Comment Log Display

While CARB’s Draft Scoping Plan includes a number of strong
measures, the draft needs significant strengthening before it will
be up to meeting the very tough challenge of combating global
warming.  Below are some suggestions that I think should be given
a closer look and consideration: 
  
• Make polluters pay for their emissions of greenhouse gases,
using the resulting revenues to promote clean energy and aid
low-income consumers. Limit sharply and verify any offsets. Do not
link our program to any states with weaker emission standards. 

• Include stronger measures to reform land use planning in ways
that reduce vehicle miles traveled.

• Promote and enable Community Choice Electricity Aggregation
(CCA), which lets communities pool their buying power to generate
clean power.

• Mandate that auto companies sell hundreds of thousands of
Zero-Emission Vehicles (ZEVs) by 2014, not the feeble proposed
level of 7500 ZEVs.

• Put Zero Waste front and center:  increase recycling by
businesses, mandate constructing facilities to compost all green
waste, and require producers to take responsibility for the
end-of-life disposition of their products. 

Also, I am concerned that California's "Renewable Energy Standards
do not "exclude" burning mixed garbage as renewable energy.  Until
much stronger efforts on reuse and recycling are adopted to
minimize material in landfills in the first place, I do not
support expansion of efforts on Waste-to-Energy (WtE). Concerns re
WtE include air pollution, e.g., dioxins, no net energy creation
and the damage to recycling infrastructure when local governments
are locked into long term supply contracts making the materials
not available for recycling.  The current CARB scoping plan does
not define what would be in California's Renewable Energy
Portfolio or Standards. It should.
 
The current CARB report also advocates for making landfills
sources of methane for energy generation.  Trying to maximize
methane generation from landfills in sufficient concentrations to
become viable as an energy source will increase the amount of
fugitive releases of methane and volatile organic compounds that
attach themselves to methane resulting in increasing methane in
the atmosphere.  Methane is 25 times more damaging the atmosphere
than carbon dioxide. If there is any chance that more methane
could be released, the Precautionary Principle says do no harm, so
the Scoping plan should do more research on this area rather than
advocating a change that at minimum is counterproductive, and at
worst could be devastating.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

James Tuleya
Sunnyvale, CA