California extends ambitious climate change law

Jerry Brown addresses the California State Association of Counties Legislative Conference in Sacramento.

A California panel has overwhelmingly rejected a plan to build almost 900 upscale homes and a hotel on a valuable stretch of Southern California coastline that has always been the site of oil drilling and now provides. It expands on California’s landmark 2006 law, which set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

A delegate to the Democratic National Convention is accused of assaulting a fellow delegate at a hotel bar during the convention in Philadelphia.

SB 32 mandates that the state reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. SB 32 codifies an executive order Brown issued previous year.

Pavley said SB 32 “will trigger more jobs in our thriving clean-energy sector and solidify California’s leadership in demonstrating to the world that we can combat climate change while also spurring economic growth”.

Brown, at the event, chided Republicans in the U.S. Congress who have opposed measures to control climate change, and he said California lawmakers, for their part, were moving forward. “Well, this month it’s been over 26 percent. Now, they’re all saying all the major privately owned utilities they can get to 50 percent by 2030”.

“The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office earlier this year issued a report stating that there were little to no reductions in greenhouse emissions despite billions of dollars having been spent from cap-and-trade revenue, which are dollars ultimately collected in the form of higher prices by consumers”, he said.

The state plans to build on that foundation and ramp up other efforts including increasing renewable electricity use, boosting energy efficiency in existing buildings and putting 1.5 million zero-emissions vehicles on the road, according to the California Air Resources Board, which is in charge of climate policy.

That program, known as cap-and-trade, limits the total amount of emissions and allots companies that need to release gases, such as factories that use power to make their products, a certain number of allowances. The last two permit sales also have fizzled.

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