Dear California ARB staff,
Thank you for the comprehensive report laying out California's
options to reach carbon neutrality by 2045 at the latest. We
urgently need to work together if we are to have any hope of
mitigating the effects on our state and catalyzing other economies
to join our efforts. I am particularly encouraged by staff efforts
to model additional sequestration efforts, as previous modeling
that only focuses on emissions omits humanity's full impact on the
carbon cycle.
However, there are two consistency checks that should be added
before the Board makes its final decision: a flat/declining
California population scenario, and the impact of this plan on a
full inventory including embodied carbon of California
consumption.
First, on the population, fewer people will lower emissions, but
will also complicate efforts to transform our economy, with unknown
net effects on the viability of the Scoping Plan Scenarios. The
California Department of Finance has estimated that the state
population shrank from July 2019 to July 2021. California
single-family median home prices are at least twice the national
price, and even before the pandemic one in five California
households paid at least 50 percent of their income in housing
costs. Jobs in the state are increasingly divided between
highly-paid ones that require advanced degrees and that can be done
remotely, and lower-paid ones that require long commutes every day.
The Scoping Plan does include a massive expansion in housing, which
makes it likely that the population will continue to decline. Much
will depend on what is assumed about the population dynamics: will
older homeowners sell and move out of state, allowing workers in
the new industries to move in and broadening the tax base? Or will
the state become increasingly skewed towards retired people who
don't pay much in taxes? Staff should include a scenario to work
through these issues and inform the public and the Board before
making a decision.
Second, the report should include the impacts of embodied carbon
in the carbon neutrality calculation, as California would severely
undercount our carbon impacts if we continue to omit consumption
but count sequestration. When working towards 1990 emissions, it
was appropriate to focus purely on the emission side. But when
working towards carbon neutrality, all impacts on the carbon cycle
- positive and negative - need to be included. As the 5th largest
economy in the world, the 40 million people in California consume
much more per capita than India, which has a smaller GDP but 1.4
billion people. To identify problems that scale globally, we must
include the embodied carbon of all the new electric vehicles and
other goods we buy, even if they were produced elsewhere. This will
make our path to carbon neutrality much more difficult, and likely
makes a 2045 date more realistic. But if we are committed to the
principle of leadership and doing our part, including embodied
carbon is necessary.
Again, I thank the staff for their good work, and am available
to answer any questions. Please note that these comments reflect my
personal views, and do not represent the views of my employers past
or present.
Sincerely,
Irena Asmundson
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