The state's investment of $10.5 billion in greenhouse gas-reducing projects is merely California making gestures to appeal to the people who haven’t yet left, according to a California State University (CSU) professor.
Some 367,299 California residents left the Golden State as of July 2021, according to media reports.
“If the risk really is a problem for the whole world, then the whole world should be in on fixing it and that's clearly not the case,” said Robert Michaels, a professor of economics at CSU-Fullerton.
From December 2020 through November 2021, more than 75,000 new California Climate Investments projects were implemented, and approximately 76 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions are projected to be reduced by projects funded since 2014, according to a press release from Gov. Newsom's office.
But Michaels argues that California residents aren’t benefitting enough.
“Any reduction that takes place in greenhouse gas anywhere, ultimately rotates around the world, all through the atmosphere, which means that in any given location, you're going to have very little in the way of benefits regardless of how big the figures for California alone sound because the money that's being spent in California is going to be benefiting all sorts of other people and even if you do have those kinds of benefits, you can't really say a lot about whether they are worth the cost,” he said.
The greenhouse gas-reducing projects are detailed in a new legislative study called California Climate Investments Annual Report.
“California is subsidizing air compressors in gas stations, and they're literally calling that one of the benefits, that you've got more air compressors in gas stations that could be detecting bad tire inflation,” Michaels told the Southern California Record. “The greenhouse gas that would be saved would be the amount of what would be proportional to the amount of extra fuel that was being purchased because Californians were underinflating their tires. In any other business, this would be called advertising.”
Michaels predicts that the money allocated to the projects will be misspent.
“Unless you can show me that programs like these benefit the wellbeing and health of California, you can't take it seriously,” he added. “You have to wonder why this is happening. Some people think there's a national priority for doing this in most other states, there isn’t.”
The study further found that under the projects, more than 170,000 trees were planted in urban areas; more than 8,900 affordable housing units were funded and conserved or restored more than 720,000 acres of land statewide.
“These investments are reducing emissions across our state with projects that provide incentives for zero-emission vehicles and equipment, increase mobility through transit, build resilience to wildfires, and much more," Newsom said in the release. "We’re committed to ensuring that the communities most burdened by air pollution share in these benefits, with cleaner transportation options, cleaner air, increased energy efficiency, and more livable communities.”