Gas reduction dropped from California climate change bill

Yesterday, Democrats in the California state legislature caved to pressure from the powerful oil industry and dropped a critical piece from a historic new climate bill.

With just two full days remaining for bills to emerge from the current legislative session, a massive lobbying campaign from oil interests could not be overcome, de Leon said.

De Leon said the amended bill, which would require public utilities in California to use renewable resources for half the energy they provide by 2030 and increased energy efficiency for buildings, would still go forward.

The governor told reporters that Big Oil had only won a skirmish, not the war, and that he was more committed than ever to tackling climate change. State Air Assets Board officers stated present insurance policies – decreasing the carbon content material of fuels, implementing vehicle effectivity requirements and growing mass transit – are already shifting the state in the suitable course.

Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association, welcomed Wednesday’s decision to cut the emissions target from the bill.

A separate bill, which would have mandated an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 from levels emitted in 1990, was also pulled, but the bill’s author, Democratic state Senator Fran Pavley, said she would attempt to revive it before the end of the session.

He said the intense debate surrounding the legislation may have actually helped the cause of climate-change legislation in the long term.

The leaders have vowed to push ahead with other reforms, including boosting renewable electricity use.

Yet according to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, Brown, Senate Leader Kevin de León, and Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins all refused to reduce CARB’s potentially open-ended authority.

Many Democrats – including moderates and those representing less wealthy districts – were concerned that the petroleum mandate would hurt California’s economy and working-class residents.

Mr. Brown told reporters in Sacramento that he would use his executive powers to continue to force the kinds of reductions in global emissions that have been a central goal of his governorship.

Brown still hopes to win Republican votes for a new tax on managed health care plans, but convincing Republicans to back a new health care tax won’t be any easier than getting them to support a transportation tax or fee, political experts say.

“There are federal preemption issues when it comes to states looking to regulate based on privacy concerns”, said Lisa Ellman, a drone policy lawyer at the firm Hogan Lovells who used to work on drone issues in the Obama administration.

The first, Senate Bill 32, is Sen. Groups like AUVSI and DJI said that the bill would have a chilling effect on drone innovation and would stifle the potential economic growth drone businesses could bring to the state, with many would-be pilots opting simply to stay grounded instead of trying to fly within the confines of the law.