| Scheme comes out of AB32, the landmark climate change bill
by Brian Leubitz
In Washington, Congress is twiddling its thumbs as they debate what science stopped debating years ago. Rather than aggresively taking on the environmental challenges of our lifetime and building a new sustainable economy, we are pretending the problems don't exist. Sure, we apparently care about the budget deficit that we are handing future generations, but a livable planet is apparently a luxury that we don't care to pass on.
But California, as they say, is different. We passed AB32, with a Republican Governor, yet. And today, we have a real system to put in place:
California has cap & trade - or will once the program starts ramping up next year. Today's approval by the state's Air Resources Board was described by chair Mary Nichols as like "moving a large army a few feet in one direction."
The objective that "army" is marching - or shuffling - toward is, of course, the fulfillment of California's goal to roll back greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the end of this decade. With at least a semi-intentional pun, Nichols calls cap & trade the "capstone" of that effort, although the program is expected to produce at most, 20% of the hoped-for reductions in carbon emissions. The rest will come from other measures either lumped under or related to the state's Global Warming Solutions Act, more widely known as AB 32.
Those other measures include stricter standards for tailpipe emissions, a "low-carbon fuels standard" (still being worked on), and the ambitious-but-attainable goal to get a third of the state's electricity from renewable energy sources, also by 2020. (KQED Climate Change Blog)
Across California, cities and counties are actually doing something about climate change. In fact, San Francisco recently announced that the City has reduced carbon emissions levels 12 percent below 1990 levels.
There is a lot more hard work to come, but it is really, really good to see this unanimous vote on the cap and trade system. |
