You’re listening to KABC 790. This is Matt Matern, your host of Unite and Heal America. My guest today, Marc Carrell, breathe and Breathe SoCal, President and CEO. And really pleasure to have Marc on the show. We’re looking forward to talk to him, talking to him regarding breathing here in Southern California and why, why we need to work on making our air cleaner. So, Marc, thanks for being on the show.

Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And it sounds like you’re you know, like, we joke about breathing here in LA. But the reality is, we still have the worst air quality in the nation here. So we’re always trying to make our air cleaner, doing what we can.

Right, it’s so fundamental to everything we do. And of course, it’s like water to the fish for us. So we we kind of forget about or I know I forget about it. Many times during the day that I’m just doing other things that focus on breathing. It’s an audit topic, autonomic function. So I’ve, I’m not a SoCal native. I’m from Chicago originally. And I came out here in the late 80s.

And an era was pretty bad at the time, but it had improved dramatically from what it had been maybe in the 50s, or something when we had leaded gasoline. So the big change was unleaded gasoline, took a lot of pollution out of the air, catalytic converters took a lot of pollution out of the air, things of that nature made great strides from where it had been.

But it was still polluted. And there were still smog days, and people had to stay inside and things like that. We don’t have that quite as much as we used to. But as you said, our basin is still a pretty polluted place because of that ring of mountains, that rings, Southern California, very beautiful, but it just keeps that dirty air hanging in the hanging in the sky. Yeah, we, we forget.

Well, people who grew up here who are in their 20s, and 30s, don’t even realize how bad the air was. But in the, in the 50s and 60s and 70s, the air was was horrible. And but it goes all the way back to the 40s when all the aerospace companies started growing here, and there were you know, la became a huge manufacturing center, I don’t think people realize that LA is still a big manufacturing center, we have more manufacturing in the LA area than we do than all of Michigan has.

So there’s still a lot of production here. But what we’ve done is impose environmental restrictions on a company so that they don’t pollute as much. We’ve upgraded vehicles, so that with a catalytic converters and other technologies so that they’re not polluting as much. But despite that, because of the number of people here because of most specifically, because of all the goods movement. This area has the Port of LA and Port of Long Beach, which are the largest, largest port complex in the nation, and fourth or fifth in the world.

So when all the Pacific trade goods come here, they’re coming here from ships that are highly polluting getting on trains and trucks that are highly polluting and then going elsewhere in the country. And so we’re suffering the brunt of all of that. And all these trucks are diesel. And we’re working at Bri SoCal to make the most of phase out diesel into move towards cleaner trucks. As soon as we can. I’ll just give you a little bit of background about our organization besides clean air where we’re focused on lung health, and we have been since the early 1900s.

And our goal is to improve public health and lung health, specifically, by addressing the key causes of lung disease and air pollution is one of them and tobacco is another one. So we have anti we have smoking prevention programs for kids and anti vaping programs and vaping awareness for parents and we have programs that help kids with asthma and adults with chronic lung disease.

We do research we have a medical arm that educates physicians. So we have a lot of things going on. And we’re, you know, working in Sacramento also, on efforts to Clean up the the fleet of vehicles that particularly a fleet of trucks that are moving throughout Southern California.

Well, that’s a lie down and on those areas as we go forward, maybe you could tell us a little bit about you and your personal journey to get to the organization and get to the place where you’re at.

Well, my background is a little unusual for a nonprofit CEO, I this is my first job is running a nonprofit. But I have a personal connection to the issues. I worked for almost a decade at the South Coast Air Quality Management District dealing with environmental justice issues and working on clean technology.

And also, I have three kids with asthma. So when this organization had an opening, people approached me and said, I should apply. And it’s been a great so far, it’s been almost four years that I’ve been here. And it’s really been a great experience. And I’m really happy.

But certainly, an organization has been around for a long time, as you said, I was looking up on your website and going back of 100 years in LA. So that’s a, that’s a pretty impressive record. Because LA is not that old of a city to have been around that long. And maybe you can tell us a little bit more about that history and how this organization evolve.

