California lawmakers voted to extend the state’s climate change fighting efforts out to 2030 on Wednesday, giving a new lease on life to the most ambitious greenhouse gas reduction program in the country. Jerry Brown, who says he’ll sign it.
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The move keeps alive the legal framework that underpins California’s wide-ranging efforts to fight climate change, from a tax on pollution to zero-emission vehicle mandates and restrictions on the carbon content of gasoline and diesel fuel.
“This is a real commitment backed up by real power”, he said during a Capitol press conference.
The state is now on track to meet its 2020 goal of reducing emissions back to 1990 levels. That bill gives the legislature oversight stronger oversight over the Air Resources Board, something that critics of A.B.
Now the bill has jumped a hard hurdle by passing the Assembly.
Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia (D-Coachella) cast the issue as a moral one. 32, which extends greenhouse gas reduction targets out until 2030, will go back to the Senate for a vote on Assembly amendments, perhaps as early as this afternoon before it too goes to the governor.
Reflecting a shift among many policymakers who now view underage sex workers as victims of trafficking that should be offered assistance rather than prosecuted, Senate Bill 1322 would direct officers who encounter a minor engaged in a commercial sex act to report the situation to county social services as abuse or neglect. 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.
The cap-and-trade program is a keystone of Gov. A lawsuit filed by the California Chamber of Commerce and other business interests presently sits with appellate court judges to determine if the cap-and-trade revenue is a tax. They are auctioned quarterly and used to routinely generate hundreds of millions of dollars for the state. Last week’s joint auction with the Canadian province of Quebec saw 37 percent of available allowances sell for $12.73 per ton, ARB announced.
Brown would not elaborate on his plans, saying he doesn’t want to channel a strategy he’s still pondering.
On Wednesday he said opponents have been “vanquished”.
“The changes it has brought to our economy are unforgiveable”, she said. Holly Mitchell, D-Los Angeles, encountered stiff opposition from some law enforcement groups that argued it would make it more hard to rescue young women from a life on the streets.
The expiring global warming law has hung in the balance as Brown and the Legislature approved a budget this year and negotiated Democratic priorities. The bill narrowly passed the Senate last week, where many members rose to speak against a policy creating less transparency in law enforcement rather than more, and had returned to the Assembly for concurrence on some amendments.
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As Brown and his allies scrambled to round up support, several moderate Democrats who previously refused to support the legislation said they received calls from Jerry Abramson, deputy assistant to the president and White House director of intergovernmental affairs, urging them to support it.
