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History > 2006 > USA > States > Regulations
Schwarzenegger backs steps
to cut emissions
Tue Apr 11, 2006 10:20 PM ET
Reuters
By Leonard Anderson
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger endorsed measures on Tuesday to reduce industrial emissions of
greenhouse gases but stopped short of calling for a hard cap on emissions,
saying the state needs more time to decide if a cap should be imposed.
The Republican governor said he supported a program to set up a mandatory system
for industries to record and report their carbon emissions linked to global
warming.
He also backed a recommended strategy to develop "market-based solutions" like
buying and selling emissions credits to give industries financial incentives to
cut pollutants.
"Let's work together to create the world's best market-based system to limit and
slash emissions," he said.
Such programs are used extensively by electricity producers in Europe. They
allow greenhouse gas producers to buy and sell emissions credits. Companies that
exceed emission levels, for example, can buy credits from producers who have
reduced their pollutants.
The carbon reporting program would cover the state's largest polluting
industries -- oil and gas extraction, oil refining, electric power, cement
manufacturing and solid waste landfills.
Schwarzenegger spoke in San Francisco at the first of a series of summits to be
held around the state to discuss a California climate report and recommendations
of his environmental advisors with legislators, business executives, government
regulators, economists and environmentalists.
The advisors recommended a series of new clean-air programs last week, and
Democratic lawmakers also introduced a bill to reduce emissions by 25 percent by
2020, a goal Schwarzenegger proposed last year.
The report said the emissions reduction target for 2020 "should be the basis for
an emissions cap in the development of the program."
Schwarzenegger said mandatory reporting of carbon pollution will help lawmakers
and regulators decide if the state needs caps but cautioned: "I don't want to
scare businesses to leave the state to go to Nevada or Oregon ... we need to
find a happy medium."
Some business groups and utilities support parts of the climate strategy but
others like the California Manufacturers and Technology Association oppose
emissions caps, saying they would harm California's economy.
Peter Darbee, president and chief executive of utility PG&E Corp. said in an
interview before the summit that details need to be worked out before caps are
decided.
"But it's the right direction, and we need to understand the costs," Darbee
said.
Schwarzenegger
backs steps to cut emissions, R, 11.4.2006,
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-04-12T022017Z_01_N11224505_RTRUKOC_0_US-ENERGY-CALIFORNIA-EMISSIONS.xml
Maryland joins states breaking with Bush on CO2
Fri Apr 7, 2006 1:55 PM ET
Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Maryland has become the eighth state
to join a pact seeking mandatory limits on carbon dioxide emissions, the
governor's office said on Friday.
President George W. Bush opposes forcing emitters to limit production of the
gases that most scientists believe cause global warming. He favors voluntary
methods of reducing them.
Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich, a Republican, signed an act on Thursday that
requires the state to join the pact, called the Regional Greenhouse Gas
Initiative.
Seven states agreed to the pact late last year: New York, Connecticut, New
Jersey, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire and Delaware. It aims to cap carbon
dioxide emissions from power plants at 1990 levels beginning in 2009, and cut
emissions 10 percent below that level by 2018.
Of the eight RGGI states, Maryland had the second-highest level of CO2 emissions
per person in 2000, behind Delaware, according to Environment Northeast. It also
had the second-highest CO2 emissions, behind New York.
Maryland's move came as a surprise to many who have worked on the RGGI for
years.
"The fact that a governor who had never done much about global warming signed
this bill is a sign this is becoming an important political issue for many
states," said a source at a nongovernmental organization who advises the RGGI.
Business groups have said the RGGI could push up electricity prices. However,
the states in the pact say it could eventually push bills lower, after initially
adding a few dollars a year to them, through efficiency gains at utilities.
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, withdrew from the pact shortly
before the seven states signed the agreement last year, saying it would boost
power prices.
But Democratic politicians in the state have said they are confident they can
overrule that decision.
The RGGI aims to put out in July a final draft of the plan, which will then be
sent to the individual states to approve it.
Maryland joins
states breaking with Bush on CO2, R, 7.4.2006,
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-04-07T175539Z_01_N07384930_RTRUKOC_0_US-ENERGY-RGGI-MARYLAND.xml
Albany's Plan for Flu Epidemic Leaves Big Decisions to
Localities
February 24, 2006
The New York Times
By MARC SANTORA
Each county in New York would be responsible for
formulating its own response plan in the event of an outbreak of pandemic
influenza in the state, according to the formal preparedness plan made public
yesterday by the state's Department of Health.
While state health workers would offer guidance and help coordinate the
response, the plan calls for critical decisions — like establishing quarantine
measures and deciding whether to close schools and businesses — to be decided
largely on a local level.
Almost immediately, the plan drew criticism from outside experts who contend
that simply providing a template for localities without adequate resources in
the form of equipment, money and expertise could prove disastrous.
"Someone at some point is actually going to have to step up to the plate and
actually provide some actual resources to the localities," said Dr. Irwin
Redlener of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia
University. "Every place in the state will be facing overwhelming challenges and
need concrete support."
But Dr. Antonia Novello, the state health commissioner, dismissed criticism that
the plan was lacking in detail and that too great a burden would be placed on
the localities.
"All responses are local," she said. "We have a standardized template that
everyone can build on and utilize."
It will be up to local communities to tailor the state plan to their own
situations, she said, from issues as simple as communicating messages about the
importance of basic hygiene to the distribution of medicines.
She noted that Gov. George E. Pataki's most recent budget asked for $29 million
to be devoted to bolstering emergency supplies. She also said that the federal
government had emergency stockpiles that could be used in the event of a
pandemic outbreak.
