By John Leschak
On April 22, 1970, college and university campuses across the U.S. rallied in the name of the environment on the very first Earth Day. Next Wednesday, almost 40 years since then, students will again rally to save Earth. During common hour, they will gather on campus to converse about how we can mitigate the greatest threat to our planet-global climate change.
Unequivocal proof of climate change is given by the current destruction of communities-the loss of Arctic sea ice has flooded Inuit villages; rising ocean levels are submerging island republics in the Pacific, like Fiji, Samoa and Kiribati; more intense and longer droughts are causing fatal famines in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and other parts of east Africa; and extreme weather has become more frequent, with the victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike among this century’s first climate change refugees.
These destructive changes have been caused by a dramatic increase in atmosphere concentrations of green-house gases (GHGs) for which human industrialization is to blame. Pre-industrial atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide were 280 parts per million (ppm), but today carbon dioxide is over 379 ppm. According to world-renowned climatologist James Hansen, if carbon dioxide levels are not reduced to 350 ppm, then humanity risks going over the tipping point into irreversible climate change.
To reach 350 ppm, we need a mandatory, federal program to reduce GHG emissions. The 2009 American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), introduced earlier this month by Congressmen Waxman and Markey, would establish such a program. ACES would mandate an 80 percent reduction below 2005 GHG emission levels by 2050; require 25 percent of all U.S. energy to come from renewable sources by 2025; and provide aid to low income families to make the transition to green living, among many other things.
The voluntary programs implemented in the early 1990s, such as the 1993 Climate Change Action Plan, have failed to halt or even reduce U.S. emissions. Between 1990 and 2001, U.S. emissions increased almost 12 percent. ACES should effectively lower U.S. emissions to an environmentally sustainable level.
But, effectiveness should not be the sole criteria for judging legislation. Distributional equity must also be considered. We need to make sure that the burdens and benefits of ACES are fairly apportioned. Too often environmental regulation has disproportionately burdened poor and minority communities. For example, the Superfund law, which imposes liability on current owners of hazardous waste sites, has discouraged businesses from developing brownfields in our inner cities, resulting in fewer job opportunities for the urban unemployed.
At the same time, environmental regulations have not protected all people equally. A 1987 report found that three out of five of the largest commercial hazardous waste landfills in the U.S. were located in predominately black or Latino communities, and that three out of every five black and Latino Americans lived in communities with uncontrolled toxic waste sites. As a result of racism, minority communities are forced to live in the least desirable parts of town. So it was with New Orleans. The area most vulnerable to floods, the Lower Ninth Ward, was 98 percent black.
To put an end to this eco-apartheid, we must ensure equal protection as well as equal opportunity in an economy that respects the Earth. These environmental justice goals can be achieved through a domestic “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM) modeled after the Kyoto Protocol’s international CDM. Whereas the Kyoto CDM encourages developed countries to fund projects in the third world, a domestic CDM would encourage investment in climate change mitigation projects in low-income and minority populations within the U.S. In other words, the same distributional principles that apply between nations would apply within nations too.
ACES provides for a domestic CDM as part of a “cap and trade” program. Under this program, a fixed number of permits for emitting GHGs (cap) are distributed or sold to regulated entities. The entities’ emissions cannot exceed the cap, but it can buy, sell or bank permits (trade). CDM allows a company to increase their emissions above their cap if, instead of buying permits from other companies, they fund reductions at a lower cost from other sources-for example, by funding a solar power start-up in the inner city.
By spurring investment in green technology, ACES should also help create the next wave of high-tech jobs for University graduates. University students can help pave the way for ACES by voting “yes” for The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF) on April 22 and 23. TGIF would create green jobs on campus for Hofstra students. By saving the Earth we will also be saving ourselves, creating a green economy where you and I can earn money.
John Leschak is a second-year law student. You may e-mail him at [email protected].