Well, we’ve been around since 1903. And our focus initially was on Tuberculosis. Tuberculosis, at that time was an incurable disease. That was our that had killed one out of every seven people that had ever been born on this planet. And so it was a major killer throughout history. In the early 1900s, there was an effort to promote clean air, and sunshine as a way to relieve tuberculosis. And so a lot of western cities, including LA, which was tiny at the time, began promoting themselves to cities, to people in cities on the east coast to come out here and enjoy all of the sunshine.

And it’d be good for your, for those who have tuberculosis. The problem was a lot of people took them up on it, and not just here in LA, but in a lot of western cities. And the sunshine is not a cure for TB. So a lot of people were dying here and they had to figure out what to do. And so the history of LA and a lot of the medical institutions that we have here started out as sanatoriums for for a TB patients including city of hope. And cedars, Sinai’s predecessor, and a number of of big hospitals here. And so, you know, we started to try to address the TB issue.

And later on when there was a cure developed for TB, it was not as big of an issue anymore when people were able to, to get cured from it. We moved on to the air pollution, which was a huge issue in Southern California in the 1940s. You know, you had all these civic groups that were protesting, wearing gas masks at City Hall trying to get the the pollution addressed and the pollution was so bad that you couldn’t see sometimes some days you couldn’t see across the street.

The air was so bad. It was a thick, dark fog. And that led to the smoke and fog name smog. So we we have a long history here. Because we go back to the to the origins of the city, you know, the city’s growth. And when the surgeon general in the 1960s announced that smoking caused lung cancer, we took up that issue as well.

So we’ve been engaged on lung health issues in Southern California for for many years and are still working to make sure our air is as clean as it can be because you know you can you can choose not to drink dirty water you can choose not to try not to breathe in dirty air, especially if you don’t even know it’s dirty.

Well, I’m a very big proponent of clean air and you know, having gotten into yoga in In my adulthood, it’s all about breathing and the importance of breath. And you one take, I have had a much greater appreciation for the importance of breathing as a part of my daily life and just as a focus of my exercise routine. And then of course, want to breathe in clean air, just like I want to drink clean water, water, but as you said, I can, I can clean my water by getting a water purifier.

But it’s it’s hard to do that, for the dirty air around us. So it is it is something that I think most of us don’t have a great recognition of is what a manufacturing hub, Los Angeles is and that we are, as you said, a greater manufacturing hub than just about anywhere in the country. And people think of Las tensile town and a lot of movies and all this stuff. But really the backbone of LA is a manufacturing base.

But you know, you’re listening to Unite and Heal America KABC 790. We’ve been talking to Marc Carrell and a Breathe SoCal, he’s both President and CEO of that organization. And we’re going to talk to Marc a lot about the efforts that he’s taking to help us get cleaner air and also the efforts that all of you can join in to help in this effort. So we’ll be right back.

As you may know, your host Matt Matern of Unite and Heal America is also the founder of Matern Law Group, their team of experienced employment consumer and environmental attorneys are dedicated to leveling the playing field by giving everyone access to the highest quality legal representation contact 844 MLG for you, that’s 844 MLG for you, or 84465449688446544968.

Listen to the Unite and Heal America KABC 790. This is Matt Matern your host, and we’ve got Marc Carrell here Breathe SoCal, President and CEO, as we were just talking to Marc about, you know, all the pollution that we still have in the LA basin and what we can maybe do to deal with the situation. Marc, you were talking about some legislation up in Sacramento?

Could you tell us more as to which pieces of legislation that you’re working on and how those pieces of legislation will help improve our air quality here?

So we’ve been working on efforts related to clean up the air? And are we actually are sponsoring legislation co sponsoring legislation? a b 619 BY councilmember Lisa Calderon is a bill that would help or have the state and counties be better prepared when there are major smoke events, particularly from wildfires, you know, wildfires is a they’re growing the size, not only the size of the wildfires, but the number of wildfires and the wildfire seasons longer.

