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10/24/07
To:	ARB
From:	Muriel Strand
Re:	Comments on Discussion of Additions to the List of Early
Action Measures to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions Under AB 32 and
Discussion of Concepts for Promoting and Recognizing Voluntary
Early Actions

I urge approval of the staff proposal.  I urge the Board to
consider and support substantial public education measures related
to the Early Actions and the New Early and Voluntary Actions.

As a graduate student in mechanical engineering and energy, about
20 years ago, I heard from professors such as John Holdren that
the effectiveness of price signals and energy conservations
measures had by that time substantially exceeded the initial
expectations of the 1970s. I conclude that the elasticity of
energy use and economic relationships is quite low in the short
term, but fortunately quite high in the medium to long term.

Thus, I think staff are right on track when they say that
“Voluntary and educational efforts are prominent examples of
non-regulatory actions that can deliver real GHG emission
reductions, and staff plans to pursue these efforts
aggressively.”
 
I believe that educational outreach can have particular impact in
the following Early Actions:

5. Consumer products
6. Truck Efficiency
7. Tire Inflation Program
8. Reduce PFCs in semiconductor industry
9. Green Ports

ARB EARLY ACTIONS TO BE DEVELOPED BY 2012 
 
New Early Actions recommendations to be considered by the Board: 
1. Refrigerant Tracking, Reporting, and Recovery Program:
2. Cement (A): Energy Efficiency of California Cement Facilities:
3. Cement (B): Blended Cements:
4. Anti-idling Enforcement:
5. Collaborative Research to Understand How to Reduce GHG
Emissions from 
Nitrogen Land Application:

The power of individuals in the public as a whole has a great deal
of momentum. As staff notes, leaders in business and government
already play an important role.

NEW FOCUSED EFFORT ON VOLUNTARY ACTIONS 
 
A common theme during the verbal comment period of the September
17, 2007 public 
workshop was the need for ARB guidance for voluntary actions. 
Staff believes that the 
leadership shown by many businesses and local governments in
reducing GHG 
emissions needs to be acknowledged and supported.  A key first
step to acknowledge 
such actions is to quantify and document voluntary emission
reductions that rise beyond 
“business as usual”.  To that end, the ARB staff plans to propose
at the October 25-26, 
2007 Board hearing a framework for developing methodologies for
the quantification of 
voluntary greenhouse gas emission reductions, and seek the Board’s
direction.

However I am not sure if staff or the Board appreciate the full
potential of education of ordinary people that is implied in my
graduate-school realization.  And I think education of citizens
and consumers is certainly one of the “traditional regulatory
methods” that government staff have employed to implement
legislative statute and intent. So I urge the Board to deeply
support such outreach.

Those who object that some ideas or recommendations included in
such education are “social engineering” should acknowledge that
social engineering is inevitable. Existing conditions simply
represent the result of social engineering as it operated in the
past – including PR, public education, class-based competition,
and other forms of economic leverage and brainwashing. More to the
point is the list of criteria and methods for evaluating any social
engineering proposal.

Moreover, if factual material is the centerpiece of public
education measures, such objections may be minimized, as well as
the creation of unproductive emotional reactivity and
self-indulgent angst.

However, many people have difficulty discussing controversial
issues, such as whose grass constitutes blight, with their
neighbors or with those who disagree with their political
opinions. If we are ever to function on a relocalized, sustainable
basis, I think we will have to learn to talk about basic issues, to
ask and answer the really key challenging questions about our ideas
and opinions. The rigorous approach common in the physical sciences
must be applied to the social and political sciences, yet given he
nature of these sciences new criteria are required, such as
prohibitions on self-indulgence, wishful thinking, double
standards, self-righteousness, and using one’s emotional upset to
derail rational discussion.

I recommend to the Board the subject of “blight” as a case study,
and the role of the lawn as a prototype. As you may know, lawns
consume large and rather irrational quantities of water,
high-nitrogen fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, and are too
often ‘maintained’ by squads of noisy gasoline machines such as
lawnmowers and leafblowers. Why? Because lawns are thought to
indicate prosperity and reduce “blight.” But blight is extremely
subjective and has been used to unjustly evict those without power
from their residences. In my experience, public conversations about
blight are fraught with violations of the criteria in the paragraph
above. But if we cannot have a public discussion about an issue
such as this where ecological sustainability is apparently so at
odds with social sustainability, we are really sunk.

But how should the Board step into this new arena and potential
minefield? 

Judiciously and steadfastly.

One possible approach would be to explicitly broaden the mission
of the Board’s Environmental Justice Advisory Committee.
Inspection of the Committee’s Recommendations on the Early Action
Measures suggests that the Committee may be overlooking
substantial benefits of rearranging our lives to replace driving
by walking and bicycling, to replace processed preserved food
manufactured in faraway factories with fresh local homecooking,
and to replace electronic toys with simple games and community
activities. Such changes can be expected to reduce health care
costs for both physical and emotional ailments, as well as
increasing economic and social security.

It would be extremely beneficial if public education outreach
included discussions of the shape, size, and organization of the
sustainable society we will eventually reach, whether drastically
or sensibly. As I watch the AB32 regulatory process unfold, I have
become concerned that we are spending a lot of time and energy
rearranging the deck chairs (of, say, commuting to work) on the
Titanic of climate change that we could be spending on starting
right away to return to traditional, sustainable, and simple
lifeboat technologies. If we have a clear picture of where we want
to end up, I think it far more likely that we will arrive there.