Letter from Sacramento: What Were They Thinking???

In the last two weeks, two significant, peer-reviewed studies published in respected scientific journals have linked COVID mortality to air pollution. Put simply, if you live someplace where you are constantly bombarded with diesel soot and other toxic particulate matter, and you are among the people who become infected with COVID, you’re more likely to die than someone who lives in a place where the air is clean. 

Air pollution isn’t a benign thing. It ruins hearts, lungs and brains. It causes permanent damage and even stunts lung development in kids growing up in polluted places. This isn’t news. It’s something that scientists and air regulators and policymakers have known for a long time.

It’s something that people living in the shadow of ports, warehouses, railyards and freeways--magnets for diesel-soot-spewing cargo ships, trucks and locomotives--have felt for even longer. And now this COVID epidemic has provided more evidence that air pollution kills.

Against this backdrop, on John Muir’s birthday and the day before Earth Day, 31 legislators—17 Democrats, 13 Republicans and 1 independent—decided to ignore all of this science. They decided to side with shipping companies and shippers, including the oil industry, and their fancy contract lobbyists.

The legislators decided that it would be smart during a pandemic, a worldwide crisis, to delay putting into place rules that will help smack down that health-robbing diesel pollution in Los Angeles. So these elected officials sent a letter to the chair of the California Air Resources Board, Mary Nichols, and asked her to delay for another six months adoption of two rules that have been years in the making and are scheduled to be voted on in June.

One rule would require big truck manufacturers like General Motors and Volvo to make more zero-emission trucks, starting in 2024. The other rule would require that oil tankers and certain cargo ships shift away from using their diesel engines while in port.

Sierra Club staff and activists have been pushing for adoption of these rules for years. In our view, they are already overdue.

The fancy lobbyists for industry interests up and down the state have seen the COVID crisis as an opportunity to blast out letter after letter asking for rollbacks in all kinds of regulations. So far, none of the most critical rollbacks or delays have been granted. So the lobbyists for the shipping industry, which includes the oil industry, turned to their friends in the legislature to send a letter.

The letter was circulated to other legislators by Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell, a Democrat who represents Assembly District 70 which includes the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, a big old diesel hot spot if there ever was one.

O’Donnell has been a disappointment on many key environmental votes. So it isn’t surprising that he would circulate a letter that runs directly counter to the public health interests of, well, everyone who lives in his district.

Some of the folks signing the letter are the usual suspects, people like assemblymembers Jim Frazier, Rudy Salas and Senator Anna Caballero, all of whom are tight with polluting industry interests and more often vote against the environment than with it. Then there are the 13 Republicans who are almost never inclined to support regulations.

What is surprising is who else is on the letter. There are the signatures of assemblymembers Wendy Carillo and Miguel Santiago, two legislators who represent constituents who don’t live near the ports, but suffer from the diesel emissions spewed by the endless lines of trucks driving local freeways between the ports and warehouses.

There’s Assemblymember Freddie Rodriguez who represents a highly polluted San Bernardino County district made so dirty in part because of diesel trucks flooding to the warehouses in his county.

There’s Senator Richard Pan, a physician. What kind of physician would decide it was okay to slow down air pollution control rules during a pandemic? Maybe the kind that tells his constituents he’s all for the environment but routinely literally runs away from certain lobbyists when asked about key environmental votes. (Note: I joined a gym to improve lung capacity and running speed.)

If you click here you can find a full list of the signers, their district office phone numbers, and their email addresses. When I write these monthly emails I often receive responses from readers asking what they can do. So here’s what you can do: Call or email your favorite legislator on the list and tell them they shouldn’t have sent a letter during a pandemic calling for a slow-down in health-protective regulations.

It likely won’t change their minds (there are those fancy lobbyists and big industry donors to contend with). But at least they’ll know you’re watching. I know I am.