California
California’s Rash Plastic Lawsuit Is Anti-Growth And Anti-Environment
Mobius loop or recycling symbol with arrows.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s plastics lawsuit against ExxonMobil may be astute politics but it is terrible policy. This lawsuit is rife with contradictions. Frivolous lawsuits are also a large and growing pall hanging over the economy.
Many studies have documented the high costs frivolous lawsuits impose on Americans. According to the Institute for Legal Reform, frivolous lawsuits cost the U.S. economy $443 billion in 2020. These costs ultimately raise the prices of the goods and services we purchase every day, which means that tort abuse imposes a $3,621 annual tax on every household.
Attorney General Bonta’s lawsuit, along with the lawsuit filed by environmental groups making similar accusations, is no different. As I noted in a previous Forbes column, the lawsuit accuses ExxonMobil of fraudulently promoting plastic recycling as a solution to the problem of plastic waste while, at the same time, state and local governments in California have promoted, and continue to promote, the exact same solution – plastic recycling.
There are many instances of these contradictions.
When California Governor Gavin Newsom was mayor of San Francisco he promoted the practice as an essential part of his efforts to establish the “toughest recycling law” in the nation. Through CalRecycle, California state and local governments continue their long-standing promotion of plastic recycling.
According to CalRecycle, “on June 30, 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 54 (Allen, 2022) into law to address the impacts of single-use packaging and plastic food service ware.” The law requires that by 2032, the use of single-use plastic is reduced by 25%, 65% of single-use plastic is recycled, and 100% of single-use plastic is recyclable.
If promoting plastic recycling is deceptive when ExxonMobil does it, why is it not deceptive when the Governor promotes the same activity? Isn’t CalRecycle being deceptive when it continues to promote plastic recycling today? These differences in treatment raise serious concerns regarding the AG’s lawsuit.
Also noteworthy, AG Bonta’s own constituents are supportive of expanding plastics recycling. According to a January 27th poll, “63% [of Californians]
want the state to expand and improve its recycling infrastructure to find ways to give a new life to plastics. That compares to only 27% who prefer the state eliminate single-use plastic and stop manufacturing new plastics.”
Moreover, whether plastic recycling is an economically viable option is not the relevant question. Some analyses are pessimistic about the value of plastic recycling. For instance, a commentary for the New Jersey Institute of Technology noted that “today, recycled plastic generally costs more to refine and buy than new plastic.”
There are other analyses that, while noting obstacles remain, assert that there are reasons for optimism. As a 2020 McKinsey analysis concluded,
Our recent research has shown substantial value-creation potential in capturing plastic waste and using existing technologies to process it to make new plastics and other chemicals. To date, however, investments to translate this potential into reality have been relatively small. Globally, only around 15 percent of plastics produced each year get recycled.
It follows from the McKinsey report that investments to translate this potential into reality are needed to support more efficient plastic waste management.
There are sound reasons to believe that investing in advanced recycling technology can provide great value. For example, Exxon’s advanced recycling facility in Baytown, Texas has processed more than 70 million pounds of plastic waste into new products to date.
There are fewer reasons to believe that Governors, Attorneys General, or other state leaders can be effective arbiters of which innovative technologies have the potential to add value, and which do not. Instead, innovation is best fostered when millions of private businesses and budding entrepreneurs guide capital allocation and assess risk.
In practice, preemptive judgements on novel technology by experts and political leaders often age poorly – after all, Henry Morton (a contemporary of Thomas Edison and president of the Stevens Institute of Technology) called Edison’s light bulb “a conspicuous failure.”
Ultimately, it is the private sector that drives innovation forward. The AG’s legal action is another demonstration of California’s growing hostility toward businesses and innovators. Beyond the lawsuit’s strong anti-growth and anti-consumer impacts, it obstructs the very creative processes necessary to more effectively manage the plastic waste problem.
California
JD Vance accuses California of letting Medicaid fraudsters cash in at taxpayer expense | Fox Business Video
Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., joins ‘Mornings with Maria’ to discuss the Trump administration’s crackdown on Medicaid fraud, Republicans’ push for new immigration enforcement funding and President Donald Trump’s latest trade negotiations with China.
California
Live Updates: Candidates face off in the CBS News California and San Francisco Examiner Governor’s Debate
Learn more about candidates’ stances on the issues in the California Governor’s Race interactive guide
CBS News California launched an interactive tool to help voters navigate this year’s gubernatorial race. The California Governor’s Race Candidate Guide features 20 hours of interviews with top-polling candidates to provide voters the opportunity to compare each candidate’s responses side-by-side on the issues that matter most to them.
Those running to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom as California’s next chief executive offered their thoughts on more than a dozen issues, including homelessness, housing affordability, gas prices and environmental policy, immigration, healthcare, crime and public safety funding, and the state’s ongoing insurance crisis.
Here’s what to know about the CBS News California/San Francisco Examiner Governor’s Debate format
The format of the CBS News California and San Francisco Examiner Governor’s Debate on Thursday will allow candidates to question each other directly.
Candidates will also participate in segments in which they address real-world issues California voters may face in their daily lives. The Californians who will be featured include a working single mother pursuing education; a couple struggling to achieve homeownership; and a scientist warning of the long-term consequences of inaction on climate change.
