Good evening,
I’m Mabel Tsang, interim co-director and political director
speaking on behalf of the California Environmental Justice Alliance
with a membership of 10 organizations and representing 30,000
frontline residents. I want to thank CARB Members for your
commitments today to California’s clean air and healthy
communities.
We strongly
support the chair’s suggestion for a cross agency working
group to study a fossil fuel phaseout - thank you to Boardmember
Balmes, de la Torre, Kracov & Hurt for your support for just
transition planning.
I’d like to
urge the Board that this taskforce, and draft plan, should
prioritize cutting the use of CCUS on fossil fuel infrastructure to
avoid keeping our refineries open purely for exports and protecting
the health of frontline residents.
As EJAC
representatives pointed out today, this draft plan is a paradox: on
the one hand, CARB staff have assured us that decreasing California
oil consumption will cause a massive decline in refinery production
by 2045.
On the other
hand, this draft’s targets will create billions of dollars of
carbon capture & sequestration investment that could extend the
life of refineries and other polluting infrastructure with the
chance that exported petroleum & diesel will exponentially grow
to offset any declines. It doesn’t add up.
If we are truly
committed to a just transition, we can’t continue to refine
exports indefinitely.
Working class
Californians deserve a commitment of a managed, and coordinated
transition – to have our state agency commit to the planning
that will, and lead, to a California beyond oil and
gas.
We know what
happens when the market decides alone - it displaces and
under-employs workers, creates gaps in the tax-base for schools and
communities, and abandons infrastructure with no accountability
from polluters to do the clean-up work. We saw it at the Martinez
refinery, we’ve seen it at Exide.
Last night, the
Legislature passed the responsibility to this Board for protecting
residents from the impacts of carbon capture, storage and
sequestration.
We need a
guarantee from this board that there will be no CCUS placed on
fossil fuel infrastructure, and for this board to provide the
strongest possible public health protections to minimize pollution
for frontline communities from this dangerous technology invading
our state.
I add my public
comment to the thousands of Californians across the state urging
that this Board, together with the Governor, enact a plan to
protect our health and safeguard our climate future.