Between 2013 and 2024, California distributed nearly $28 billion to the oil industry and biofuel companies from two state climate programs: the Low Carbon Fuel Standard and the Cap and Invest program. That is the research finding that will be presented in this webinar by the authors of a new, soon-to-be-released report by The Climate Center: “Clearing the Zero-Emission Path.” The $28 billion was mostly generated via higher gasoline prices at the gas pump. That money was supposed to fund investments in cleaner, more efficient, and more affordable transportation systems that are needed to stabilize our climate. Instead, it supported carbon-emitting combustion technologies.
Speakers
Woody Hastings has served as The Climate Center’s Energy Program Manager since 2010. He is an energy and environmental policy analyst, strategic planner, and community organizer with over thirty years of experience in the non-profit, governmental, and private sectors.
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Dr. Jasmin Ansar joined The Climate Center in September of 2022 as a Senior Climate Researcher to research and develop optimal policies to address the climate change emergency at speed and scale. Dr. Ansar is an economist who began her career as a professor and has been employed in both the private and public sectors. She has been a Climate Economist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and worked on designing and advocating for effective global warming policies with particular emphasis on proposals in California. Dr. Ansar has taught Economics at the City University in London, Lorry I. Lokey Graduate School of Public Policy and Business, Mills College in Oakland, the Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco, UC Berkeley, and the University of British Columbia. Dr. Ansar has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Southampton, England, a Diploma/MSc. in Econometrics and Economics from the University of Southampton, England, and a B.A. in Economics with Mathematics from Sussex University, England.
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Greg Karras is a Principal at Community Energy reSource. Community Energy reSource offers independent pollution prevention, environmental justice, and energy systems science for communities and workers on the frontlines of today’s climate, health, and social justice crises.
He has extensive experience, knowledge, and expertise in the energy manufacturing sector, including petroleum refining, and in particular the refineries in the State of California. He has served as an expert for CBE and other non-profit groups in efforts to prevent pollution from oil refineries; to assess environmental health and safety impacts at refineries; to investigate alternatives to fossil fuel energy, and to improve environmental monitoring of dioxins and mercury. He has also served as an expert for the City/County of San Francisco and local groups in efforts to replace electric power plant technology with reliable, least-impact alternatives.
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Clair Brown, PhD, is Economics Professor and coordinator of the Climate and Society Center, at the University of California, Berkeley. One of her student research teams is working on California climate equity policies, and the other works on national policies to create a sustainable equitable economy. Her most recent book Buddhist Economics: An Enlightened Approach to the Dismal Science (Bloomsbury Press) provides an economic framework that integrates global sustainability, shared prosperity and care for the human spirit.
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