates for 2030 and beyond without significant changes to how communities and transportation systems are planned, funded, and built.“
The report fingers you and me for the state’s failure to show progress. (Well, much less me than you since I haven’t owned a car in years.) As the report grimly acknowledges, an astonishing three-quarters of commuters drive to work alone, a level that is staying the same or growing in most regions.
The authors of the CARB report lament that California – at the state, regional, and local levels – has not yet gone far enough in making systematic and structural changes to how we build and invest in communities that are needed to meet state climate goals. The report argues that, to “meet the potential of SB 375 will require state, regional, and local agency staff and elected officials to make more significant changes across multiple systems that address the interconnected relationship of land use, housing, economic and workforce development, transportation investments, and travel choices.”
If anything, that last statement suggests what’s wrong with CARB’s approach. It’s based on the assumption that more regulatory intervention is the key to achieving clean air. In effect, it’s an implicit restatement of the if-I-were-czar mentality that infects the dreams of everyone of us who is chronically exasperated by the behavior of everyone else.
Sure, aiming to build more housing near workplaces would probably cut into commuting. But it remains that we are still a society that insists on driving the SUV down to the corner store to get a loaf of bread. And we’re still a society that has frightened ourselves into believing the world is full of predators ready to snatch up our children, who therefore must be chauffeured to every activity beyond the front lawn. (I’m finishing up this commentary while in Paris, where the sight of school children riding the Metro or buses unaccompanied by adults is common. In urban California, that would be regarded as criminal negligence.)
So, does the blame fixed on millions of solitary commuters mean that CARB staffers will soon be seen standing in the middle of the 405 freeway demanding drivers use buses and trains? Hardly, if air quality regulators have demonstrated anything, it is their eagerness to look past the real causes of California’s bad air in favor of hectoring those institutions that have actually been making substantial progress in cleaning up their acts.
But how does CARB propose to improve its grade?
In a richly convoluted sentence that would have made Faulkner envious, CARB’s report card concedes: “As this report’s findings suggest, the state’s current structure of policies and lack of incentives will continue to produce and exacerbate the insufficient results outlined in this report unless shared responsibility, changes in authority or mandates, and strong, deliberate, collaborative action is taken by state, regional, and local policy makers to foster a policy environment that enhances the way we live, work, and travel.“
In other words, we need not a mere czar but rather…wait for it…a COMMITTEE. Specifically, the folks in Sacramento propose a bureaucratic solution, an “interagency body involving the Secretaries and Chairs of key California agencies and Commissions, and representatives from regional and local governments.”
And what will this esteemed, if hideously large and unwieldy assemblage do, you ask? Well, the answer is that it will “produce and implement a new ‘State Mobility Action Plan for Healthy Communities’.”
Ah yes, a NEW PLAN. But, wait, before we can have a PLAN, we’ll need plenty of studies followed by meetings to evaluate the studies followed by more studies to plug the gaps in the earlier studies. (Envisioned is the formation of a “transportation system think tank”, which presumably would not duplicate the research of existing transportation institutes within the University of California system.)
All of this should safely kick the can down the road well into Gavin Newsom’s governorship.
It is understandable, if perversely so, that organizations such as CARB devise the solutions they do. Despite public workshops and other efforts to hear differing opinions, they essentially remain echo chambers precisely because no one joins CARB or other regulatory bodies who is not already wholly dedicated to the organization’s mission. Internal dissent? Maybe over font size or pagination, but over precious little else.
That’s why CARB would propose a Grand Committee to get the state back on track to achieve its climate goals. Who else than a band of zealots would suppose everyone participating in this committee would be singing from the same hymnal? Perhaps it will shock the political innocents at CARB to find that representatives from San Francisco or West LA might not see eye-to-eye with Central Valley residents, let alone with the citizens of the Principality of Marin. Let’s suppose that convening a broad-based panel coughs up a furball as contentious as, say, a Legislature.
In short, the new proposal aims to achieve the political equivalent of a virgin birth, a PLAN we can all venerate and follow without having had to endure the slimy processes of democracy.
Until a full-blown recession or sharp jump in fuel costs yields significant reductions in private vehicle miles traveled, California will not achieve its own greenhouse gas commitments. In the interim, everyone connected with maritime trade should be on notice that CARB, frustrated by not living up to its own goals, will continue to hector the state’s seaports.
Happy Holidays.
The commentary, views, and opinions expressed by Jock O’Connell are his own and do not reflect the views or positions of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association. PMSA does not endorse, support, or make any representations regarding the content provided by any third party commentator.