How did you get to work today?

This morning, four million people drove to work in Los Angeles. How was your commute? Did you have a lively conversation, surf the web or catch up on your summer reading?

Chris DeFay did. He is the vanpool coordinator at Google Santa Monica, and he commutes to work in a vanpool every day. “I love it!” says DeFay, who can recite a long list of the benefits of vanpooling: it reduces stress, provides a place to socialize, has interpersonal and environmental benefits, and in Google’s case, it even comes with free wi-fi. DeFay’s story is one of the many clean air commutes featured in Getting to work: Your clean air commute, a report recently released by the Coalition for Clean Air (CCA).

Communities need clean air now: AB 1405 makes progress

Climate change is a global crisis that is felt on a local level. Some communities are more vulnerable to this crisis than others, but AB 1405 will provide equal protection to all Californians. Introduced in February, the bill is gaining momentum. It passed in the Assembly and has gone through committees on Environmental Quality, Energy and Utilities, and Natural Resources. It is now on its way to Senate Appropriations, its final hurdle before heading to the Senate floor and onto the governor’s desk.

Obama’s nationwide emission standards: a California success story

In mid-May, President Barack Obama announced that his administration would be setting strict, updated standards for vehicle emissions—modeled upon those which the Coalition for Clean Air (CCA) had been advocating in California since 2001. The new standards will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil, which is more than the United States imported from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Libya and Nigeria last year alone.

Smart summer travel

Planning a last-minute summer getaway? Want to escape the heat or visit a new city? Before you start making arrangements, consider the impact your travel has on the air.

Faces of CCA

Each issue of Clearing the Air will feature two people who are instrumental in the work and success of the Coalition for Clean Air (CCA). In this edition, we proudly feature CCA’s new board chair, Erik Neandross, and Executive Fellow Shankar Prasad, M.B.B.S.

CCA makes an IMPACT on Warner Brothers

Warner Bros. employees break for lunch on an environmentally friendly soundstage to volunteer with the Coalition for Clean Air (CCA). Employees stuffed 1,000 green cleaning kits which will be used to educate Los Angeles Unified School District parents on the harmful effects of cleaning products used in schools. CCA’s outreach and advocacy efforts to parents and local and state agencies are focused on eliminating toxic cleaners that leave behind a cloud of “smog in the classroom.”

CCA is honored to partner with Warner Bros.’ IMPACT Employee Giving Program, which offers hands-on volunteer opportunities with organizations such as CCA and matches employees’ contributions dollar-for-dollar.

In the community

In the community is a new column dedicated to highlighting clean air events in your local community.

.

How did you get to work today?

This morning, four million people drove to work in Los Angeles. How was your commute? Did you have a lively conversation, surf the web or catch up on your summer reading?

Chris DeFay did. He is the vanpool coordinator at Google Santa Monica, and he commutes to work in a vanpool every day. “I love it!” says DeFay, who can recite a long list of the benefits of vanpooling: it reduces stress, provides a place to socialize, has interpersonal and environmental benefits, and in Google’s case, it even comes with free wi-fi. DeFay’s story is one of the many clean air commutes featured in Getting to work: Your clean air commute, a report recently released by the Coalition for Clean Air (CCA).

This report acts as a guide for workers, employers and decision makers, informing them about ways to switch to a clean air commute. As it turns out, clean air commuting is good for workers and employers alike.

CCA staff released the report and its findings in a special meeting of the Los Angeles City Council Committee on Jobs, Business Growth and Tax Reform. The committee advanced a motion to consider a set of strategies to encourage employers throughout Los Angeles to offer clean air commuter options. Speaking in favor of city actions to expand clean air commuting were City Controller Wendy Greuel, Samuel Garrison of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, and Jason Elias of the Service Employees International Union. Committee Chair and Councilmember Greig Smith expressed support for clean air commute solutions and forwarded the motion to the full city council.

“A clean air commute is easier than one might think—even in the city of cars,” said CCA Campaign Director Martin Schlageter.

