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Good Morning! Your Climate 202 researcher, Vanessa Montalbano, wrote the top of today’s newsletter. If you live in the DC area, we hope you are staying warm during this week’s spurt of cold weather. But first:
Battle brews in California over taxing the rich to fund electric cars
With less than three weeks until the midterm election, California gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is rallying against a ballot measure that would raise taxes for the richest Californians to help fund electric vehicles, charging stations and wildfire prevention even as he aims to ban gas-powered cars in the state by 2035.
The ballot initiative, Proposition 30, is being hailed by supporters, including the state’s Democratic Party and environmental groups, as crucial in the fight against climate change. If enacted, it would tax residents who make more than $2 million per year an additional 1.75 percent through January 2043 — or sooner, if statewide greenhouse gas pollution falls significantly below certain levels before then — according to the California Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Roughly 80 percent of the additional tax will go toward helping people purchase zero-emissions vehicles and installing charging infrastructure, especially in communities overburdened by the impacts of climate change. The remaining 20 percent would go to wildfire response, such as hiring or retaining firefighters and for prescribed burns.
- But Newsom and other opponents say the proposed tax is being used as a cop-out by companies such as lyftwhich has given about $45 million to the campaign, so that it can circumvent a new rule from the California Air Resources Board requiring 90 percent of ride-share vehicles to be electric by 2030. They say Lyft is trying to use taxpayer money instead of its own to cover the costs of complying with the new regulation.
“Prop 30 is being advertised as a climate initiative,” Newsom said in a recent ad. “But in reality, it was devised by a single corporation to funnel state income taxes to benefit their company. Put simply, Prop 30 is a Trojan horse that puts corporate welfare above the fiscal welfare of our entire state.”
As of Oct. 4, after the ad aired, about 49 percent of likely voters said they supported the proposed tax, with 37 percent opposing it and 14 percent undecided, according to a University of California at Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll.
As the “Yes on 30” campaign’s top funder, Lyft was involved in drafting the measure and helping to qualify it for the election. The ride-share company committed in 2020 to electrify all vehicles operating on the platform by 2030 and has advocated for similar tailpipe emissions mandates in other states across the country, including Washington, Oregon and Massachusetts, Lyft spokesperson CJ Macklin said.
Also at the drafting table in California was the Natural Resources Defense Councilthe Union of Concerned Scientists and the Coalition for Clean Airamong others.
- Asked to comment on Newsom’s allegations that Lyft is using the measure as a corporate bailout, NRDC’s Max Baumhefner said: “To be clear, Lyft did not conceive of the measure, it came from the community,” adding that “it’s a false statement to say that it’s a shadow coalition.”
He said in an interview with The Climate 202 that “a small portion of rebates will go to people who happen to drive for Lyft, but that will happen not because they drive for Lyft, but because they’re California residents.”
In a September blog post, Lyft co-founder and chief executive Logan Green wrote: “Not a single dollar of Proposition 30 is earmarked for Lyft or the ride-sharing industry as a whole. Ride-sharing drivers will be eligible just like ALL Californians, but they won’t receive any type of priority or preference”
However, Lyft’s involvement in the campaign is an outlier among other gig corporations that rely on freelance drivers. Above spokesperson Carissa Simmons The Climate 202 told that Uber has largely stayed out of the Proposition 30 debate.
“Uber was not involved in the drafting of Prop 30, and we have no association with the campaign,” Simmons said, adding that “it’s our belief that addressing climate change is a team sport.”
Unlike Lyft, Simmons said Uber provides resources valued at $800 million overall to drivers to help them make the switch to EVs.
- Still, Uber and its drivers stood to benefit just as much as Lyft if the ballot measure is approved by voters in November. If passed, it could also be a sign that other states are likely to follow, since California has historically been a leader in setting national environmental standards.
The Golden State already has its own emission reduction programs, including $10 billion over the next five years for electric vehicles specifically from this year’s budget and $54 billion for climate action broadly. Not to mention the added federal subsidies for electric vehicles from the Inflation Reduction Act.
