Environmental Lawyer Blog

We have brought you blog posts (here and here) about the San Francisco Superior Court case brought by environmental justice groups challenging the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) environmental analysis of AB 32. As we reported in March, Judge Goldsmith’s final ruling stated that CARB violated CEQA (the California Environmental Quality Act) by failing to adequately consider certain alternatives to the cap-and-trade system CARB was set to implement. However, last Friday, Goldsmith’s judgment was filed with the court and it clarified and narrowed his final ruling.
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Earlier this month, the director of the Sierra Club of California, Bill Magavern, wrote an open letter to Governor Jerry Brown asking that his administration “re-evaluate” the cap-and-trade regulation adopted by the California Air Resources Board (ARB) in December of last year. The cap-and-trade program is one of the strategies being employed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020, as mandated by AB 32 (known as the “Global Warming Solutions Act”). (But, you already know this since you read our blog ALL the time… right??)

In the letter the Sierra Club criticizes the cap-and-trade program for a number of reasons including the following:
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