Read more clean air commuter stories such as DeFay’s, and get started on greening your daily commute.

Anna Mota and her community rally in support of a Community Benefits Fund with bill co-author, Assemblymember Kevin de León.

Communities need clean air now: AB 1405 makes progress

Climate change is a global crisis that is felt on a local level. Some communities are more vulnerable to this crisis than others, but AB 1405 will provide equal protection to all Californians. Introduced in February, the bill is gaining momentum. It passed in the Assembly and has gone through committees on Environmental Quality, Energy and Utilities, and Natural Resources. It is now on its way to Senate Appropriations, its final hurdle before heading to the Senate floor and onto the governor’s desk.

To Los Angeles residents such as Anna Mota, the passage of AB 1405 can’t come quickly enough. Mota and her son Israel, who suffers from asthma, live in a low-income neighborhood where the effects of pollution are particularly tangible: “we suffer more than those who live in communities where people have access to fresh air and tree cover. These refuges are far from my home, and I cannot afford to take my children to the other side of the city to breathe fresh air.”

“My community deserves equal protection from California’s climate crisis,” says Mota.

That’s exactly what AB 1405 will bring, requiring that 30 percent of any revenues generated through the implementation of AB 32—California’s landmark Global Warming Solutions Act—would be used to establish a Community Benefits Fund. “My community is very important to me,” emphasizes Mota, who sees the positive changes AB 1405 could bring. It “would help neighborhoods like mine cope with the burdens of climate change, such as increased air pollution, heat waves and droughts.”

.

Tim Carmichael, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Alberto Mendoza at the White House press conference.

Obama’s nationwide emission standards: a California success story

In mid-May, President Barack Obama announced that his administration would be setting strict, updated standards for vehicle emissions—modeled upon those which the Coalition for Clean Air (CCA) had been advocating in California since 2001. The new standards will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil, which is more than the United States imported from Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Libya and Nigeria last year alone.

CCA President and CEO Alberto B. Mendoza and former Senior Policy Director Tim Carmichael attended the president’s White House press conference as he outlined new standards which will raise fuel efficiency for all vehicles to 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016—an eight mpg increase from previous standards. “That is the equivalent of taking 58 million cars off the road for an entire year,” said Obama.

CCA was one of the original co-sponsors of then California Assemblymember Fran Pavley’s legislation (AB 1493, 2002) requiring automobile manufacturers to reduce global warming pollution from their new vehicles.

“When CCA began working on the Clean Cars Law in 2001, our focus was on California,” said Mendoza. “We knew then that clean cars had to be part of our future—for our health, our economy and our environment. Today, we now know that this is Detroit’s future, as well as our own.”

California is a global leader in developing effective strategies to reduce air pollution and global warming emissions. It is wonderful news that the Obama administration is willing to let California continue to lead in this area for the benefit of the entire country, and ultimately, the entire planet.

.

Smart summer travel

Planning a last-minute summer getaway? Want to escape the heat or visit a new city? Before you start making arrangements, consider the impact your travel has on the air:

Airplanes:
Aircraft currently produce about 12 percent of transportation-related CO₂ emissions worldwide. Besides accounting for tons of CO₂ every year, airplanes also emit the greenhouse gas NOx and hot exhaust from engines, which mix with air at high altitudes and form contrails—the long white lines often observable across the sky. These play a role in trapping escaping heat and gases within the earth's atmosphere, increasing the warming effect.

Trains and busses:
Trains and busses can move as many people as planes, but they have smaller carbon footprints. Though these modes of transit use diesel fuel, which contributes to climate change, they emit less than air travel. The average amount of CO₂ emitted by travel can be calculated with this simple equation:

Bus or train: miles traveled x 0.1 = kg CO₂ emitted
Airplane: miles traveled x 0.29 = kg CO₂ emitted

That means that travel by airplane creates almost three times as much CO₂ as train or bus travel.

