California is under fire for claiming to care about emissions while being responsible for the overwhelming majority of a chemical that activists link to climate change.
The state at least feigns concern about pollution. It mandates and subsidizes solar power and electric cars, forcing the poor to pay the nation's highest gasoline and utility costs as a result, and tells them they should feel ethical doing it. They throw up ridiculous maps showing PM2.5, small micron particulate matter so tiny you need an electron microscope to see it, to keep people in a panic about pollution when the state actually has some of the best air quality in the world.(1)
Yet rich elites are happy to pretend they're not impacting climate change when it comes to protecting their property. Southern California uses a lot of sulfuryl fluoride and for years anti-science activist lawyers at groups like Center for Biological Diversity have demanded it be banned - mostly so they can sue over it ever existing in the first place. A new analysis says California is the nation's leader in this pollutant, with 85 percent of the total.
Yet it has not been banned, even in California, for the same reason "organic certified" foods have exemptions for dozens and dozens of synthetic ingredients - there is no "organic" substitute and the lobbyists and trade reps who run the boutique NOSB marketing panel inside USDA don't want their clients to have businesses they can't be in. Center for Biological Diversity can demand it be phased out but without a substitute, lots and lots of $5 million homes are at risk. Insurers have already fled California because the state won't let them charge higher prices for people who move to high-risk fire areas, if owners can't stop termites, the few insurers remaining will flee and then the state will be in the insurance business.
Center for Biological Diversity shrieks that 16 people have died in the last 30 years but those were due to high acute exposure, not ambient atmospheric traces. During the last 30 years, over 750 people have died due to cow attacks but environmental cranks aren't claiming cows be banned and being taken seriously.
That is why they are now latching onto climate change. Using bad science, that because the chemical has greater warming potential while ignoring that it dissipates, they hope to get California politicians on their side. The problem they face is that the California Governor is already violating the state Constitution with a $40 billion deficit due to his overspending. He has deferred every payment he can and can only take on a limited amount of bond interest. If he bans this chemical because it may impact climate change 80 years from now and houses start getting eaten by termites, he may face another recall vote.
Science outside climate evangelism has good news for the Governor on why he can continue to ignore activists on this one. Like methane, sulfuryl fluoride being 480X the warming impact of CO2 is meaningless at the levels it exists - and how quickly it dissipates. CO2 is the only thing worth worrying about but if you were late to that gravy train and missed out on hype about methane and PM2.5 also, sulfuryl fluoride can be your next target.
Because if someone puts it on a color gradient map, it's time to preach doom.
Just don't expect the Governor to listen when, if he were in the private sector and violating state law as he's doing in Sacramento halls of power, he'd already be in jail.
NOTE:
(1) The pollution exceptions are recurring wildfires that continue to happen because government won't allow logging or removal of dead trees and residents move to high-risk areas but then vote down fire mitigation efforts unless everyone else pays for it. Yet even that is PM10, actual pollution. PM2.5 is instead only an epidemiological claim, and it is handy to show 400% more than the smog we would worry about.
