The final straw was a tense meeting last month<\/a> where CARB\u2019s Deputy Executive Officer Rajinder Sahota likened a University of California, Berkeley, researcher\u2019s critiques of the state\u2019s forest carbon offset program to President Donald Trump\u2019s attacks on the endangerment finding that allows the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat was really the catalyst, but it\u2019s been coming for a very long time,\u201d said Garoupa, who described Sahota\u2019s comments as a personal attack on the scientist in a letter<\/a> to CARB leadership following the meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n CARB said they brought in the Attorney General\u2019s Office to conduct an independent review and concluded that the agency\u2019s standards of conduct had not been violated<\/a>. They said they would continue to support the EJAC, whose members will all reach the end of their terms in March.<\/p>\n \u201cWe respect Dr. Garoupa\u2019s decision to step down in advance of her term ending this year and commend her for her service,\u201d said spokesperson Lindsay Buckley in a statement. \u201cCARB has made great strides embedding environmental justice into our policies and programs, and we remain steadfast in our support for the committee\u2019s vital work.\u201d<\/p>\n Martha Arg\u00fcello, the other EJAC co-chair, said she would remain in place to help ease the transition for new committee members joining next year and to work with CARB\u2019s new board chair, who started in October, but she echoed Garoupa\u2019s concerns.<\/p>\n \u201cCalifornia\u2019s climate leadership should be expressed in partnership with environmental justice communities and in a willingness to be bold,\u2019 said Arg\u00fcello, who is also executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles. \u201cThat\u2019s not what\u2019s happening right now.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Garoupa\u2019s resignation points to the long-running disagreement between in-state environmental justice groups and regulators over the fundamental impacts of carbon markets. That argument appears to be growing increasingly intractable just as the agency prepares to update and strengthen its cap-and-trade program, recently renamed cap-and-invest.\u00a0<\/p>\n The program puts a declining cap on state carbon emissions across sectors and allows companies to buy and trade permits to emit up to the limit. Proceeds from the permit auctions, which have raised about $4 billion annually in recent years, fund climate programs from high-speed rail to wildfire prevention to affordable housing near public transit.<\/p>\n The revenues have made the program increasingly popular among politicians and funding recipients, but groups on both sides of efforts to confront climate change have been skeptical of it.<\/p>\n The oil industry fights efforts<\/a> to make the program more stringent and costly, but ultimately prefers it to direct regulation. Trump called out the program this year in an executive order<\/a> that aimed to block state climate policies, but his second administration has yet to make moves to stop it. And environmental justice groups continue to view carbon trading as a way for companies to pay their way out of reducing carbon emissions, and the associated air pollution, at the source.\u00a0<\/p>\n Studies have shown that cap-and-trade has driven improvements in air quality across the state, but that the benefits are inconsistent<\/a> across neighborhoods.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve always said it\u2019s a dangerous approach to climate policies, to leave it to the whims of the market,\u201d said Arg\u00fcello. \u201cWe\u2019ve always said we should focus more on reducing air pollution.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In recent years, Garoupa said, the EJAC has worked with CARB to encourage more direct pollution reduction under the program in the state\u2019s most polluted neighborhoods. But members feel their proposals<\/a> to further limit the role of offsets, exclude technology that captures carbon dioxide directly from the air and implement facility-level caps or no-trade zones have fallen on deaf ears.\u00a0<\/p>\n Forest carbon offsets were front and center in the October exchange that ultimately led to Garoupa\u2019s departure.\u00a0<\/p>\n Separate from the permits that regulated companies buy and trade to meet the state\u2019s emissions cap, cap-and-invest also allows companies to buy state-sanctioned offset credits from sectors not regulated by the program, such as agriculture and forestry. Businesses currently can use these offsets to meet up to 4 percent of their required emission reductions, a cap that will rise to 6 percent starting in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over 70 percent of those offsets come from projects that aim to store more carbon by changing how forests are managed.<\/p>\n On October 16, the EJAC had invited UC Berkeley researcher Barbara Haya to present some of the science<\/a> on the offset piece of the program. Haya and other researchers have found that CARB is significantly over-crediting carbon reductions from forest projects, mainly by allowing project developers to choose exaggerated baseline emissions. Developers are allowed to base their estimates of how much carbon a project would store on assumptions that, without the offset projects, there would be very large carbon losses from project areas due to timber harvesting. However, researchers have found that these risks are often not as high as stated.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis program has been heavily studied because it\u2019s so important,\u201d said Haya in an interview. \u201cI don\u2019t know of any studies that find that the program is not over-crediting.\u201d<\/p>\n Towards the end of Haya\u2019s presentation, Rajinder Sahota, who oversees CARB\u2019s climate policy, provided comments to clear up what she described as a \u201cmischaracterization\u201d of the offset program.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important to have facts on our side as we do this work,\u201d said Sahota. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing the federal attacks on climate science and rollbacks on public and environmental protections, and CARB, the state of California, is spending significant resources to defend against those attacks on our programs and policies,\u201d she said, noting CARB\u2019s defense of the EPA\u2019s determination that greenhouse gases harm public health\u2014the Endangerment Finding that Trump is trying to repeal.