This structure for Thursday’s debate differs from the previous face-off hosted by CBS News California stations, which comprised three segments focused on affordability, accountability and social issues that lasted roughly half an hour each.
Becerra, Hilton, Steyer lead field in latest polling on California governor’s race
An Emerson College poll released the day before the CBS News California and San Francisco Examiner Governor’s Debate showed Xavier Becerra leading the field with likely voters surveyed at 19%, followed by Steve Hilton and Tom Steyer both receiving 17%. Chad Bianco came in at 11%, followed by Katie Porter at 10%, Matt Mahan at 8%, Antonio Villaraigosa at 4% and Tony Thurmond at 1%. Twelve percent said they remained undecided.
In a CBS News/YouGov poll last month conducted before the April 28 CBS California Governor’s Debate, Hilton received support from 16% of likely voters polled, with Steyer and Becerra following at 15% and 13% respectively. Bianco came in at 10%, Porter received 9%, Matt Mahan and Antonio Villaraigosa both received 4%, and Tony Thurmond received 1%. The survey also found that a significant 26% of those polled were undecided.
California’s June 2 primary is an open primary where the top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, advance to face off in the November general election.
By Dan Walters, CalMatters
This commentary was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
Two decades ago, when California got serious about reducing or even eliminating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, its political leaders weighed two potential tactics about industrial emissions.
The state could impose direct facility-by-facility limits, generally favored by climate change advocates. Or it could set overall emission reduction goals that would gradually decrease and auction off emission allowances, assuming their costs would encourage reductions.
The latter, known as cap-and-trade, was favored by corporate interests as being less onerous and was adopted, finally taking effect in 2012.
Since then, the California Air Resources Board has conducted quarterly auctions of emission allowances, collecting a total of $35 billion dollars so far, which, in theory, is being spent on projects that would reduce emissions.
The revenues have varied from year to year, but they have generally increased as the emission caps have declined. Since reaching a peak of $8.1 billion in the 2023-24 fiscal year, however, auction proceeds have been declining.
Roughly half of the money has been given to utilities to minimize cap-and-trade’s impact on consumer costs. However, the program has been widely criticized as a de facto tax on gasoline and other fuels, which were already among the most expensive of any state.
The remaining revenues have been deposited into a Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund that governors and legislators have tapped for various purposes, not all of them connected to emission reductions. In a sense, it’s been a slush fund.
Last year Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature overhauled the program in two bills, Senate Bill 840 and Assembly Bill 1207. The program was extended, it was renamed as cap-and-invest and new priorities for spending auction proceeds were set.
Notably, the state’s cash-strapped and long-stalled bullet train project would get a flat $1 billion a year, rather than the 25% share it had been getting. Project managers hope that lenders will advance enough money to complete its first leg in the San Joacim Valley; the plan is to repay the loans from the $1 billion annual cap-and-invest allocation.
Early this year, the Air Resources Board released new regulations to implement the legislative changes but faced criticism that they would increase consumer costs. That led to a revision in April that softens the rules’ impact — most obviously on refiners who have been threatening to leave California — but environmental groups are very critical.
The April version would also sharply reduce net revenues from emission auctions, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, providing barely enough for the $1 billion allocation to the bullet train and another $1 billion for the governor and Legislature to spend. Other programs that have been receiving cap-and-invest support, such as wildfire protection and housing, would probably get nothing.
The program has been tapped in recent years to backfill programs that a deficit-ridden state budget could not cover, so the projected revenue drop would exacerbate efforts by Newsom and legislators to close the state budget’s yawning gap.
“The (Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund) is a relatively small portion of the overall state budget, but it has been a noteworthy source of funding for environmental and other programs in recent years,” the state Assembly’s budget advisor, Jason Sisney, says in an email. “Collapse of its revenues would change the state budget process noticeably. The state’s cost-pressured general fund seemingly would be unable to make up much, if any, of a significant (Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund) revenue decline at this time.”
When Newsom presents his revised budget this week, he may reveal how he intends to cover the cap-and-invest program’s shortfall, particularly whether he will maintain the $1 billion bullet train commitment that project leaders say is vital to continuing construction of its Merced-to-Bakersfield segment.
It could boil down to bullet train vs. wildfire protection.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
-
Alabama5 minutes agoGov. Ivey announces America 250 Alabama Celebration
-
Alaska11 minutes agoThis Alaska cruise port lets you experience the wild, untouched state
-
Arizona17 minutes agoDozens of repossessed Spirit Airlines jets now parked in Arizona desert
-
Arkansas23 minutes agoDave Van Horn press conference: Arkansas baseball coach, players recap Game 1 loss at Kentucky | Whole Hog Sports
-
California29 minutes agoJD Vance accuses California of letting Medicaid fraudsters cash in at taxpayer expense | Fox Business Video
-
Colorado35 minutes ago
Families, care providers navigate cuts to Colorado’s Community Connector program | Rocky Mountain PBS
-
Connecticut41 minutes agoARREST WARRANT: Georgia man accused of laundering nearly $63K from dead person’s account in Connecticut
-
Delaware47 minutes agoKent, Sussex Counties see rising share of Delaware roadway deaths in 2026