LOS ANGELES, Feb 20, 2008 -- Comttex

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's move to allow heavy polluters to partly buy their way out of lowering their emissions has met resistance from Low- income community groups, it was reported Wednesday.

The 18 groups in five California cities has launched a statewide campaign to "fight at every turn" any global-warming regulation that allows industries to trade carbon emissions, saying it would amount to "gambling on public health," according to the Los Angeles Times.

In a 21-point "Environmental Justice Movement Declaration," the groups said the cap-and-trade plan would harm poor neighborhoods where most of the heavy polluters are located.

"Under a trading scheme, 11 power plants to be built around Los Angeles could offset emissions by extracting methane from coal seams in Utah or planting trees in Manitoba (near Los Angeles)," said Jane Williams of the California Communities Against Toxics, which fights pollution in low-income areas.

The defiant tone of the groups in Los Angeles, Fresno, Oakland, Sacramento and San Diego indicated that political turbulence might be ahead as the state Air Resources Board hammers out a strategy to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as required under a 2006 law, according to the paper.

The agency must design a plan, due at the end of this year, to ratchet down emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, an effort that is likely to affect virtually every industry in the state.

Until now, the debates over how to implement the law have been conducted in polite workshops with industry and environmental groups offering technical testimony to state air board officials.

One issue is whether to auction off carbon emissions permits or simply give them to polluting industries.

"Cap and trade is a charade to continue business as usual," said Angela Johnson Meszaros, director of the California Environmental Rights Alliance.

Environmental justice groups instead favor carbon fees on polluting industries, a strategy endorsed by many economists as simpler and more transparent, although politically tough to enact, according to the paper.

Meszaros said she didn't trust an auction system. "We're concerned that proceeds from an auction won't be applied to transitioning us to a zero-carbon future. State law requires that fees be used for the issue for which the fee is assessed. But with budget shortfalls in California, proceeds from an auction are going to be sucked into filling the holes."

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