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For California's Post-2020 Cap And Trade, Give Money To People
California's Legislature is considering whether to continue the State's Cap & Trade system meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight global warming before it potentially expires in 2020. Governor Jerry Brown, some Democrats in the State Legislature, and environmentalists would like to renew it, but opponents question whether it is an illegal tax supporting a slush fund for liberals, and how effective it has been at reducing emissions. Adding to the drama, the price of permits crashed in the last auction, possibly due in part to uncertainty about the program's future.

The lack of demand could partly stem from the program's subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, which receives millions of permits for free (even though they mostly oppose the program). The Petroleum Refining, Natural Gas Extraction, and Cement sectors received over 49 million free allowances in 2016. At $12.73 per allowance, that subsidy is worth over $629 million per year.

The politicized nature of auction proceed expenditures may also account for some of the difficulties in renewing the program. Critics note that the State has chosen to devote hundreds of millions of dollars from Cap & Trade funds towards high-speed rail project and affordable transit-oriented housing, which helps mostly urban constituencies. A report from the Legislative Analyst's Office raised questions about the current laundry list of items in the State's expenditure plan, including the criteria by which projects are selected, and whether spending the money on projects actually reduces emissions overall. The economics of Cap & Trade is such that projects in one sector may serve to reduce the cost of permits in that sector, but the space created under the cap will be taken up by other sectors until emissions rise to meet the cap.

A simpler and more transparent approach would be to return the auction revenues to households through climate dividends. Instead of a funding source for government programs, Cap & Trade (actually in this approach, "Cap & Dividend") would become a money generator for people. Climate dividends are similar to anti-poverty movements focusing on the concept of "basic income," and international development efforts promoting "unconditional cash transfers." It would be congruent with the State's efforts at establishing a State Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

The California Public Utilities Commission has mandated utilities return the revenues from their "consigned allowances" back to the ratepayers through a California Climate Credit that appears twice a year on electricity bills. Post-2020 the State could expand that to an off-bill per capita dividend that would be simple, transparent, and be inclusive of disadvantaged communities not just coastal cities.

The State's Air Board will be hosting a public hearing September 19 and accepting public comment on proposed regulations for the 2018-2020 period of the current program and how to implement the Governor's April 2015 Executive Order that established a target to reduce GHG emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. This includes aligning the Cap & Trade program with President Obama's Clean Power Plan.

California has shown leadership on climate change by creating a price on carbon. It can improve the program in its next phase, and perhaps gain supporters for the program's extension, by decreasing subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, and depoliticizing the way funds are used by moving the funding for environmental programs into the regular budget process and returning Cap & Trade revenues back to people as climate dividends.

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Auto Industry Needs to Make It Easier to Shop for Electric Cars -Here's How
Electric vehicles (EVs) are cleaner, greener, and more fun to drive. Different mileage ranges, prices, and car types abound with about 30 plug-in electric sports cars, SUVs, and sedans now available from Chevrolet, Nissan, BMW, Ford, Tesla, and many other automakers. Shopping for an EV should be fun and easy. So, with so many terrific options available, why are EV sales still at only one percent of total monthly U.S. auto sales?

We launched Rev Up EVs, the first-ever multi-state study of the EV shopping experience, to find out. Based on surveys from Sierra Club volunteers who called or visited 308 different auto dealerships and stores across ten states to check out and test drive EVs, the study finds that there is tremendous room for improvement among both the dealerships and the automakers to provide customers with a better EV shopping experience.

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Photo Credit: Sierra Club

The California Air Resources Board's Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) program requires automakers to sell increasing numbers of EVs between now and 2025. Because of the many environmental and economic benefits of electric vehicles, the ZEV standard is now followed by nine other states as well. With the standards currently up for review, many automakers are lobbying regulators to weaken zero emission vehicle regulations, saying they are doing everything they can to sell EVs.

But the numbers don't add up. A recent Union of Concerned Scientists and Consumers Union survey of randomly selected drivers found that 55 percent of survey respondents in Northeastern states and 65 percent in California are interested in EVs, and that 65 percent of surveyed California drivers wish there were more EV options. An earlier survey of driving habits showed that for more than 40 percent of Americans, switching to an electric vehicle would be practical right now. With such high interest, EV sales should be accelerating at a much faster pace.