<\/p>\n \u201cTo date, we have been reluctant to use that same critical lens publicly on the continuing attacks against our climate programs from non-federal parties and that needs to change,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Offsets aren\u2019t counted in the state\u2019s own inventory of climate progress, she said. She went on to cite letters from the agency<\/a> and a scientist<\/a> in 2019 rebutting one of Haya\u2019s past analyses, and characterized Haya as someone with a bias against CARB, saying that she provided unpaid support to a lawsuit environmental groups filed against the program in 2012. (The news outlet ProPublica reported in 2021 that she spoke with the plaintiff\u2019s attorneys but was not a part of the case<\/a>).<\/p>\n After the October meeting, a group of carbon market researchers wrote a letter<\/a> of support for Haya, backing her presentation and expressing concerns about Sahota\u2019s dismissal of the peer-reviewed literature as an \u201cattack against [the Board\u2019s] climate programs.\u201d Garoupa also said that CARB\u2019s carbon market staff have turned down numerous requests to speak at EJAC meetings, but did not provide advance notice of Sahota\u2019s plans to attend and make comments, leaving them feeling blindsided by the deputy executive officer\u2019s criticisms.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt shows that they don\u2019t respect our processes and aren\u2019t actually engaging with us in an authentic way,\u201d said Garoupa.\u00a0<\/p>\n CARB said that they\u2019re currently developing a plan to bring researchers together ahead of an upcoming review of the offset program. When it reauthorized cap-and-invest this past session, the California legislature directed CARB to produce a study by the end of next year looking at the impacts of state offset projects and potential changes. They also have to update their protocols for assessing and crediting offsets by 2029 to align them with the best available science.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt is clear the offsets program is an area of robust academic debate and we are committed to a process that considers all perspectives,\u201d said Buckley, the CARB spokesperson, in a statement. \u201cThis is an important issue globally and it\u2019s essential to have open and transparent dialogue about how to translate academic findings into actionable, cost-effective policy.\u201d<\/p>\n Katelyn Roedner Sutter, the California director at the Environmental Defense Fund who also sits on the state\u2019s Independent Emissions Market Advisory Committee, said that \u201coffsets play an important and appropriately limited role within the cap-and-invest program,\u201d spreading climate finance into sectors not covered by the cap like forestry and to tribes like the Yurok who have used the money to buy back their ancestral lands. Offsets have historically been a way to make cap-and-trade compliance more affordable for companies, although she said that\u2019s changing since a 2021 rule change requires more offsets to be located in the state, where projects are costlier.\u00a0<\/p>\n This story is funded by readers like you.<\/p>\n Our nonprofit newsroom provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going. Please donate now to support our work.<\/p>\n Donate Now<\/a> <\/p>\n \u201cI think a part of the challenge here is that the forestry protocol is a decade old,\u201d said Roedner Sutter, of the debate over offsets\u2019 effectiveness for addressing climate change. \u201cWe have been among the many asking CARB for years to update their offset protocols, especially their forestry protocol and I am excited that SB 840<\/a> is going to make that happen and then make sure they\u2019re updated on a regular basis.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Haya said Sahota\u2019s comments made her worried about the upcoming reviews. \u201cInstead of addressing the scientific findings about the poor outcomes of their program, she attacked the scientist,\u201d said Haya. \u201cIt makes me really concerned that CARB is not going to take the science seriously in revising their protocols.\u201d<\/p>\n The dust-up comes a year after CARB approved updates to the low-carbon fuel standard, its emissions trading program for transportation fuels. The new rules were widely opposed<\/a> by environmental justice groups, who see the program as driving too much funding to biofuels and hydrogen at the expense of transportation electrification. On cap-and-trade, environmental groups lobbied the legislature<\/a> to remove the free allowances the program gives to the oil and gas sector when they reauthorized the program this year, and lawmakers ultimately gave CARB the authority to decide whether to do that.<\/p>\n Arg\u00fcello said that the EJAC and CARB have a better working relationship on topics such as building decarbonization. Facing pressure from environmental justice groups, the state has also taken steps to better incorporate EJ perspectives in CARB\u2019s processes, from establishing two environmental justice board seats in 2016 to, in 2021, changing the EJAC from a temporary body supporting the state\u2019s 5-year climate plan updates into a standing committee.<\/p>\n Yet the groups remain at an impasse over carbon markets.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOn the LCFS, on cap-and-trade, we\u2019ve had a harder time being heard and listened to,\u201d said Arg\u00fcello. \u201cWe\u2019ve consistently had a position that has been resisted by CARB.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In September, the agency told EJAC that October would be the group\u2019s last formal public meeting before the new EJAC members took over next year. CARB said they plan to issue the solicitation for new members \u201cearly next year.\u201d They told the EJAC co-chairs that new appointments would be in place by the fall of 2026, according to Garoupa\u2019s resignation letter.\u00a0<\/p>\n That would leave CARB without a formal environmental justice advisory panel meeting during the cap-and-trade rulemaking, which the agency wants to finalize by the spring.<\/p>\n![\"Catherine](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Catherine-Garoupa-734x1024.jpg\"\/)
Catherine Garoupa is the executive director of the Central Valley Air Quality Coalition.<\/p>\n
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