Location, Location
With a city motto of "Exclusively Industrial," the town of Vernon was already a pollution magnet. Then offsets made it worse.
you don't have to leave the United States for an object lesson in how an emissions offset system can go wrong. Consider Vernon, California: The tiny city and its neighboring communities have some of the highest air pollution levels in the Los Angeles basin—and it could get worse because of one of the world's first offset initiatives.
In the early '90s, Southern California implemented a federally mandated offset program for the toxic air contaminants known as particulate matter. As the demand for pollution offsets increased, the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which oversees the program, found itself with a tempting option: Instead of holding on to its small quota of offsets set aside for essential services such as schools and fire departments, it could sell them for a healthy profit. With particulate-matter offsets going for $200,000 a pound, the air district stands to rake in about $420 million. Polluters who buy the offsets can save millions over what they would have paid for them on the open market.
Even though Southern California's air pollution levels have been capped, offsets could have a paradoxical effect on the 100 or so residents of Vernon and the mostly Hispanic and low-income residents of surrounding areas. Vernon, whose motto is "Exclusively Industrial," was already a pollution magnet; its city council welcomed just about any facility that wanted to locate there, including a hazardous-waste dump and a metal-processing plant. There are now plans to use pollution offsets to build a 934-megawatt natural-gas-fired power plant there. That's perfectly acceptable within the rules of the offset program, but it means a greater concentration of toxic air pollutants in an already hard-hit area.
"It's as if the local permitting authorities are saying, 'We already have a national sacrifice area in Vernon; a little more wouldn't make any difference,'" says Pat Costner, science adviser to the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. Or as Angela Johnson Meszaros, director of policy for the California Environmental Rights Alliance, concludes, "Access to pollution credits means pollution in our communities, period."
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The comparison being made between particulate offsets and carbon offsets is incorrect.
One extremely key difference between this example and carbon offsets is that carbon dioxide is a global pollutant, so a global cap benefits (or harms) everyone equally. Markets for local and regional pollutants like particulates or mercury need to be designed differently to avoid the problems described here. This sort of problem cannot occur with carbon offsets, because carbon dioxide does not have a local effect.
The local issue is not so much the CO2 emitted, or sometimes other greenhouse gases which are more toxic, but what are called "co-pollutants". When you site a power plant because you've bought carbon emissions credits, you are not only producing CO2 but also particulates, SOx, NOx and plenty of other pollutants that do have important local effects. So regardless of which pollutant is being regulated, the same pattern results: a concentration of polluting industries in poor communities of color.
So let me get this right...one companry pollutes less, earns carbon credits and sells them to somebody who can't cut down on C02 emissions so they can pollute more for the people who polluted less?!?! If there is a flaw in my understanding I would like to hear it. If not...-shakes head-
@ Steve: thanks for your important clarification of the difference between offsets for greenhouse gases (GHGs), and offsets for criteria and/or toxic air pollutants. As you point out, the unique nature of GHGs as a pollutant (that they have only global, no local) health impacts, makes them uniquely suited for offsetting. It's unfortunate that a past bad example of how offsets work has sullied their reputation overall, because with GHGs they're very effective.
@ Neil: Your argument makes sense in theory but not in practice. What you are saying is that GHG offsets could allow a company to emit more GHGs, and since other criteria/toxic pollutants are also emitted when GHGs are emitted, allowing offsets allows a concurrent increase in those other pollutants. However, that ignores the fact that those other pollutants are already subjected to heavy regulation under the Clean Air Act, which effectively prevents their increased emission for any reason. If this doesn't make you feel any better, it's also very easy to simply make a rule as part of an offsetting scheme that use of GHG offsets can not permit for any net increase in the emission of other toxic/criteria pollutants. GHG offsets have so many benefits for helping achieve emission reductions that would not otherwise be covered by a cap and trade system or a tax, and it's unfortunate that people are so willing to abandon them because they can't think creatively about how to solve issues like co-pollutants.