By studying the EV shopping experience in each of the ZEV states, the Rev Up EVs study found that some automakers and auto dealers are doing a great job developing, marketing, and selling EVs to consumers by having several EVs on their lots, informed salespeople, and strong EV advertising. These best practices are not rocket science. But many other dealers and automakers are falling short.

The first step to selling any car is to actually have it available for purchase -- you can't sell a car that isn't there. But the Rev Up EVs project found that it's often difficult to find an auto dealership with even one electric vehicle on its lot. Auto dealerships in the nine other ZEV states were 2 ½ times more likely than those in California to find no EV on the dealership lot for customers to see, test-drive, and lease or buy.

Availability may be the first step to selling a car, but it's not the only area with room for improvement. Even at dealerships with at least one EV on the lot, about one third of the salespeople at surveyed dealerships failed to provide their customers with information on the tax credits and rebates that make EVs significantly more affordable and that are proven to increase electric vehicle sales.

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Photo Credit: Sierra Club

To increase EV sales, we can't lower the bar for the auto industry. We need the industry to step up and put best practices to work to sell EVs and comply with the ZEV regulations. In fact, to achieve our climate, air quality, and EV sales goals, we need even stronger ZEV regulations. And it's possible. Automakers can increase inventory and multi-state distribution of EVs, as well as offer attractive deals to dealerships. Once they're on dealers' lots, EVs need to be charged, ready for test drives, and prominently displayed. Auto dealers and makers need to train their salespeople on the ins and outs of EVs so that salespeople can answer customer questions. Finally, automakers need to increase advertising of their EVs which, in turn, will encourage dealers to advertise more at the local level.

In less than a month, drivers across the country will take part in the largest celebration of electric vehicles, National Drive Electric Week, now in its sixth year. At upwards of 200 parades, ride and drives, charging station ribbon cuttings, city fleet displays and other community events, people across the country will showcase the many benefits of driving electric. In previous years, we've found these events to lead to more people heading to dealerships to buy or lease EVs. Will the industry be ready to welcome these customers?

This post was co-authored by Mary Lunetta, the campaign representative for the Sierra Club's Electric Vehicles Initiative.

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Modern Megacity, Meet Ancient Wisdom
"City limits have become limitless cities," proclaims a Prudential advertisement appearing in many airports. Jakarta, São Paolo, and Shanghai all have metropolitan area populations of more than 30 million people; Tokyo approaches 40 million. Prudential seems to have a good point.

The modern Holy Land now contains three large urban strips. One stretches from south of Bethlehem, through Jerusalem, and north to Ramallah. It spans 30 miles and includes about one million people. The Gaza Strip is the second urban belt, with about 1.8 million inhabitants. The third is the greater Tel Aviv metropolitan area, with about two million inhabitants. While these figures pale in comparison to other cities in the world, for those living in any urban belt, easy access to nature is a pressing challenge. Currently, the majority of the people in the world live in cities, and as mass migration from rural areas to cities continues, this challenge will only become more pronounced.

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This is where millennia-old religious teaching becomes relevant. When the Hebrew Bible was received on Mt. Sinai, there were likely fewer people on the entire planet than currently live in Tokyo and Jakarta. The Bible has much to teach the modern megacity, since it contains a clear instruction on how to combat urban sprawl and achieve sustainable urban planning. Leviticus chapter 35 states the instruction from God that the 48 Levitical cities were to establish an open space around them-- what Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch called a 'greenbelt.' The Hebrew word used, migrash, comes from the root 'to separate,' since urban centers were meant to be separate from one another. The Talmud discusses how, once a city was established with a greenbelt around it, the city could not be expanded into the greenbelt. If the city became too dense, a new city would need to be built elsewhere. Significantly, the rabbis of the Talmud understood the law of the greenbelt to apply not only to Levitical cities but also to all Israelite cities in the land of Israel. (More teachings on greenbelt are available here.)

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Rabbinic commentators make clear that for a city to be truly livable, it must be surrounded by green space, since the quality of life of city residents, to a significant degree, depends on access to green spaces. A society that lacks green space can become stifling, oppressive, disconnected and unnatural. Green space enables people to walk and sit in nature, promoting physical, emotional, and spiritual balance. Trees generate oxygen and help filter the air. The greenbelt ensures that nature stays close to the people, enabling the people to remain connected to nature. The greenbelt promotes balance in an urban society as well as balance between humans and nature.