Cars:
Every gallon of gas burned releases about 20 pounds of CO₂ into the atmosphere. Though all cars burn gas, hybrids get more miles per gallon: average fuel efficiency for a 2008 passenger car is 27 mpg/city, but a 2008 hybrid reaches 45 mpg/city. If you don’t own a hybrid, consider renting one for your trip or purchasing carbon offsets.

Every bit helps:
It is estimated that the average American contributes to the creation of 10 tons of CO₂ per year. With about 300 million people living in America today, we create more than three billion tons of CO₂ every year. If we could reduce our personal CO₂ emissions by just half a ton per year, we would prevent the creation of 150 million tons of CO₂ .

When combined, the changes each individual traveler makes can help stop thousands of tons of CO₂ from entering the atmosphere. If it is an option, consider going by ground rather than air the next time you travel.

Faces of CCA

Each issue of Clearing the Air will feature two people who are instrumental in the work and success of the Coalition for Clean Air (CCA). In this edition, we proudly feature CCA’s new board chair, Erik Neandross, and Executive Fellow Shankar Prasad, M.B.B.S.

Erik Neandross
Board Chair

CCA: As the new board chair, what visions do you have for the future of CCA?

Erik Neandross: As environmental and air quality issues become more prevalent with the new administration in Washington, D.C., and with so much of what is happening in D.C. being modeled after the policies and regulations put in place here in California, I see CCA playing a larger role in this national level. Having been at the forefront of air quality policy for the last 15-plus years, CCA has a tremendous wealth of experience that it can lend to these discussions. However, we will continue to maintain a vigilant focus on our efforts here in California, as much work remains to be done on criteria pollutant issues and greenhouse gas emissions.

CCA: You have a long family history working with CCA. Can you please elaborate on that?

EN: CCA has always played an important role in helping to chart the course on these important issues. Through the years, I have worked with CCA in an informal capacity to exchange ideas on the “issue du jour” and to provide feedback and guidance on CCA’s direction and efforts. Of course, I have always supported CCA financially through the annual luncheon and other means. Now that my wife and I have a two-year-old son that we are raising here in Southern California, home to some of the worst air pollution in the nation, the importance of CCA’s work has become even more personal. We now know that smog and air pollution can reduce childhood lung development by 1 percent per year of growth. By the time my son is 20 years old, there is the possibility that he will have only 80 percent of the lung capacity he should have by this age. That is unacceptable, and I am proud to be working with the entire CCA organization to change this frightening statistic.

Dr. Shankar Prasad is joined by former colleagues Dr. Barbara Finlayson-Pitts
and Dr. James N. Pitts, Jr., both atmospheric chemists.

Shankar Prasad, M.B.B.S.
Executive Fellow

Dr. Prasad came to CCA a year and a half ago, bringing with him invaluable experience as the deputy secretary for science and environmental justice at the California Environmental Protection Agency and as a health effects officer at the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Upon joining the CCA team, Prasad wrote that he felt excited and privileged to work here. “I hope that the advocacy expertise of this organization and my experience can be combined to promote clean air policies focused on reducing cumulative and disproportionate impacts,” he said. Since then Prasad has helped build a climate change program that aims to secure equal climate crisis protection for all Californians.

As part of the implementation plan for AB 32—California’s landmark Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006—Dr. Prasad helped persuade the California Air Resources Board to identify California’s most polluted communities. This critical inclusion ensures the protection of communities that bear the greatest burden of air pollution. Taking it one step further, CCA has since co-sponsored AB 32-related legislation which will strengthen the above identified communities by allocating financial resources to those who are least able to cope with the effects of the climate crisis. This legislation is known as AB 1405: Community Benefits Fund.

Dr. Prasad’s advocacy efforts are helping to advance sound global warming policies in California that we hope to see emulated elsewhere. CCA is itself privileged to have someone of Dr. Prasad’s stature on its staff.

In September, CCA will launch Ask Dr. Shankar, a blog where community members can ask questions regarding the health effects of air pollution.