Comment Log Display

Dear Chairperson Nichols, and Mr. Goldstene,

 

I offer the following attached comments on the alternatives in the
AB32 Scoping Plan, in the hope of reaching a new accord on this
opportunity to stop disastrous climate change and eliminate
California’s fossil-fueled smog and toxic emissions. 

 

My name is Diana Pei Wu, and I am a Professor of Urban Communities
and Environment at Antioch University Los Angeles. I received my
PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in Environmental
Science, Policy & Management in 2006. During that time period, I
worked and studied themes as diverse as environmental racism,
international community development and conservation, human rights,
and forestry. I also have an M.A. in Ecology and Evolutionary
Biology from Princeton University and, before becoming a social
scientist, had worked as a tropical ecosystem field ecologist for
nearly a decade in places as diverse as Hawaii, Costa Rica, Panama,
Cameroon, Malaysia, Kosrae, Brasil, Western Samoa and Kenya. Thus,
I have personal and professional knowledge of the communities and
ecosystems that are affected by REDD, cap-and-trade and offset
mechanisms here in the United States as well as extensive ecosystem
and community knowledge abroad. 

Below I outline the great and continuing failures of market-based
pollution programs, in particular, the program being proposed as
REDD – Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest
Degradation. Although all governments and most mainstream
conservation groups claim that no official REDD projects exist yet,
there are dozens, if not hundreds, of so-call “REDD readiness”
programs already in existence, and the already existing findings
should prove to you that the observed problems with these programs
are indeed structural by nature, and unable to be remediated or
“safeguarded” without great cost to human and ecological
well-being.

I strongly urge you to explore real alternatives to cap-and-trade
and come to the reasonable conclusion that these mechanisms harm
communities and livelihoods for Californians, and our families and
communities in other parts of the world. California must not take
on the position of exacerbating or causing human rights abuses in
other parts of the world. The ecological, ethical and economic
fallout of those violations reverberate deeply throughout the
global world system.

Sincerely,
Diana Pei Wu