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Dear California Air Resources Board,

I am writing again because California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard
remains a climate policy failure that backslides on the state's
role as a climate leader. The program subsidizes combustion fuels
to the tune of billions of dollars per year and has no place in our
toolkit of climate policies for the 2020s. There is too much on the
line for our climate to get this critical program so wrong. 

Despite promises of leading the nation on the environment, your
budget proposes significant delays and cuts of hundreds of millions
of dollars to vital zero-emission transportation programs, which
makes it all the more urgent to use the Low Carbon Fuel Standard to
more fully support zero-emissions transportation. Historically,
California has thrown good money after bad, and devoted 80% of the
LCFS's $3 to 4 billion each and every year to benefit some of the
most polluting fuels: crop-based biofuels (contributing to the
deforestation of the Amazon) and biogas from large factory farms.
There are better uses for these funds!

The world has changed a lot since the implementation of the LCFS in
2009. Unlike the 2000s, we have a north star goal for our climate
and the air we breathe: zero emissions transportation.  Continuing
to invest the billions in revenue from the LCFS into harmful and
polluting biofuels that end up combusted, instead of electric
vehicles powered by clean energy, hampers our efforts to fight the
climate crisis while enriching oil companies and industrial
agriculture. 

So I urge you to acknowledge these realities and modernize the
program by reflecting your consensus that the only way to meet air
quality standards is through eliminating combustion altogether, not
piling on billions of dollars in lavish incentives for combustion
each and every year. By focusing on real air pollution solutions,
you could add a clean air multiplier to the credits system,
especially for public fleets that transport many people at once,
would deliver major benefits for California's air quality and throw
a lifeline to cash-strapped transit agencies that low-income
Californians depend on for mobility. 

In order for California to meet our clean air and climate goals we
must harness the power of the Low Carbon Fuel Standard by
overhauling this multibillion-dollar program to fund
electrification and clean hydrogen. Please act expeditiously to
reform the program to achieve our state's ambitious goals for a
zero-emissions future.

Sincerely,
Richard Bradus
San Francisco, CA 94115