Local action necessary on global climate change

California leaders talk the talk about being a model on climate change initiatives, but aren’t always walking the walk by taking local action to reduce climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions. Case in point: Last Wednesday’s whiff by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District Board of Directors on passing a rule to limit greenhouse-gas emission increases at each of the five Bay Area oil refineries, which would represent a significant step.

After years of negotiations with community and labor groups and months of drafting a proposed regulation, district staff rolled out a new proposal at the 11th hour.

Why? Because the first proposal for air district Regulation 12, Rule 6, staff said, would not survive legal challenge from the oil industry.

The new one, the environmental and community groups fumed, would increase, not cap, greenhouse gases.

The air district executive officer, Jack Broadbent, had praised the first proposal, saying the the district’s board of directors had “set the stage for a first-in-thenation rule to cap greenhouse gas emissions from our region’s five refineries.” And, “As the nation steps back from the Paris climate agreement,” proclaimed Broadbent, “the Bay Area and California must, more than ever, continue to step up and fill the leadership vacuum.”

Instead of stepping up, however, the directors voted, 13-6, to delay the vote. The air district’s staff is working on a proposal for the September meeting to limit toxic air pollutants, not greenhouse gases, from oil refineries. It is unclear when the board might take up climate-change rules again. So much for Bay Area leadership on climate change. The legal concerns turn on this: The district can’t take away what it has already permitted, and those permits are not based on greenhouse-gas emissions. The district already has granted short-term permits to refineries to expand or upgrade but none of those projects are started or operating. The district staff projected that the refineries might exceed the greenhouseemissions caps if or when they upgrade or expand.

All five refineries have operated for the past five years well below the proposed caps, but as traditional oil sources dry up, oil companies will seek to upgrade

their refineries to refine the heavy Canadian tar sands oil, which requires more energy to refine and produces more greenhouse gases.

That’s why the oil industry objects to the district’s facility-specific rules and wants broad, industrywide rules set by the state. It sees the state’s cap-and-trade program, which allows refineries that can’t cut emissions to buy permits or “allowances” from those who have and have capacity to spare, as the best approach.

“Greenhouse gases are a global pollutant, not a local one,” said Bob Brown, the Western States Petroleum Association’s Bay Area director.

The problem in passing Regulation 12, Rule 6 lies in the air districts’ murky regulatory role. The state created the 35 air districts in the 1970s to address air pollution that affects public health, not climate change. The Bay Area air district does recognize the health impacts of climate change, but Wednesday’s vote was the first attempt to reflect climate-change concerns in its rules.

The California Air Resources Board, which sets guidelines for the districts, is working on how to incorporate the climate-change goals set by the Legislature into the air board’s work.

In April, the board’s executive officer specifically noted the Bay Area district’s draft cap rule would help ensure refineries “do not add to the state’s overall emissions of greenhouse gases” and that it “would appreciate the opportunity to work with the district “to develop complementary rules that can achieve the results that we and the communities want and expect.”

Air district efforts should complement a state capand-trade program — both are needed to get us to the goal of reducing greenhouse gases locally and globally. Communities want and expect their elected officials, both state and local, to protect health — theirs and the Earth’s. The board needs to get back to the job of doing so.