H.R.

1943 (SUPER Act of 2013)

The main idea of this solution is to create a task force to try to lower the levels of short-
lived pollutants. This will be done by reviewing the current and possible new policies that are
related to the reduction of these particles. Afterwards, the task force would look try to make the
policies more concise and decide which policies would be best for lowering air pollution. The
task force would then report its findings to Congress. This will probably raise some taxes as the
task force would be established by the president. However, it would not be too costly as this act
is currently just about finding the best ways to lower the amount of pollution and will not enact
any new policies yet. In California, the state tends to be a more liberal state that promotes the
idea of being environmentally friendly. About 40% of Californians live in areas near high levels
of traffic which is approximately 15 million people. Both the governor and the majority of the
state legislature is Democratic, and the state legislature also has a Democratic super majority.
More specifically, in the state legislature, there are 28 Democratic and 11 Republican senators as
well as 55 Democrats and 25 Republican members of the Assembly. This Democratic super
majority makes it more possible for the solution to be applied in California, because the solution
relies on government involvement. Approximately 15.3% of people are below poverty line and
about 8.7% of the state is unemployed. Editorials show that more people are realizing that air
pollution is a problem and there were a few that said that one of the better ways to address air
pollution right now would be to focus on short-lived air pollutants. A strength of this solution is
that it would be able to quickly affect the environment compared to other possible solutions.
Since this solution plans to reduce the amount of short-lived air pollutants being produced, the
short-lived air pollutants that are currently in the environment would dissipate in a few years. As
discussed by Durwood J Zaelke and Veerabhadran Ramanathan, there kinds of air pollutants
make up 40% of current warming. They predict that reducing these pollutants could slow the
rate of global warming by 50% in the next 50 years. Some weaknesses in this solution would be
that it is only a task force that researches the best way to lower short-lived climate pollutants.
Essentially, it would only report its findings to Congress and does not have the power to change
any policies at the moment. Another problem with this solution would be that it does not address
the problem of carbon dioxide in the air making this more of a short-term solution. It would be a
good time to enact this bill, because people are beginning to better realize that climate change is
a major problem. In fact, Bill Nye appeared on news stations to debate about why climate
change is an issue that needs to be addressed as soon as possible. Some roadblocks are that,
while more people are beginning to realize the threat of global warming, there are still many that
believe that climate change is due to natural causes or is nonexistent.