Unfortunately, since the destruction of the second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E., or sometime thereafter, Jews have not observed this commandment. Nor have they in the past 130 years, with Jews returning to Israel in large numbers. Yet, global sustainability and our collective future requires a balance between urban settlement and nature, not just more building. As Edward Abbey wrote, 'growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.' Some of the world's megacities are so large that lower-income residents have to commute to work three hours a day- each way! To have to live that way is to live a degraded lifestyle. Building cities with greenbelts in mind would moderate overgrowth, promote compact urbanism, check urban sprawl, and improve quality of life.

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Population growth plays a large part in current city growth and the rise of megacities. The exponential human population growth in the past century has led to the exponential growth of cities. The result is rapidly growing cities with less green access for their inhabitants. Genesis 1:28 establishes the Biblical commandment "be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth." (See here for an ecological understanding, based on rabbinic commentators, of this verse.) A key question to address is, at what point have we filled the Earth and therefore fulfilled this commandment? Ironically, many Bible adherents stringently fulfill this commandment while neglecting other commandments intended to make such growth sustainable-- like the commandment of the greenbelt.

A leading Israeli environmental scientist, Dr. Alon Tal, spoke to this in his recent New York Times op ed, Israel's Looming Demographic Challenge. He writes, "Israel's environmental problems are largely a function of a rapid increase in population. The country will never be able to control greenhouse gases, maintain even minimal levels in our rivers and streams or protect our fragile habitats if this demographic growth continues at such an astonishing rate. With urban development taking over about five square miles of open space every five years, Israel's wildlife is in steep decline."

But it's not just about the birds and the bees, the trees and the toads. Despite Israel desalinating huge amounts of water (by burning fossil fuels to do so), some of the twelve million Palestinians and Israelis experience water shortages, Gaza is on the brink of permanently depleting and salinizing its underground aquifer, and the Sea of Galilee nears the 'black line.' What might the water situation look like with 20 million people, which is projected for later this century? High population growth and the lack of sustainable urban planning together present a significant challenge, for Israelis and Palestinians alike, and for people around the world.

Living sustainably on this planet is, as the Dalai Lama said, "a question of our very survival." In order to enable the next generation to inherit a thriving, livable planet we need to put a greenbelt on unchecked urban growth and access the wellspring of ancient wisdom at our disposal.

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From Elsa To Cecil
Every individual animal matters: whether it is Elsa the lioness, whose poignant story of freedom gave birth to generation after generation of animal lovers, or Cecil the lion, whose brutal demise elicited a global outcry against lion hunting. World Lion Day (August 10) is meant to remind us of the dire state of lions in the wild, and inspire us to act with vigor to ensure the species' future.

We have no time to waste; lions desperately need us to shield them from deadly threats. They face habitat loss, reduction in prey populations, retaliatory killings from coming into contact with humans, and rising levels of international commercial trade in parts of their bodies (bones to Asia and "trophies" to the U.S. and Europe).

Fewer than 20,000 lions remain. Their threats persist; some governments still fail to act to protect the species; and some NGOs refuse to support full international protection. How could we "celebrate" World Lion Day when lions are in such crisis?

We did celebrate... With action.

We started in 2011 with our ultimately successful petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to increase protection for lions under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Now, we're focused on global protection at next month's meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in Johannesburg, South Africa.

We knew the situation was dire, so we dubbed 2016 the "Year of the Lion" to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Born Free film and to put a special focus on lions all year long.

On World Lion Day, we introduced a light-hearted new video to raise awareness of the threats facing lions all year long. The video is for those who are unaware of their plight, and who perhaps can't handle the gruesome reality of what is happening on the ground.

We want people to continue to pay attention, just like they did when the news of Cecil broke. We hope that the comedic nature of Born Free USA's new video will inspire people to share it on Facebook and Twitter, and email it to friends and family. The more people who watch it, the more that lions will be on the forefront of the public consciousness for months to come.

Make no mistake, though; designating a "day" for lions doesn't mean that we forget about them during the rest of the year. Rather, it means that maybe -- during the buzz surrounding World Lion Day -- the world will listen to another lion's story.

Keep Wildlife in the Wild,

Adam

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Vital Questions Must Be Answered on Eve of Park Service Centennial
If anything could mitigate the current divisions roiling our country, I believe our National Park system would be that thing. The power of our national parks to inform, inspire, heal and build community can hardly be overstated - if you are among those privileged to know them.

My view could be considered hyperbole coming from a private citizen, a relatively obscure fan of the parks. So take it from the great American writer and historian Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) who said,

"National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst."

