But hold up there, cowboys. Yes, there is a pending court case about whether cap-and-trade is a tax—and therefore whether it needed to have passed with a 2/3 majority—but there are pretty good arguments against that reasoning, and the case has already been shot down once.
And sure, last spring's cap-and-trade auction was disappointing in terms of raising revenue, but greenhouse gas emission reductions from the cap are not affected by the amount of revenue collected in the trade. And while we still don't know the results of this week's auction, permits had recently been trading on the open market at a price above the auction's floor price. So let's not jump in to proclaim the program's demise quite yet.
Skelton's derisive column is not helpful in the midst of a proliferation of ramped-up pessimism and misleading allegations about cap-and-trade. Do we want California to do everything it can to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or would we rather stand around arguing about it? We're kind of running out of time here.
In his race to the bottom, Skelton derides Governor Brown's various efforts to extend cap-and-trade as well as “to keep alive the unpopular bullet train project”—it is certainly unpopular at the Times—and dismisses out-of-hand the possibility of finding agreement on extending the program.
He quotes one unnamed, unidentified Democrat (a legislator? A staffer? Someone hanging out at a nearby coffee shop?) to back up his case that Brown has no support.
And he conflates the high-speed rail program with climate change legislation. They are not the same thing. Yes, right now the High Speed Rail program receives 25 percent of the money that comes from cap-and-trade, but it was never included as an element in the original Global Warming Solutions Act, A.B. 32, nor is it part of that law's potential successor now up in the legislature, S.B. 32.
That's not a “red flag,” as Skelton calls it. It's how the laws are meant to work. They set a target for greenhouse gas reductions, and that is all. One would think the pro-business Skelton would be happy with this—after all, it is what business interests requested from the legislature when A.B. 32 was passed.
Mr. Skelton's drumbeat about that darn unpopular bullet train is likewise tiresome. The current senate proposal on cap-and-trade expenditures contains no “additional money for the bullet train" because that proposal only addresses the unallocated portion of revenues. Not because nobody supports the train. Just to be clear: High speed rail already gets 25 percent of the total, and no one expects the plan to contain “additional money for the bullet train.”
Note: Streetsblog is aware that cap-and-trade is not a panacea that's going to cure global warming, and there are a lot of reasons to be cautious about relying on a market mechanism to reduce emissions. But it's a far sight better than throwing up our hands and giving up, which seems to be the alternative solution offered by opponents of cap-and-trade, high speed rail, or anything that might cut into oil company profits or cause people to drive less.
Streetsblog California editor Melanie Curry has been thinking about transportation, and how to improve conditions for bicyclists, since her early days commuting by bike to UCLA long ago. She was Managing Editor at the East Bay Express, and edited Access Magazine for the University of California Transportation Center. She also earned her Masters in City Planning from UC Berkeley.
Update on the status of the bike path on the RSR bridge; Santa Cruz transit about to get a lot better; Headstone could delay Metro expansion; Free transit on Clean Air Day (this Wednesday); More
L.A. County needs to embrace physically-protected bikeways, robust traffic calming around schools, and similarly transformative, safety-focused projects