That is the flaw in the carbon offsets program. The "Market" thinks it can 'buy' its way out of everything. It is not working to reduce carbon significantly in Europe. It concentrates pollutants.
There is no substitute for conservation and clean energy.
I think eco-politics is being used to deliberately sabotage the US economy. Simple as that. Develop greenfuels or put a sock in it.
Roy - the point is there is a cap, collectively, and if that cap can be periodically lowered (as it is designed to do) then the market can in indeed work wonders and probably better than a carbon tax.
Vernon is also in the smog belt, cars from all over LA are the primer culprit for any pollution in Vernon.
I guess I'm missing something; I thought if you pollute, you pay, so even if you sell off your credits, it would come back at you when you have to pay for polluting more.
This seems like a poor choice of words for the title of this story ("Why Carbon Offsets Backfire") when the story is about "particulate matter offsets" and not "carbon offsets."
Carbon offsets are a distraction by the Corporate interests to keep on polluting. Planet Earth will never be free of pollution until the Oil, Coal and Nuclear are stripped of their power to do so, and sound, green technologies such as Nikola Tesla's radiant energy, solar and geo-thermal be widespread. The Bush Administration is in cahoots with these "oily" Corporations which prefer to see our planet destroyed than relinquish power. This Administration has been at the service of the powers of darkness just like Ruth Montgomery warned in her books. Until American citizens wise up, and start paying attention to their intuition to guide them in selecting leaders who are dignified, and truthful to lead this Nation that our forefathers strived to leave a declaration of rights to prevent tiranny from ever gainning control over the people, the same feudal travesty is going to continue on. Therefore my fellow Americans exercize your democratic rights, and voice your discontentment, for it is our home the Earth that is being plundered and destroyed for the huge Corporate profits while ordinary citizens are trying to make ends meet. Humans too are the Earth; we are Nature. Without Nature there is no economy and no life.
["Why Carbon Offsets Backfire"]
Um..., because it's a stupid idea primarily aimed at raking in huge sums of cash from companies forced to trade in offsets, and gullible environmentalists who can be convinced that it'll some reduce CO2 emissions overall? That the REAL benefit will be increased wealth among the bureaucrats and government-connected con-men & women who set up the companies that profit from trading in offsets?
That'd be my take on it.
With an assist from a compliant legislature, a number of cities that barely met the "qualifications" as cities were allowed to incorporate in the mid 1950's. City of Industry, City of Commerce are two that joined Vernon in this charade to avoid the "burdens" imposed by being beholden to the neighboring cities for services and of course the little issue of paying taxes as well as having to abide by the codes etc. of the county. Able to make their own rules and laws and of course push their candidates for election (the same people stay in power for years and are treated very well by their benefactors) businesses had the best of all possible worlds. They contracted with the county of Los Angeles for policing and fire services and kept their very few residents uncomplaining with nice "perks". Yes, the areas suffer from pollution and yes, the residents tend to be people tolerant of pollution and a certain lack of ambiance but many would not move from their residences and I believe that at least one Olympic Medal swimmer got her start in the municipally owned pool in the City of Commerce. The legal maneuver of creating these, if memory serves correctly five entities was "greased" by the "mother's milk of politics, money" (thanks, Jess Unruh, for the quote), true then, seems to be an unassailable truth in this age.
The meat of this offering doesn't fit the title at all.
The California offsets in question are in emergency waivers for air polluters -- literally. They regulate particulates, which are a wholly separate type of pollutant, than is CO2. Particulates are known to cause all sorts of health problems, and were regulated long ago, long before CO2 became the policy football that it now is. Don't say one thing, when you mean another.
Particulates are plain old air pollution, and the credits being sold are a license to put out health-damaging substances that cause asthma, exema, pulmonary disease, low white cell counts, and an increased risk of everything from stroke to congestive heart failure.
