Comment Log Display

Thank you for your efforts panelists and CalEPA.
Observations:  

A)I appreciate Majinder as a facilitator, however earlier sessions
included ethnically diverse female panelists who contributed very
important input...where are the female panelists in this last 3
person panel, plus facilitator Majinder, regarding cap and trade
prices?  

Women arguably have more experience with purses (smile)
and by extension may have unique and important perspectives about
pricing and effects on children and families, can you please
include more ethnic and gender diversity in future discussions?

B)My great great grand children won't let me sleep...Greenland is
melting, arctic salmon are dying from heat stress in 70 degree
river water future impacts are likely to exceed what we have seen
already.

https://www.co2.earth/ claims it is 410.8 ppm now,

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide
claims it was 405 ppm in 2018.  

Both those numbers are higher than the 350ppm of my youth,
emphasizing the fact that we have more power to reduce pollution at
our individual tailpipes and smoke-stacks than we are empowered to
decrease background CO2 levels in our air.

Cap and trade needs to address Environmental Justice aspects of
transportation emissions and industrial/commercial point source
emissions of particulate and other emissions.  

C)When you consider incentives, taxation, and pricing please
remember California's vulnerabilities that became evident under GOP
President Bush and democratic Governor Gray Davis:  Bush-funder
Enron gamed our natural gas and electricity delivery systems with
initiatives like DeathStar and others which caused brown outs and
stole billions of dollars from Californians.  Then the imposition
of a gas tax approved under Pete Wilson dealt a fatal blow to Gray
Davis' administration and before we knew it we had a referendum
election that put a GOP actor named Ahnold in office.  Conclusion: 
incentives may be more politically viable than increasing cap and
trade pricing and increased taxes at the gas pump.  That said, I
still think the price floor on carbon needs to better reflect the
real, ecological and social cost of carbon.  I also think CalEPA
needs to do a better job of including the Biodiversity cost of
carbon emissions in that price floor, as well as in the way
California's state government distributes the proceeds from the
carbon emission allocation auctions.