CARB's equity plan will hurt the poor

We all want a cleaner environment. But how to get it? Through more needless regulations? Or economic growth?

On Oct. 27, the California Air Resources Board advanced the former. It approved its “first five-year strategy update for its equity-driven Community Air Protection Program.” CARB Chair Liane Randolph said, “Blueprint 2.0 is an example of equity-driven innovation that puts a spotlight on the environmental challenges that overburdened communities face and engages residents so that solutions are informed by their priorities and needs.”

Notice the repeated use of “equity,” the recent buzzword giving government more power. It used to be “equality,” as in laws banning discrimination and providing equal opportunity to all. “Equity” really means putting government bureaucrats more in control of our lives to achieve precisely equal outcomes — socialism.

We don't need CARB to tell us that rich people live in cleaner environments than poor people. That's why, in our capitalist system, people strive to do better, to improve life for themselves and their families.

California used to understand this. In 1947, the Los Angeles County Air Pollution Control District was formed, the first of its kind in the nation. In 1967, CARB was created at the state level. They reduced the endemic smog you still can see in 1960s TV shows. People were helped equally, whether they lived in a mansion in Newport Beach or a granny flat in Santa Ana, because the air is everywhere and everybody's.

Then California went too far. Regulations and taxes choked the main way poor people rise into the middle class: manufacturing jobs. Ananda Rochita is the new vice president of communications at the California Manufacturing & Technology Association. She sent me numbers showing how manufacturing, and the great jobs it creates, has been decimated here.

In 1990, there were just under 2 million manufacturing jobs; down to just over 1.3 million in 2019. That's a decline of 29%. On a per capita basis, it went from 6% of 30 million residents in 1990 to 3.3% of 39.4 million in 2019.

For overall jobs, manufacturing has dropped from 15.7% to 7.7%. Just between 2018 and 2021, 352 companies moved their headquarters out of state; and many more moved warehouses and production plants.

Now, get this. The average manufacturing wage is $89,912. That's 23% above the $73,220 for all occupations. Nationally, the number for manufacturing is $60,870. So California's wage is 48% higher.

Yet although California does have some startup plants, such as Tesla's in Fremont, it long ago chased out the Big Three auto companies' plants. Such as the NUMMI plant GM ran with Toyota in what now is Tesla's Fremont factory. Other shuttered plants included GM's in Van Nuys and Samson Tire & Rubber's in the City of Commerce.

“It just made sense for Toyota to pull the plug,” said Dennis Virag, president of the Automotive Consulting Group in Ann Arbor, Mich., when the NUMMI plant closed. “When you look at states like Kentucky and Tennessee, California just isn't competitive in manufacturing with its taxes, regulations and overall cost of doing business.”

California has made itself inhospitable to manufacturing. But look at what we lost. Under the recent UAW post-strike agreement with the auto companies, Ford will pay top workers $42 an hour, or $87,360 a year; but overtime usually boosts that significantly. And workers get generous retirement, medical and other benefits.

Another factor is California's high cost of living, a major factor being over-regulation, is driving people out. But California enjoys the second-lowest per capita CO2 emissions of any state, at 9.12 metric tons, according to the Solar Power Guide, after Maryland's 8.56. So when a Californian gets fed up and moves to Texas, that number more than doubles to 24.97. A move to Louisiana pentuples it to 48.44.

There has to be a balance. As the reduction of smog shows, we can take sensible steps to clean up the environment. But if CARB really wanted to advance “equity” for poor people, it would stop destroying the jobs they need to climb the ladder to the California Dream.