It will “keep California on the move to clean up the environment”, Brown said before signing the new legislation.
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He was joined by key legislators who led the legislation’s approval, including Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin De Leon, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, Pavley, Garcia, Sen.
The measures in the most populous US state would extend by 10 years California’s main greenhouse gas reduction program and beef up oversight of the state agency charged with implementing it. Brown chose an urban natural park on the edge of downtown Los Angeles as his setting to sign the legislation into law on Thursday, Sept. 8.
“This will help with public transit, affordable housing and what I call green transportation”, said Joe Linton of StreetsBlog Los Angeles, sweating after riding his bicycle up a steep hill for the bills.
The governor, in an outside ceremony surrounded by some of California’s top lawmakers, put pen to paper at 11:37 a.m.to pass laws to extend the toughest greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals in the country and to invest in poor communities hardest hit by climate change. Last year, Brown’s plans appeared in the lurch when business-friendly Democrats backed by the oil industry defeated an earlier version of the Pavley’s climate bill. It amends the 2006 California Global Warming Solutions Act that that requires the state to reduce statewide emission levels to at least 1990 levels by 2020.
In a statement, California Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Allan Zaremberg said, “Taken together, SB32 and AB197, impose severe caps on the emission of greenhouse gases in California, without requiring the regulatory agencies to give any consideration to the impacts on our economy, disruptions in everyone’s daily lives or the fact that California’s population will grow nearly 50 percent between 1990 and 2030”.
The governor, who has traveled the world promoting greenhouse-gas reduction efforts, issued an executive order a year ago setting the 2030 goals contained in SB32. Last year, he signed a bill that requires the state to get half of its electricity from renewable resources by 2030. “Well, this month it’s been over 26 percent”.
“They’re going to plead for a market system”, the governor said.
We’re talking about a world where California gets more than 50 percent of its electricity from renewables in 2030 (up from 25 percent today), where zero-emissions vehicles are 25 percent of the fleet by 2035 (up from about 1 percent today), where high-speed rail is displacing auto travel, where biofuels have replaced a significant chunk of diesel in heavy-duty trucks, where pastures are getting converted to forests, where electricity replaces natural gas in heating, and on and on.
California Gov. Jerry Brown is set to extend the nation’s most ambitious climate change law by another 10 years, charting a new goal to reduce carbon pollution.
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Despite pushing the climate goals through, the centerpiece of the state’s effort to combat global warming remains in jeopardy. For the protection of AP and its licensors, content may not be copied, altered or redistributed in any form. Please see our terms of service for more information.