And people are experiencing significant bad air days when we do have the wildfires. Not just here, but all over California. And it’s been pretty bad over the last few years where people have experienced this. And so there’s a lot of confusion. What do I do with the smokes outside? from wildfires, I can smell it and some people think oh, okay, it’s fine. I can smell it, but I don’t see the wildfire. But it’s a health hazard. And you’re not just breathing in, you know, smoke from your own fireplace, your breathing in, you know, burned down trees, burned down, houses burned down.

You know, businesses and all the plastics and all the other chemicals that come out of it. And so it can be very, very dangerous. And so what we want is to make sure that counties which aren’t usually prepared for the health impacts of smoke, they’re, they’re focused on the firefighting impacts of the fires are, have a plan in place and know what to say to the public when the public’s concern, should they be going out? Should they not? Should they be canceling school? Should they be canceling children’s sports?

What should they do? Where should they go to get the information and people who don’t have homes? What should they do and how should the counties deal with that are people working outside?

So there’s, we just want to make sure that they’re prepared. I don’t know how many people have I’ve heard but if two years ago, two, three years ago, when there’s a big fire that huge player in, in paradise up in Northern California, the smoke was was really, really bad.

And the Sacramento City and Sacramento County were giving conflicting information to the public about what to do with masks. And that’s the kind of problem that we want to avoid, and have everyone prepared next time when this will happen, because we know there’s there’s going to be more wildfires.

What certainly is a great danger. And I was just shocked I was up in Northern California when that started in August of 2019. And the amount of smoke, I drove back to LA, the smoke was in the air for 300 to 400 miles. I mean, it was just unbelievable, how large of an area the was filled by the smoke from those wildfires, it was truly breathtaking like that.

And if you look at the air quality index that those days, and then there have been a few wildfires since where it’s happened as well. San Francisco and the Bay Area were, I believe, the worst air quality in the world at that time worse then then India and Pakistan and many of the other areas with really, really bad air. So the wildfires really can can be very, very serious health hazards. And so we want to make sure people know to stay indoors and protect themselves.

Any other pieces of legislation that you’re working on up in Sacramento or anything locally?

Well, we’ve been working also on the flavored tobacco bands. And there was a statewide ban enacted a year ago in the legislature that we were big proponents of enacting. And then big tobacco has funded a signature campaign and gotten that law to be on the ballot next year. So there’ll be a referendum on that law next year. And so we’re part of the group that’s trying to urge people to keep a law in place and back and keep the ban on flavored tobacco products, particularly, which is particularly focused on on vaping products in place.

And most people are aware of the the increase in vaping among youth and how the targeting of youth through flavoring, the vaping pods and the E cigarettes with bubble gum and candy flavors and fruit flavors to keep younger people to buy them and to get hooked. So we were a big supporter of that and worked on that last year. And so now we are working to try to do two things, one, when the referendum comes up next year to try to defeat the referendum.

But also we’re trying to work at the local level here in Southern California, so that local cities pass their own flavor bans in case the statewide ban is overturned. And so we’ve been working in a number of cities here, including the city of LA, which still has not adopted a flavor ban, but did did hold to take testimony on the issue a few weeks ago. And so that’ll come back to them and hopefully we’ll get a band passed and we’ll hopefully we’ll get a band pass. You know, the bigger issue.

Or one of the big issues is the exceptions and the carve outs and so the question has has been about carving out in many of these jurisdictions carving out menthol, which is the one flavor they want to keep, because menthol is a huge moneymaker. menthol cigarettes, particularly are huge moneymaker for big tobacco.

And the other thing is hookah, which you know, hookah is a there’s a lot of stores, cafes that are providing hookah and they wanted to keep that in place. Although our concern is that the law be actually enforced, which requires that if you’re providing hookah in your establishment, you’re also not selling liquor and food. So that’ll come back and that’ll that’s still an issue here in LA and we’ll see what happens.

Well, and just want to clarify so there is a current statewide ban on on flavored tobacco is that so the statewide ban was put on hold because of the referendum once they got enough signatures to put it on the ballot. I guess once they filed that they want to do this, it’s on hold and then it went on the ballot so it doesn’t go into effect unless the referendum fails.

Oh, well, that’s kind of strange, because my understanding is kind of like once they’ve passed a law, that’s the law, but there’s an exception for referendums.

