Abstract
In a Perspective, James Boyce and Michael Ash discuss Lara Cushing and colleagues' research study on the implications of California's policy on carbon trading.
Highlights
In this issue of PLOS Medicine, Rachel Morello-Frosch and colleagues report the first evidence-based assessment of air pollution equity outcomes of California’s carbon pricing policy implemented in 2013. They found that, over the 2011–2015 study period, emissions from industrial facilities of greenhouse gas (GHG) and co-pollutants—particulate matter (PM2.5), sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and air toxics—were almost as likely to increase as to decrease and that neighborhoods with emission increases tended to have higher percentages of racial and ethnic minority, poor, less educated, and linguistically isolated residents [2]. These findings suggest that climate policy can best fulfill its potential if designed explicitly to achieve widely shared health co-benefits and improved environmental equity
In the US, including California, studies have documented that ethnic minority and lower-income communities bear disproportionate air pollution burdens [5–8]. These patterns suggest that carbon pricing and other climate policies that reduce fossil fuel combustion could generate improvements in air quality that will benefit disadvantaged communities
The study by Morello-Frosch and colleagues focuses on the large point-source emitters targeted by the capand-trade program, but the emission trends for these facilities are the joint outcome of both types of policies
Summary
A critical instrument to manage the costs of greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution, cover roughly 20% of the world’s carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion [1]. Carbon pricing can yield public health co-benefits by reducing emissions of hazardous air co-pollutants along with carbon dioxide and can, in principle, improve environmental equity by reducing disproportionate pollution burdens in socioeconomically disadvantaged communities.
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