FACTS
The extension of Cap-and-Trade must focus the program on affordability and equity for families. Proven affordability solutions exist and lawmakers must expand them, especially for families with low incomes. If we don’t make the state’s transition to clean energy affordable and accessible to all Californians, we fail. If we don’t help our most vulnerable communities adapt to a future of more climate extremes, we fail.
CAP AND TRADE’S
DIRTY SECRET
Instead of requiring our biggest polluters to reduce their emissions-causing climate change, Cap-and-Trade makes them pay for the pollution they emit under a cap that declines over time. Since 2012, this revenue has funded important investments like providing safe and affordable drinking water, offsetting costs for home energy efficiency upgrades or the purchase of a zero-emission car, and credits on our utility bills.
But Cap-and-Trade has a dirty secret. Since 2017, it has provided the state’s oil and gas industry, including some of the world’s largest and most profitable companies, with pollution freebies worth nearly $890 million just last year.
As Big Oil is gushing with our free money, California is less affordable than ever for the California communities suffering most from pollution. Instead of paying polluters responsible for causing the climate crisis, California must redirect these dollars to helping communities cope with the harm they cause - energy bills we can’t afford, water we can’t drink, and asthma, heart disease and cancer we’re suffering from.
CLIMATE CHANGE WILL WORSEN
CALIFORNIA’S AFFORDABILITY CRISIS
California has the highest poverty rate of all the 50 states. It increased to 18.9% in 2023, up from 16.4% in 2022 and 11.0% in 2021. The poverty rate was particularly high among California’s Black and Latino communities. Put another way, 7.3 million Californians lack the resources to meet basic needs — that’s more than the populations of Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, and San Francisco combined.
In this context, Governor Newsom’s Cap-and-Trade proposal is profoundly callous. It abandons California’s most vulnerable who need help securing access to clean drinking water threatened by more frequent drought, providing refuge from more frequent and extreme heat, and reducing wildfire risks before the flames start. It also violates state laws requiring at least 35% Cap-and-Trade funds benefit disadvantaged or low income communities and families with low incomes.