Yeah.

So in terms of when so there’s actually never been a ban on flavored tobacco at this point in time, they that ban everyone, and there’s no statewide ban, but a number of local jurisdictions do have their own local bans in place.

Okay. Because, like, I wasn’t seeing quite as many kids out of vaping as I had in the past, but of course, my site, my sample is less than scientific. So it’s true. I don’t know if that’s actually true. But well, you know, we’re seeing, there’s some data showing that the number of kids who are vaping now has decreased because of COVID.

Because, obviously, seeing their friends in school was an incentive to do this with their friends. But we don’t know if there’s going to be a jump back with it. And also, there are still a lot of kids who did start it and they’re hooked on it.

Because most of them, many of them didn’t realize that they were vaping. Nicotine and nicotine is one of the most addictive substances. And so a lot of these kids are vaping not because they want to anymore, but because they can’t quit, right?

Well, why don’t we change tracks and talk about the train issue and the truck issue? Here in LA, in particular, related to the Port of Long Beach, and, and all the pollution that is coming out of those two major ports in LA and Long Beach, and all the traffic that they generate that comes in and out of that port? And what can we do to reduce that? That pollution that’s coming from that source?

Well, you know, the diesel pollution is a carcinogen. The state has known about it, and has declared it a carcinogen, I think in 2012, and other agencies, and even the Feds know that it is the particulate matter from diesel exhaust is a health hazard. And yet, nothing has been done about addressing it, people recognize it, and then they just move on.

And so we’re hopeful on a few fronts, one of the technology, which has gotten a lot better, and we know we’re very close to seeing electric trucks will be here soon. And that we can do something about the diesel fuel issue specifically.

Right? Well, I’m a big proponent to have alternative fuel. And I know that the hydrogen is been proposed to be used on trucks and that it could be even more effective fuel source than electric trucks, because the better way to store the energy. We can talk a little bit about that when we get back as to that and many other issues related to cleaning our air here in Southern California.

You’re listening to Unite and Heal America KABC 790. This is Matt Matern, your host our guest today Marc Carrell and of Breathe SoCal, we’ll be back in just one moment. You’re listening to Unite and Heal America. KABC 790 This is Matt Matern, your host and our guest Marc Carrell, Breathe SoCal, President and CEO.

We’re talking about the Port of Long Beach Marc and, and Port of LA and the type of pollution that’s coming out of there. And of course, we also have the pollution coming from the ships that are seated there, offshore. And those are some of the biggest polluters in the world. Have we done it taken any steps to address the ships that are belching toxins into our air?

Well, there’s been some efforts to address the ship pollution, which has is even worse than diesel pollution. They use what’s called bunker fuel, which is the sludge that’s a byproduct of diesel production. So it’s really thick and, and burns really, really poorly. So you get a lot of pollution from it. There was a problem with regulating ships is they’re not regulated by the local state or even federal level.

They’re internationally regulated. And so you have to have international treaties adopted. There was a recent treaty adopted I would say about eight years ago, which has ended up cutting the sulfur component, composition of the fuel used and a half to Make sure that it has a less sulfur oxides in the emissions. But there’s still a lot of nitrous oxides and particulate matter coming through, which is the, the, the nitrous oxides cause are, are a big component of ozone, which is ground level smog. And the particulate matter is the soot that comes out the haze that creates the haze in the air and is the stuff that sits on your windowsill, if you don’t clean it too often.

And so we, we are happy that there are efforts by the courts to require those ships to plug in when they get into port. Because that puts them on electric power instead of using their diesel engines that burn the dump bunker fuel to sit for days, while they’re basically idling. To unload their stuff, they have to keep their engines on there’s there’s two sets of engines and they have to keep the engines on that run the the internal systems because people the the folks who work on the ship, don’t leave if they don’t have any of the visas from their country to get into the US.

So they stay on the ship. And so all of the air conditioning and the refrigeration and, and everything for them has to stay on. And so by requiring the ships to plug in, they can use electricity to run those systems instead of have to burn for air make poor air out of by burning the bunker fuel.

