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To whom it may concern at the ARB:

I attended the workshop on Carbon Neutrality and the Social Cost of
Carbon.

This was a disturbing event due to the demonstration of a failure
to understand the basic fundamentals of climate science.

One of the most simple elements of climate science is that
emissions are cumulative.

Climate change is happening because of the increasing concentration
of GHG in the atmosphere. This is occurring because of the sum of
our emissions from yesterday, plus the emissions from today, plus
the emissions from tomorrow. Why does the ARB perpetually deny this
basic fact of climate science?

The concept of "carbon neutrality" is largely a fiction that has
been constructed for economic and political reasons to protect
polluting industry and the financial interests that profit from
their activities. The concept of "carbon neutrality" is devoid of
scientific understandings of how it is that humans are disturbing
global carbon cycles.

The other element that was very disturbing in this workshop is the
way that geoengineering is being normalized, and that such fossil
fuel industry technological adaptations are not being named for
what they are: geoengineering.

Carbon Capture and Sequestration and Direct Air Capture are both
geoengineering technologies that do nothing to address climate
change because they are intended to allow the fossil fuel industry
to continue with business as usual.

A case in point was the actual description by one panelist of
"decarbonized fossil energy."

This is a fallacy. There is no such thing. The entire concept of
"decarbonized fossil energy" is an invention of the fossil fuel
industry. Why is the ARB once again protecting polluting industry
under the guise of the development of climate policy?

One of the great failures of the ARB is the perpetuation of the
myth that ongoing fossil fuel use is compatible with climate
action. History will not be kind with the ARB, the future
generations will look at the failure of the ARB to integrate
fundamental science into policy development and will ask "what were
they doing protecting polluters with such bad science?"

The one redeeming factor in this workshop was the presence of an EJ
voice on the panel who stated the most important truth of the
entire workshop:

"While it is the most vulnerable communities that are most exposed
to the harms of climate change, it is these very same vulnerable
communities that are most exposed to the harms embedded in much of
the climate policy that the ARB is promoting."

The time has long passed for the ARB to abandon economic ideology
as the prevailing compass for the development of policy and to
begin to put climate science front and center.

Our organization remains available to participate as a panelist in
future workshops on "carbon neutrality." We have expertise and
knowledge to share.

Thank you for your attention to this message.

Gary Hughes