While lauded by activists as leadership, the Air Resources Board in California and its mandate of a controversial cap-and-trade scheme was always scientifically and economically suspect (see California grossly overstates emissions to get mandates passed) and it has turned out to be ethically questionable also.
San Francisco superior court judge Ernest H. Goldsmith has placed the program on hold, stating that the Air Resources Board did not consider public comments on the measures before adopting them. Voters turned down the option to delay the implementation of the plan last November, part of a 2006 law which requires the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
But even environmental groups knew cap-and-trade was flawed and this latest lawsuit was filed by six of them, because they contended it would allow refineries and power plants in poor neighborhoods to avoid cutting emissions of both greenhouse gases and traditional air pollutants.
