Confronting Unaccounted-for Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Stockton, California

• Publication year: 2023
• Author: Written by Leehi Yona

CONFRONTING UNACCOUNTED-FOR GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS IN STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA

Written by Leehi Yona¹

Editor's Note: This article by Leehi Yona earned first place in the Environmental Law Section's inaugural 2022 Environmental Law Student Writing Competition. Leehi wrote this article while in her third year at Stanford Law School, where she is also pursuing a PhD and writing a dissertation centering on the global carbon cycle. Leehi is passionate about the intersections between climate change science, policy, and justice.

INTRODUCTION

To address climate change, responsible actors such as governments and corporations must reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to limit GHGs' atmospheric concentrations, often reporting GHG inventories to measure progress. However, these responsible actors often exclude some GHG emissions from their reports. As a result, accountability measures² such as the United Nations Paris Agreement³ subsequently do not account for these excluded emissions when determining the progress actors make towards pledged emissions reductions. These "unaccounted-for" greenhouse gases ("UGHGs") thus distort mitigation incentives and lead to potentially flawed perceptions of progress: responsible actors are less likely to mitigate the climate impacts of their UGHG sources than those of their accounted-for sources.

Unaccounted-for GHG sources, such as international aviation;⁴ fuel extraction, production, and refining industries;⁵ and maritime shipping contribute not only to climate impacts, but also to local air pollution via co-pollutants such as particulate matter (PM2.5) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).⁶ Historically disadvantaged and marginalized communities (which are also by definition more vulnerable to climate change) located near these UGHG sources experience disproportionate air pollution impacts as a result. Accounting for UGHGs would help regulate industries that cause environmental harm through both local air pollution and locally felt, outsized climate impacts on communities. When "UGHG industries" are located near marginalized communities, their environmental justice impacts are thus twofold: one local and acute, the other global and with persistent long-term consequences.

This article examines how UGHGs impact environmental injustices in Stockton, California, a city with both historic and ongoing racial and socioeconomic disparities and a high number of UGHG industries. It suggests illustrative policy and legal levers for improved GHG accounting to serve environmental justice goals, proceeding in four parts: Part II briefly describes the history of environmental injustice in Stockton; Part III assesses Stockton's UGHG emissions sources,

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specifically focusing on aviation, stationary sources, and shipping activities. Next, Part IV estimates total UGHGs in Stockton, while Part V outlines options for legal and policy interventions to account for UGHG emissions.

STOCKTON, CALIFORNIA: A CITY WITH BOTH MULTIPLE SOURCES OF UNACCOUNTED-FOR GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS AND HISTORIC AND ONGOING ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICES

This paper focuses on Stockton, California for three reasons. First, Stockton is at the confluence of many historical and current environmental injustices,⁷ and a center for many UGHG industries, which makes it a suitable exemplar in an analysis of how UGHG emissions can exacerbate existing harms. It serves as a logistics and shipping hub to export agricultural goods from California's interior to the rest of the country and the world, while also serving as an important distribution hub for the San Francisco Bay Area.⁸ Stockton's central role makes it home to a concentration of shipping, aviation, ground transportation, and trucking activities.⁹ This industrial reality occurs within the context of a long and deep history of socioeconomic and racial injustices which still impact local communities.¹⁰ This history is centuries old and includes colonizers' violence against Native American tribes in the 19th century, 1930's redlining which entrenched intergenerational poverty, and the razing of communities of color as recently as thirty years ago.¹¹ These socioeconomic and racial injustices intersect with environmental injustices as well: Stockton's historically redlined neighborhoods also have fewer green spaces, poorer air quality, and more industrial activities than its whiter, wealthier areas.¹² Concurrently, however, Stockton is home to a vibrant and longstanding history of community organizing and local movement leaders fighting for social justice.¹³

Second, Stockton has both a local, city-level inventory for analysis as well as an established history of GHG-related public concerns. Specifically, the City agreed to produce GHG inventories pursuant to a settlement agreement with the Sierra Club and California Attorney General; this settlement agreement related to a lawsuit to a lawsuit that alleged the City's 2035 General Plan failed to adequately address climate change.¹⁴

Third, states and local governments are playing an increasing role in addressing climate change, and these subnational contexts provide opportunities to move climate policy forward.¹⁵

Assessing unaccounted-for GHGs in Stockton might have an impact in motivating statewide climate action in California, since excluded emissions can undermine the state's credibility as a self-proclaimed climate leader.¹⁶ The following section summarizes Stockton's historic and ongoing environmental injustices, recognizing that the literature on this topic is extensive.