Emergency waivers are a policy instrument to avoid liability for government-sponsored measures that may at times let such pollutants loose into the air in greater-than-allowed amounts. They apply, for instance, to deciding when the pollution is bad enough to enforce commuter travel restrictions. Selling these waivers to private parties is a perversion of their intended use, as they can't very well serve their original purpose when a company is using them as an excuse to pollute more on a steady basis.
Don't look now, but this is a cash-strapped state looking for any and every means possible, to get a bit of liquidity going, since they don't seem to have enough money at the moment even to budget it.
They'll be selling the public schools, next -- I'm sure some of the same companies that tried (and failed) to run New York's public schools for profit are already lined up outside the Governator's office.
Isn't life a wonder? So many trainwrecks, so little time...
MJ: Pleas note all of the (correct) commentary here about the near-entire lack of correspondence, between the subject of this column's title, and the article as presented.
I'll trust that no one meant to deceive, but the effect is the same. Please review your articles before posting, at least for those of your authors who are new or infrequent posters.
The situation expressed in the article above is serious in its own rite, and a mistake like this one just gives legs to those looking for ways to attack.
M. Daaz:
Please let Nikolai Tesla rest in peace. He was a brilliant and industrious man, but his radiant energy idea has fatal flaws that still make it a foolish waste of energy, as well as a dangerous toy to live around.
Tesla's main enemy was conduction through the atmosphere, the very same phenomenon that made his idea work in the first place. His towers put out an electrical stream that passed, at very high voltage and relatively low amperage, through the air, to (possibly) some device that could make use of the energy, and thence to ground or into the air through that device. The field had to have a tight enough energy curvature that usable energy could be gained from electrodes spaced perhaps a couple of feet apart in the air, or connected to the ground on one pole. The voltage available depended on the distance between the open contacts.
Even if no one used the massive energy his generators put out into the air-ground loop, the energy still flowed; it took almost as much power to drive the system with no one using the power, as it did when power was being well-used, since the generators still had to pump electon flows through the air-ground loop. The generator had to run full-out the whole time.
And it only had a short range, less than a cell-tower's coverage area, if my facts are right. The last years of his life were spent cadging funds to up the coverage by improving the insulation, raising the towers higher (for the same purpose; to prevent air-ground shorts), and increasing the output of his generators, which of course made the insulation problems ever worse. To extend the usable-power range even modestly, one needed massive power increases.
This was the problem Tesla never solved -- because it cannot BE solved, given the air we have on this planet!
And if it did work, would YOU want to live in an electrical field of such close curvature that it sends current from your head to the ground -- or live, work and travel in insulated buildings and cars, and walk around in insulated clothes, afraid to touch anything with your unprotected flesh? We wouldn't need the EPA, either, because there would soon be no nature to protect, with currents running down every tree, every animal's body. Nature electrified; what a glorious dream. Maybe the ASPCA could collect funds to make rubber booties for all the woodland creatures.
But even if we thought that was a price we humans could accept, we would still have to have power-stations every two miles, to make it work like he thought it ought to. Think what THAT would do to the particulate count!
Tesla had many successes, true. Tesla was brilliant, true. Tesla was a man who had one "killer" idea, that he couldn't believe wouldn't work, and it took over his life.
Sorry, but that is the exact definition of a crank.
As a resident in the City of Commerce and neighbor to Vernon, I serious don't understand why these individuals want to bring more pollution to residential areas. I mean, think about the kids and senior citizens. It's bad enough that our cities are industrial, but is it really necessary to become a death hole?
Mother Jones,
Please read this comment. Dan Mortensen is right. The story is not factually accurate regarding carbon offsets.
Your journalist confused NOx credits, which are localized and thus can make one area worse than another, with CO2 credits, which are global and can not.
The story needs to be retracted.
Skylar
This article is funny. The author clearly knows nothing about the issue of carbon offsets, has basic facts wrong, this has been brought to MJs attention and yet nothing is done.
Ms. Wysham looks very bad as does MJ.
Funny if not so sad.
Headline changed from "Why Carbon Offsets Backfire" to "Location, Location" as in the July/August 2008 issue.