His view was reinforced by Ken Burns in his groundbreaking 2009 series, "The National Parks: America's Best Idea."

And just last week Shelton Johnson, who is featured in Burns' series, described his job as a park ranger in Yosemite National Park as "facilitating astonishment... .I create that bridge between the divine and the earth, that's my job. It means building a bridge between one world and the next."

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One of the most famous park rangers on Earth, our friend Ranger Shelton Johnson tells non-white and all Americans, "you have an inheritance" in our national parks.

If our national parks have such power, how come a full 30 percent percent of our population doesn't know they exist? That translates to nearly 100 million of around 315 million Americans. My heart cries out at the disservice this does to our country -- that the very places our ancestors and our current president saved to inspire us and guide us as are right here in our midst, yet obscured from the view of so many.

Having explored our parks from Alaska to the Virgin Islands, I know the real story of America -- that there's no one to "take our country back" from, and that together we already made America great. In the current uncivil discourse, both the aggressors and the people on the receiving end of that aggression could benefit from knowing what really happened here.

When First Lady Michelle Obama declared this summer "I wake up in a White House built by slaves," the unknowing masses went wild with revulsion. Only upon research revealing the incontrovertible facts did a grudging acceptance emerge.

I suggest that if the Park Service was doing its job, this history would be common knowledge since the White House is set in a national park.

Among the earliest acts of American nation building, the first man shot dead in the Boston Massacre was the African American Crispus Attucks, whose story is told at Boston African American National Historic Site

At the Presidio of San Francisco -- a national park -- I learned that the City and the fort were explored, developed and built primarily by Americans of Hispanic, African and Native descent.

At Valley Forge National Historical Park outside Philadelphia I learned that soldiers of every race and ethnicity, and women, served in General George Washington's Continental Army that holed up there in the dire winter of 1777-78. From this hellish experience the birth of the American military is traced.

A visit to the monuments on the National Mall in Washington DC honoring our servicemen and women showed me that every racial and ethnic group has served in every war defending our country, and made the ultimate sacrifice of their lives.

I've learned the story of America's evolution from the 20,000-year-old Anasazi communities at Bandelier National Park and I'm looking forward to visiting the most recent expression of our evolution at Stonewall Monument in New York City, marking the integration of the LGBT community into national history.

So I can stand toe to toe in any conversation with anyone about the past and future of my country, and I've had occasion to sympathize with some who tried to make me feel like a second class citizen, after completely demolishing their misconceptions. I only wish that my 100-million or so countrymen and women who are of African, Asian, Hispanic or Native descent feel the same luxury based upon the security of knowing the legacy we have in this country.

As the Park Service gets ready to celebrate its 100th Anniversary August 25, it admits to a grave imbalance in the number of non-white Americans that have a relationship with the parks either as users or as part of the workforce. This "challenge" has dogged the service for the 20 years I've been involved, though the 2000 census indicated that the fastest growing sectors of our population was non-white.

Like the park service, corporate America recognized the need to build their clientele among emerging groups. But where corporations have responded and succeeded in expanding their base by targeting information and opportunities to this sector, the service has lagged far behind in broadening its constituency for the parks.

What message will it send to the Park Service and its leadership if they are celebrated and allowed to enter a second century in the same exclusionary posture as the previous century? In 2050, will my great grandsons still have to invest their energy into making the parks egalitarian for all Americans as we've been doing since 1995?

More than two million Americans have signed petitions objecting to Director's Order 21 that would increase the corporate presence in our national parks and require staff to become fundraisers. What threat does that Order pose to the integrity of the park system? Considering that today's Republican Party platform calls for large swaths of public lands to be removed from the federal treasury, isn't it self-defeating that fully one-third of the population has not been informed that we have this birthright to enjoy and protect?

I salute the 20,000-plus high caliber public servants of the National Park Service on the Centennial. I've had the pleasure of meeting many of our public lands stewards and consider you among my most cherished friends. I commend those of you who are already engaging with the plurality of the American public on an equal footing. Please be assured that a network of diverse leaders around the country stand ready to assist you . Let's find answers and solutions to these questions. Let us help you secure the future of our National Park System by working together to engage our country in the enjoyment, care and preservation of America's peerless natural, cultural and historic treasures.

THIS will make it a Centennial worthy of celebration.

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MOMA Minimalism by Tim Gaweco

morning light. by Philipp Heigel

epic morning light in the palatinate forest.