Driving Change: Reducing Vehicle Miles Traveled in California

Assesses benefits and challenges of a 2008 strategy to integrate higher-density development, investments in alternatives to solo driving, and pricing incentives, as well as the state's experience with implementing it. Includes policy recommendations

California 2025: Planning for a Better Future

Provides overviews of issues, underlying factors, projections, and policy outlook for the state's budget, climate change effects, economy, education, population, transportation, water management, and workforce

Climate Change Challenges Vehicle Emissions and Public Health in California

Two of California’s greatest environmental challenges are to meet national ambient air quality standards and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. Although California has been struggling with air quality problems for more than four decades, concern over climate change is a relatively new phenomenon. Yet, the common ground between these two concerns is evident—both air quality and climate change policies aim to reduce the harmful pollutants that threaten the public’s health and well-being. And one of the major culprits in both cases is the same—motor vehicles, the leading source of both smog-forming and greenhouse gas emissions. This study examines options for reducing emissions from motor vehicles and evaluates each of the options in terms of its public health, climate change, and cost implications, including the uncertainty associated with each option. We examine battery-electric vehicles, fuel cell vehicles, the use of ethanol blends in flex-fuel vehicles, and reductions in vehicle miles traveled. We find that increasing the use of battery-electric vehicles provides the greatest public health benefit per unit of GHG emission reduction, followed closely by the use of fuel cell vehicles, and then by reductions in vehicle miles traveled. However, all of these options involve tradeoffs, and none ranks favorably along all dimensions. For example, battery-electric and fuel cell vehicles provide significant public health and climate change benefits, but both options involve high cost an

Science and Uncertainty in Environmental Regulation: Insights from the Evaluation of California's Smog Check Program

Environmental decision making is a complex process confounded by technical uncertainty, political pressure, and social interests. New calls for environmental decision-making frameworks emphasize the need for an holistic approach that incorporates technical and non-technical expertise, and participation by all affected and interested parties. In this paper, we analyze the evaluation of an environmental regulatory program to characterize the interaction of science and policy and the processing of uncertainty using concepts from science and technology studies. This demonstrates the influence of institutional goals and commitments on the uptake and use of science and the processing of uncertainty in the regulatory process. We discuss the implications of such analyses on the development of new environmental decision-making frameworks

Adapting air quality management for a changing climate: Survey of local districts in California

<p>Air quality can be affected by weather and thus is sensitive to a changing climate. Wildfire (influenced by weather), consecutive high temperature summer days, and other extreme events are projected to become more severe and frequent with climate change. These may create challenging conditions for managing air quality despite policy targets to reduce precursor and pollutant emissions. Although extreme events are becoming more intense and interest in climate adaptation is increasing among public health practitioners, little attention in scholarly literature and policy covers climate adaptation for air quality governance. Understanding the management and managers’ perspectives at the local level provides insight about the needs for climate adaptation, including their adaptation status, perspectives, responsibilities, and roles. This study explores local manager perspectives and experiences of managing air quality within a changing climate as one puzzle piece to understand the gap in climate adaptation within the air quality sector. A broader goal is to contribute to the discussion of developing a multi-jurisdictional vision for reducing the impacts of air quality in a changing climate. In 2016 local air quality district managers in California were invited to participate in an online survey of 39 questions focused on extreme event impacts on air quality. The questionnaire focused on present air quality threats and extreme event challenges, adaptation status and strategies, adaptive capacities, perceived barriers to adaptation, and jurisdictional responsibilities and roles. Over 85 percent of the 35 local air districts in California participated in the survey, which represents 80 percent of the state’s population. High awareness and knowledge of climate change among local managers indicates they are ready to adopt and take action on policies that would support climate adaptation, but barriers reported suggests they may need policies and adequate funding to take action and make necessary changes.</p> <p><i>Implications</i>: Downscaled global climate models project an increasing severity and frequency of extreme events. In the southwestern United States, these include wildfire, heat events, and dry periods, among others, all of which can place an extra burden on air quality managers and emitters to achieve air quality standards even as they reduce emissions. Despite climate change presenting increasing challenges to meet air quality standards, in the southwestern United States, policy and action to mitigate these impacts have been surprisingly absent. California presents a valuable case study on the topic because of its historic leadership in air quality management for the United States and also because of its initiatives in combating climate change. Yet still we found that adaptation has not been incorporated into air quality management thus far, but local managers seem sufficiently knowledgeable and willing.</p