PROJECT - Policy Action Conference

SACRAMENTO, CA (November 20, 2008 – 12:30pm) – Over 100 environmental and social justice advocates statewide are giving public testimony and organizing a rally to call attention to the negative environmental consequences in California Air Resources Board (CARB) Proposed Global Warming Legislation Scoping Plan’s recommendation of an international trading scheme and use of offsets to address climate change.

The proposed plan:

·       Establishes an approach that has never worked and will harm our communities

·       Exacerbates environmental injustices and health impacts

·       Fails to ensure significant local reductions for the entire industrial sector, including oil refineries and powerplants located where low-income communities of color work, live, learn, and play.

·       Supports international trading for the entire industrial sector, allowing them to rely on pollution credits that companies can buy and sell amongst themselves from anywhere in the world, instead of mandating emissions reductions.   The free market, as is starkly evident in the recent months of our nation’s financial crisis, is grossly unpredictable.

At 12:30pm, speakers at the Rally and media event will demand that this Administration adopt a climate plan that meets the health, job creation, and climate goals required by low-income communities of color fenceline to toxic polluting facilities and the law.

California needs a climate change plan that serves all the residents of California, especially communities overburdened by toxic pollution facilities and on the frontline of misery caused by climate change.  Advocates will tell regulators to do their job and regulate pollution and protect health instead of relying on failed polices and unworkable international trading schemes to supposedly fix climate change.

For more information regarding the environmental justice communities’ critique of climate change policy, visit http://www.ejmatters.org.  CARB’s Proposed Scoping Plan can be found at:  http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/scopingplan/document/psp.pdf

Rally Sponsored by: West County Toxics Coalition, Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, Communities for a Better Environment, Healthy 880 Communities, PODER, Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, Environmental Justice Air Quality Coalition, California Environmental Rights Alliance, Environmental Health Coalition

For more information, contact: Greenaction (415) 248-5010 x 101 and CBE (510) 302-0430x11