But the problem we’ve seen recently is with the huge backlog of deliveries from the ships, because the trade from China was delayed during COVID. And now all these ships are coming. And they’re delivering products. And that’s and they’re delivering goods from other countries, there’s this huge backlog of ships coming into the harbor, to dock and unload.

And so you’re seeing a lot of times when I’ve been to the beach in the last month or so I’m seeing a lot of ships in the in the distance. And they’re sitting out there and they’re not plugged in. And so you have a lot of pollution coming from the ships. And that’s a huge problem in the region. You know, we we talk about diesel trucks as being the main source of, of pollution in our region.

If we can move those diesel trucks to become electric, or hydrogen, or even low NOX natural gas, which is the cleanest version of natural gas trucks, then then we’ll reduce that source by significant amount and the next big source are the ships. And that’s a lot tougher to deal with simply because we don’t have the regulatory power to do that.

We certainly would do what we would be wise to consume a little bit less of the non essential goods that we get from other countries that just kind of junk I think we consume stuff by I mean, this may not be the most politically correct thing to say. But you know, our economy is kind of driven by consuming endless amounts of junk. But I have noticed some some things on the horizon.

One is that they’re talking about and they’re actually doing this putting sales on some of these big container ships, which make them cleaner, and so they’re less polluting. And then the second issue relating to the discharge of it must be the oil in the water because I see these blobs of oil that show up on the beach.

And one if you happen to be unwise enough to step on one there, it’s it sticks to your bottom at the feet like you’ve been permanently Marced by this garb of I’m thinking it might be oil from the ships, or it might be oil from some other source. But I I think that that’s the most likely source. What do you What’s your understanding?

I can’t speak to the blobs of oil on the beach. I don’t know anything about that. But I do know that with regard to the sales on the ships, that’s something that some companies are looking at. And there are some very progressive companies that are moving goods across the oceans, and they’re looking at ways that they can reduce their emissions and sales is one thing. Another is changing from the bunker fuel to a cleaner natural gas.

And so some of these things are being experimented with right now. Because while the shippers themselves, don’t have a requirement internationally A lot of companies are trying to be much more sustainable and much more responsible. And that’s one of the things that we’re looking at we, we have a campaign called end diesel. Now, we’re trying to end the use of diesel fuel in California, we would like it to be phased out over an eight to 10 year period.

And we’re trying to get legislation introduced next year. To do that. We think that, too, for too long, the efforts have been focused on the technologies that are using the diesel and not the diesel, which is the cause of the of the pollution and the harm. So we hope that we can reduce and nearly eliminate the use of diesel, we can’t totally eliminate diesel being sold. Because there’s a constitutional issue of a commerce clause, if they use it in other states, we can’t forbid it from being used.

But we can reduce it very, very low sales to be very low, so that it’s not a significant source of emissions here. And the other thing we’re doing is, because, you know, one of the things that we tried to work on last year was at the airports, when they were looking at the amount of the amount of trucks who are run on diesel, and it’s in the 1000s, that come in and pick up loads or drop off loads. And what they said was that they are going to adopt a fee on every cargo container.

And that’s the will go into a fun that will help the truckers by cleaner trucks offset the cost of a hydrogen or a natural gas or an electric truck, which are much more expensive than a diesel truck. So we were happy that they were going to do that. And we urge them to adopt a fee in the $50 range per 2020 foot container. But they went with a $10 fee, which doesn’t really do as much as as we think is necessary. And then on top of that they never actually started collecting the fee, they approved it but never enacted it.

So over the last year and a half during COVID. It has, since they’ve the shipping has come back, they have had record month they have had more trade coming in and out of the ports of LA and Long Beach than they ever had in any month previous. And so they’ve lost our calculation, if they had started collecting the fee, that would have been about three quarters of a billion dollars they would have collected. But they didn’t do any of this.

And so we’re still where we were a year and a half ago. The port’s have a reputation for taking credit for the use for a settlement agreement that required them to cut emissions 1015 years ago, the Clean Air action plan. And everything they talked about today is still based on those efforts. They talked about reducing pollution by 90%. But it was 94% from those huge numbers, and it’s still huge numbers. And they haven’t moved from those numbers in years. So we are very frustrated with reports.