By every metric, pollution and environmental harm have severely impacted Stockton communities. Indeed, some argue that "[t]he air quality challenges that the communities in the San Joaquin Valley face are unmatched by any other region in the nation."¹⁷ By Clean Air Act National Ambient Air Quality Standards,¹⁸ the region is in "Serious Nonattainment"-the highest classification possible¹⁹-for PM2.5 air concentrations,²⁰ and "Extreme Nonattainment"-the highest classification possible²¹-for ozone air concentrations.²² The human impacts of this negative air quality are substantial: a nationwide study placed Stockton 12th on a list of the top U.S. cities impacted by PM2.5 concentrations, responsible for 61 excess deaths and over 50,000 "adversely impacted days" (days where people missed school and work or otherwise needed to restrict their activity) in 2017 alone.²³ Because they emit co-pollutants, UGHG industries contribute to these negative impacts on human health.

These substantial air quality impacts exacerbate existing racial and socioeconomic inequalities. Both CalEnviroScreen and EJScreen, the most widely referenced environmental justice tools—metrics that integrate environmental, demographic, and socioeconomic data in California and nationally, respectively—place Stockton at the top of lists for air pollution, traffic pollution, lead pollution, and general adverse exposures, often at the 99th percentile.²⁴ Stockton is also a "Disadvantaged Community,"²⁵ a designation used for cities "disproportionately affected by environmental pollution and other hazards that can lead to negative public health effects, exposure, or environmental degradation[,]"²⁶ which have "concentrations of people that are of low income, high unemployment, low levels of homeownership, high rent burden, sensitive populations, or low levels of educational attainment."²⁷ Community members are vocal about this environmental racism.²⁸

Stockton's demographics further compound these increased risks and rates of environmental harm.²⁹ Notably, Stockton has larger Latinx and Asian communities compared to nearby major cities and nationally. Indeed, its Little Manila neighborhood was home to "the largest population of Filipinos in the world outside of the Philippines from the

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1920s to the 1960s,"³⁰ a history marred by subsequent zoning laws that demolished and tore Little Manila apart.³¹ Stockton also has fewer residents with undergraduate degrees, as well as both lower median household and per capita incomes, compared to national averages.³²

In 2007, amidst these inequities, the City of Stockton released a 2035 General Plan that outlined "a blueprint for growth for the City."³³ In 2008, the Sierra Club sued Stockton, alleging that the City "failed to adequately analyze or mitigate the [2035 General] Plan's impacts on [...] air quality, [...] water supply and quality, wastewater, [...] safety, biological resources, and climate change,"³⁴ among others, as required by AB 32.³⁵ The California Attorney General was poised to join the Sierra Club in the litigation when all three parties signed a settlement agreement that required the City to, among other things, produce a "Climate Action Plan" and a GHG emissions inventory in exchange for the plaintiffs dismissing the case.³⁶ For all these reasons, Stockton provides a useful case study regarding the ways in which UGHGs exacerbate existing environmental harms.

SOURCES OF UNACCOUNTED-FOR GHG EMISSIONS IN STOCKTON

Stockton, California is home to many industries³⁷ that emit UGHGs and co-pollutants, primarily³⁸ aviation, stationary sources,³⁹ and maritime shipping.⁴⁰ The following section of the paper will describe these different industries and estimate⁴¹ their total emitted UGHGs, using 2018 as a reference year.⁴² Some UGHGs are "place-specific," located within Stockton's geographical boundaries, while others are "place-agnostic," meaning that they are part of the supply chain⁴³ of those same Stockton-based activities, but located upstream and downstream (outside of geographical boundaries, also known as "Scope 3" or "indirect" emissions). This paper estimates both of these UGHG types.

Many stationary industrial facilities produce upstream and downstream GHGs, such as fuel production facilities, refineries, and power plants. Refineries are a major source of local air pollution in California,⁴⁴ notwithstanding that the largest portion of refinery GHG emissions...