At 400 pages, the state plan focuses on three main areas: early detection,
prevention, and delivery of care. Dr. Novello acknowledged that the plan was
evolving, and she said the goal was essentially to give the localities a
framework so they could create their own plans. State officials, however, could
not provide specific details on matters as basic as how many additional
ventilators the state has or how much antiviral medication has been stockpiled.
The need to prepare for avian flu has taken on added urgency in recent months as
a dangerous strain, H5N1, has spread from Asia to Europe. On Thursday, French
health officials said that avian flu had possibly been found at a poultry farm.
Millions of birds around the world have died, and about 170 humans have been
infected, and more than half of them have died. The virus, however, has not been
found to be easily transmissible from person to person.
Scientists are worried about the possibility that it could combine with a more
common form of flu and become a rapidly spreading killer.
The federal response plan was unveiled in November, with President Bush calling
for $7 billion to be devoted to preparation. Congress has since slashed that
figure by about half, and about 90 percent of the federal money is being devoted
to research on a possible vaccine and to buying Tamiflu, one of the only drugs
now effective against avian flu.
The federal government said it was up to individual states to develop their own
plans to receive financing, which is why New York State is making its plan
public now.
New York City, which is developing its own plan apart from the state, receives
money directly from the federal government for preparations to battle a
potential pandemic flu.
Dr. Isaac B. Weisfuse, a deputy health commissioner who is leading the city's
flu planning, said it would be very hard to develop one plan to cover the needs
of wildly divergent departments across the state.
He said the city should be done with its plan within two months. "For New York
City," he said, "clearly I feel we have to have ownership on the local level."
He said city officials were still wrestling with some of the difficult details
painted over in broader strokes in the federal and state plans. One aspect the
city is focusing on concerns voluntary isolation. "If you are ill, you should
stay home — and we as government should provide guidance," he said.
Dr. Novello said that the state, in the event of a pandemic outbreak, wanted
everyone to have at least a two-week supply of food, water and household goods
ready.
While the city is developing its own plan, the quality of the health departments
in New York's 62 counties varies wildly, so it is hard to know if they would be
prepared in the event of pandemic flu.
The kinds of challenges the city and state may face were demonstrated in
September, when the city ran a "tabletop" exercise involving more than a dozen
city and state departments envisioning a situation similar to the outbreak of
Spanish flu in 1918, which left at least 33,000 dead in the city alone. At least
20 million to 40 million people died worldwide.
The exercise was intended to test the emergency response system by challenging
leaders to make quick decisions, and seeing if and where communication breaks
down or resources run out. One major concern repeatedly expressed was that many
health workers would simply fail to show up for work.
Dr. Redlener of the Columbia University center said that the state plan could
more directly address staffing issues. For instance, he said that decisions
should already have been made about whether day care centers would be set up in
the hospitals. He also questioned whether it was really wise to move patients to
hotels and dorms if hospitals got too full, a measure called for in the federal
plan.
Susan Waltman, senior vice president and general counsel for the Greater New
York Hospital Association, agreed that there were challenges, but she praised
the state's efforts to develop a plan.
"I thought that the federal plan was a very good framework," she said, adding,
"I think the state fleshes that out even further."
Others, however, criticized both plans for a lack of details. Dr. David Seaberg,
a board member of the American College of Emergency Physicians, a national
organization with 23,000 members, testified recently before Congress about what
he said were shortcomings in the federal plan, and echoed those concerns about
the state plan.
"With the majority of the nation's emergency departments already operating
either at or over critical capacity, the strain of arriving avian flu patients
would cripple America's 4,000 emergency departments," he said.
Albany's Plan for
Flu Epidemic Leaves Big Decisions to Localities, NYT, 24.2.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/24/nyregion/24flu.html
California Puts Passive Smoke on Toxic List
January 27, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times
SACRAMENTO, Jan. 26 (AP) — California became the first
state to declare secondhand smoke a toxic air pollutant on Thursday.
In making the decision, by a unanimous vote, the California Air Resources Board
relied on a September report that found a sharply increased risk of breast
cancer in young women exposed to secondhand smoke.
The report also linked drifting smoke to premature births, asthma, heart
disease, other cancers and health problems in children.
The board's decision, which was unanimous, puts environmental tobacco smoke in
the same category as diesel exhaust, arsenic and benzene.
"If people are serious about breast cancer, they have to deal with secondhand
smoke," said Stanton Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control,
Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco. "That's
what this is all about."
Dr. Glantz reviewed the science behind the decision. "This is a seminal,
international document. It's impossible to underestimate what a big deal this
is."
The report by scientists at the state's Office of Environmental Health Hazard
Assessment drew on more than 1,000 other studies of the effects of passive
smoke. It blamed secondhand smoke for 4,000 deaths each year in California from
lung cancer or heart disease.
The most significant new finding is that young women exposed to secondhand smoke
increased their risk of developing breast cancer by 68 percent to 120 percent.
That conclusion conflicts with a 2004 report by the U.S. surgeon general.
Sanford Barsky, a researcher writing on behalf of the R.J. Reynolds tobacco
company, told the board in previous testimony that the state report "either
ignores mentioning or does not give the appropriate weight" to studies refuting
a link between secondhand smoke and breast cancer.
California scientists say their research is more current than the surgeon
general's report.
An R. J. Reynolds spokesman, David Howard, said that regardless of the dangers
from passive smoke indoors, no research supports regulators' decision to declare
it an air pollutant.
"No studies exist that show that exposure outdoors leads to any increased risk
of tobacco-associated illness," Mr. Howard said.
California Puts
Passive Smoke on Toxic List, NYT, 27.1.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/27/national/27smoke.html
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