And so what we’ve recognized is we’re probably not going to get very far pushing them, we need to push the companies like Amazon, and target and Lowe’s and Home Depot and the other big retailers and focus on their practices. Most of them have said that they’re being more sustainable, they’re being more environmentally conscious and aware of their climate footprint.

And so we want to track that and see and give them a rating to highlight which ones are doing well which ones aren’t and which kind of trucks they use to move their cargo and whether it’s clean trucks or whether it’s diesel trucks is going to be a big component.

Well, that sounds like a great effort. I wanted to just picking back up on this, this issue of the fee and not being collected. So so you’re saying that the Port of Long Beach and board of La had enacted this fee. Tell us a little bit about the which political body would be responsible for for making sure this is actually effectuated.

So the Port of Long Beach is controlled by a board of harbor commissioners that is appointed and all of them are appointed by the mayor of Long Beach and the Port of LA is run by the board of harbor commissioners who are all appointed by the mayor of Los Angeles. And so these boards often Do what their mayor’s want them to do. And yet they are. Well, the ports are, are also run by executive directors who general managers who run these organizations like a business.

They’re focused on making sure they have as much business coming in as many ships coming in. And as many trucks coming to take these, these deliveries out, so that by increasing the number of the amount of cargo that comes into these ports, the port makes more money. The the hitch is twofold. One, the money has to stay at the ports, they can’t spend it anywhere else. So they’re just it’s a cycle, the more money they make, the more they spend on themselves.

It does create jobs at the ports. But it also the more that comes in and creates more pollution. And even though they’re city agencies that are on state land, they are not focused. They’ll say they are but they haven’t been focused on the impact they’re having on the community, particularly the pollution impacts, which have significantly impacted the areas around the ports and most of the city of of Long Beach, in the harbor area of La San Pedro, Harbor, Harbor, harbor gateway, and Wilmington. All of that is a is highly polluted because they are seeing all these trucks, trains and ships right in their neighborhood.

I’m just asking for the ask is citizens of Los Angeles or citizens of Long Beach, or the surrounding community for accountability as to why is this tent our fee not being collected? And it should it be collected by both the Port of Long Beach and the Port of LA or was this just as to one of them? A jointly approved this. They work together on some of these? What’s called their cleaner action plans.

So any efforts that’s trying to address environmental impacts they tried to do together. And so both boards, both harbor Commission’s adopted the fees, one of them and I, to be honest, I can’t remember which one recently said that they were going to plan to implement it in the last quarter of the year. So I didn’t quite understand why they needed to have a hearing to tell us that they’re not going to do something for another several months.

But they are. They are they’re all responsible to the mayor and the city council. And so if you agree with us, you can go on and diesel now.org To get more information and to email your your elected officials. But it’s the members of the City Council of Long Beach in LA and it’s particularly the the mayor’s who are responsible for appointing these members. And who could tell these members that they should adopt a fee and adopt a larger fee ASAP? Absolutely.

Well, you’ve you’ve heard it here now call the mayor of the city of Los Angeles and call the mayor of Long Beach and tell them we want these fees to be collected. And they probably should be increased because quite frankly, our air is filthy from all these polluting diesel trucks and as well as the ships and we need to clean it up. And I think that might send a message to the powers that be that if they have to pay some kind of tax, they may change their behavior.

I mean, that sometimes works. Well, if nothing else that would allow, as you said, to use some of that money to buy cleaner trucks or subsidize the purchase of cleaner trucks so that we would then have cleaner air in and around Southern California.

You’ve been listening to Unite and Heal America and KABC 790. My guest Marc Carrell will be back in just one minute. You’ve been listening to Unite and Heal America KABC 790. This is Matt Matern, your host we’ve got Marc Carrell, Breathe SoCal, President and CEO of that organization. And we’ve been talking to Marc about the Port of LA and, and clean air down there.

And one of the things that I wanted to talk to Marc about was, you know, his organization, I know you guys get some funding from energy companies like Sempra and and wondered how does that affect your organization? And, you know, the concern that those energy companies can be trying to put their fingers on the messaging and alter things a bit and what Uh, controls? Do you have to kind of protect against that?

