Commentary

Environmental justice with brain damage

A coalition of folks has organized to oppose Gov. Schwarzenegger’s plan for a cap and trade program to address greenhouse gas emissions on “environmental justice” grounds. They utterly reject the scale at which climate change occurs, objecting in principle that “Under a trading scheme, 11 power plants to be built around Los Angeles could offset emissions by extracting methane from coal seams in Utah or planting trees in Manitoba.” So they don’t care if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced, they care where they are reduced. Maybe because the organizers are pollution fighting groups and they consider greenhouse gas emissions to be a pollutant, so feel compelled to fight their emission in low income areas. See, CO2 emission must be hurting those people living near power plants. You could not ask for a better example of how scientifically illiterate some of these environmental activist groups can be.