California is on track to meet the original requirements of the Global Warming Solutions Act, Brown’s office said in a news release. At right, is Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles.
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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. Jerry Brown extended the nation’s most ambitious climate change law Thursday by another 10 years as California charts a new goal to reduce carbon pollution.
“What we’re doing here is far-sighted, as well as far-reaching”, Brown said at a signing ceremony at Vista Hermosa Natural Park in downtown Los Angeles.
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Gov.
Under the law, the state must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels, a goal that will likely involve significantly more electric cars, additional renewable energy and drastic cuts in emissions from dairy farms and other key industries. While previous law required the state to reduce emissions by 2020, the new measure, SB 32, sets a new, more aggressive target for 2030.
The new climate policies were opposed by the oil industry and some manufacturers, who raised concerns about rising costs and giving regulators too much power over Californians’ lives.
Brown told a gathering a day earlier in Sacramento that critics have long tried to scuttle reforms by saying they aren’t feasible. “Well, this month it’s been over 26 percent”.
The governor, who has traveled the world promoting greenhouse-gas reduction efforts, issued an executive order previous year setting the 2030 goals contained in SB32.
“Climate change is real and, knowing that, California is taking action”, Brown said in a statement. “Now, they’re all saying – all the major privately owned utilities – they can get to 50 percent by 2030”. On Thursday, he also signed a companion bill that provides more legislative oversight of the appointed state air resources board and gives aid to poorer areas that lawmakers say have suffered the most harm from climate change.
The law doesn’t address the cap-and-trade program, which requires companies that spew greenhouse gases to buy pollution permits that are auctioned quarterly. The last two permit sales also have fizzled.
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With the uncertainty over the cap-and-trade program, the expanded climate change law “is a point on a map, but the roadmap to that point has not been filled in yet”, Dan McGraw, a Houston-based carbon analyst with the ICIS trade publication, said in an email.
