California governor promises more climate fights

Less than a month after critical climate legislation was declared dead by Capitol insiders, oil lobbyists, and some California legislators, today we celebrate passage of two bills that together enact the most aggressive emissions targets in North America and require California – the world’s sixth-largest economy – to reduce carbon pollution to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.

The bill cleared the state Senate in a 25-12 vote on Wednesday. Governor Jerry Brown is expected to sign it, along with another piece of legislation that vows to boost legislative oversight of climate change programs organized by the California Air Resources Board.

Breitbart News recently reported that roughly 9,000 California companies moved their headquarters or diverted projects to out-of-state locations in the last seven years due to the not-so Golden State’s “hostile” business environment.

The state is now on track to meet its 2020 goal of reducing emissions back to 1990 levels.

Senator Fran Pavley, the author of the 2006 law that set the state’s first emission reduction target, said that effort has generated billions of dollars in investment in the state’s clean energy sector while creating jobs and reducing emissions. Higher energy prices are particularly harmful in the inland Central Valley, where summers are hotter and winters colder than in the coastal cities where Democrats dominate, said Sen.

“It’s shameful when coastal elites have no sympathy for the middle class and the working poor who do not live on the coast”, Vidak said.

California lawmakers are sending Gov. In particular, the measures do not address the cap-and-trade program, which is facing a lawsuit claiming the program is an unconstitutional tax. In the press conference for the vote, members of the Senate said the new requirements will affect all industries in the state, from agriculture, to oil refining, and even public utilities.

Brown promised more action will follow, but declined to offer specifics, saying he doesn’t want to channel a strategy he’s still developing.

Brown has also opened a committee to raise funds for a possible climate-related ballot measure in 2018. “We’ll have more battles, and we’ll have more victories”.