Well, we, you know, when people ask me, oh, you get gas company money, I have to remind them, we also get money from Edison, we get money, we’ve gotten money from Tesla, we get money from electric vehicle manufacturers and other organizations that promote clean, clean and zero emission vehicles. And so you know, we have board members from both the gas company and Edison we have, we try to play it straight and say that this is our position, and we’re happy to have you on our board, we’re happy to have your input.

But we don’t change our position because of one or the other. And when we apply for money, we tell them exactly what we’re going to do with the money, and how we’re going to spend it beforehand. And, you know, we’re, we’re pretty transparent about about that. So we don’t take any money from the tobacco industry, and we don’t take any money from the oil industry.

But we do have money from both the gas company and from Edison, because we believe that what they’re both doing on Edison moving toward helping us move towards cleaner electric vehicles and the gas company helping us move towards hydrogen. And, you know, they’re they have a huge strategic plan to move and increase the hydrogen infrastructure in the state, we think they’re both important for going forward.

So tell us a little bit about that, in terms of what the gas company is doing to increase the hydrogen infrastructure here in California.

They’ve been working on efforts to, you know, develop, research and develop cleaner options for natural gas as well as for hydrogen and hydrogen, we, you mentioned earlier is a nother zero emission fuel that we see as a big component of the future vehicle fleet of the state, with, particularly with heavy duty vehicles, electric vehicles are, you know, we have a position that we’re fuel neutral, some people have taken a position that they only want electric, our view is if a fuel is going to help us get to zero emission in this state, it should definitely be considered and hydrogen has a different duty cycle than electric vehicles do.

So while electric vehicles are going to be great for the short haul trips, because they they’re charging takes a lot longer. Hydrogen is going to be great for the long haul tracks across the country, because they can fuel in a much quicker time. And so we think both of those technologies are going to be part of the future in terms of the different fuels that we’ll be using, but you

certainly don’t have to commute it convert me on the hydrogen issue, because I’m on my second hydrogen powered car, but the rest of the audience, they may they need a little more conversion on that front. But tell us what the gas company, you know, what steps they’ve taken that are concrete steps that have helped rollout the infrastructure for more hydrogen based economy?

Well, they, as I said, they have a plan that will move will help the development because they already have the infrastructure for natural gas. And so they’re looking at how that can be converted to a hydrogen delivery system in the future.

And I think that’s important to know that we’re not just looking at the grid, the electric grid, to power everything in a state, but that there’s other sources, because if the grid goes down, which it sometimes does, you know, we need to have make sure that there’s alternatives.

We’ll quickly pivot to Edison, because we don’t have a whole lot of time left. And you could tell us a little bit about what Edison is doing to help us get to a net zero emission economy here in California.

Edison has been really strong in advocating for moving towards zero emission vehicles. They have been promoting zero emission vehicles, and we’ve been working with them on that. We’ve also been working with them on efforts related to wildfires. But they’re, they’re trying to shore up the grid. And that’s a much bigger, much bigger project for the whole state.

Uh, uh, asking a follow up on that as far as micro grids is, is Edison working in unison with the companies that are trying to roll out micro grids and and should we be rolling out micro grids?

To be honest, I don’t have the answer for that. I don’t know. If they’re doing that. I know that renewable energy and it’s coming online and distributed generation is a key component of that, but I can’t tell you if they’re working with the companies from micro grids, I just don’t know.

Sure. Well, Marc, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show. You’ve been listening to Unite and Heal America KABC 790. And my hope, my guest Marc Carrell from Breathe SoCal, President CEO doing great work there.

And really appreciate having you here and sharing with our audience. A lot of great information about what’s happening in Southern California and hopefully, you know, they can reach out to your organization in Southern California and, and help you.

Yeah, our website is BreatheSoCal.org. For more information about the lung health programs that we have and for more information on our diesel efforts and dieselnow.org

Thank you very much, Marc. And we’ll be back next week with another edition of Unite and Heal America and KABC 790 This is Matt Matern signing off.