Sen. Ricardo Lara, a Bell Gardens Democrat, said from Paris he will introduce legislation setting reduction targets of 40 percent to 50 percent below 2013 levels for emissions of black carbon, methane and fluorinated gases, which can come from refrigeration and air-conditioning systems.
“The reality is that we have asthma clusters, we have cancer clusters in southeast L.A,” he said. “Those are realities that my constituents face.”
Through diesel and other regulations, California has reduced emissions of black carbon, or soot, by more than 90 percent since the 1960s, according to the Air Resources Board, and the state has imposed standards on methane emissions from landfills. In addition, Brown signed legislation in 2012 dedicating 25 percent of cap-and-trade revenue to disadvantaged communities, including poor and heavily polluted areas.
Though most Californians “all kind of care about climate change, what people really care about is local pollutants,” said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at University of California, San Diego. “I think the environmental community is making a pivot to that.”
Noah Scovronick, a research fellow at Princeton University who studies short-lived pollutants, said they have become a hot topic in recent years because “the science has just really come online.”
In addition, he said, the public policy argument for addressing them is strong: The World Health Organization estimated in October that reducing short-lived climate pollutants could prevent about 2.4 million premature deaths annually by 2030, including from cardiovascular and respiratory disease.
“If you mitigate short-lived climate pollutants,” Scovronick said, “you get benefits locally, and you get benefits almost immediately in some cases.”
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article48700275.html