One of Newsom’s top arguments against the proposed tax is that the state already has “famously volatile” tax rates. According to the World Population Review, a nonpartisan research organization, California residents charges the highest individual income tax rates out of all 50 states and DC.
Dan corda politics lecturer at Berkeley, said the only higher priority for news than fighting climate change is avoiding a budget deficit in a year when the state has already seen shortfalls in expected revenue.
“Newsom is worried that raising taxes further on the wealthy is going to leave the state budget very vulnerable the next time there’s a recession,” he said. “Whether Newsom runs for president or not, he certainly doesn’t want to spend his second term raising taxes or cutting popular government programs, so avoiding a further tax increase on the wealthy is his best protection against that.”
Biden touts $2.8 billion in Energy Department grants to expand battery manufacturing
President Biden on Wednesday highlighted the latest steps in his administration’s push to bolster the adoption of electric vehicles, including $2.8 billion in Energy Department grants to expand battery manufacturing in a dozen states, The Washington Post’s John Wagner other Mariana Alfaro report.
The grants, which were authorized by the bipartisan infrastructure law, will go toward 20 battery manufacturing and processing companies for projects in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Tennessee and Washington .
Three of the projects will focus on developing battery-grade lithium, graphite, and nickel, respectively, according to an Energy Department press release. Another project will seek to develop the first lithium iron phosphate cathode facility in the country.
Biden has set an ambitious goal for electric vehicles to account for half of all new car sales by 2030.
Biden rejects GOP claims that release of oil from strategic reserve is ‘politically motivated’
biden on Wednesday dismissed GOP claims that his plan to release 15 million more barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is a politically motivated effort to lower gas prices ahead of the midterm elections, wagner other Alfaro report.
“It’s motivated to make sure that I continue to push on what I’ve been pushing on, and that is making sure there’s enough oil that’s being pumped by the companies,” Biden said in remarks from the White House on energy policy.
Biden again accused oil and gas companies of charging high prices despite earning record profits, saying gas prices aren’t “falling fast enough.” In an effort to quickly lower those costs and boost production, he also called on Congress to advance legislation that would “speed up the approval of all kinds of energy production, from wind to solar, to clean hydrogen” — an apparent nod to a deal that democratic leadership made with Sen. Joe Manchin III (DW.Va.) to pass a permitting restructuring bill.
“We need to get this moving now quickly,” Biden said. “You can increase oil and gas production now while still moving full speed ahead to accelerate our transition to clean energy.”
Carbon emissions from fossil fuels to rise by less than 1 percent this year
Global carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are projected to rise by just under 1 percent this year, according to a report released Wednesday by the International Energy Agency, Angela Dewan reports for CNN.
The finding comes despite widespread concerns about countries backsliding on their climate commitments amid the global energy crunch sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The report estimates that carbon emissions will rise by 300 million metric tons this year — a much smaller jump than the spike of nearly 2 billion tons last year as global economies rebounded from the pandemic. The increase would have been larger — potentially as much as 1 billion tons — without major deployments of renewable energy and electric vehicles around the globe.
“The global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted a scramble by many countries to use other energy sources to replace the natural gas supplies that Russia has withheld from the market,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a statement. “The encouraging news is that solar and wind are filling much of the gap, with the uptick in coal appearing to be relatively small and temporary.”
Oceans are warming faster than ever. Here’s what could come next.
A report published this week in the journal Nature Review found that the warming of the world’s oceans due to human-caused climate change has both accelerated and reached deeper depths, with the strongest changes observed in the Atlantic and Southern oceans, The Post’s Brady Dennis reports. That warming — which the scientists said is probably irreversible through 2100 — is poised to continue and create new hot spots around the globe, especially if humans fail to make significant and rapid cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.
The consequences of hotter oceans are already on vivid display worldwide, with unprecedented events such as rising seas, exceptional heat waves, prolonged drought, fierce hurricanes, deadly flooding and torrential rainfall becoming more common occurrences. The paper underscores that many of the effects of warmer waters are still unknown but that marine life and the nations that have contributed the least to emissions will suffer the most profound consequences.
Us on the first day of fall weather: 😂
