CALIFORNIA’S GLOBAL WARMING LAW – NOW THE HARD WORK BEGINS

By Bill Magavern, Advocacy Director, Sierra Club California

In 2006 California’s Legislature passed, and the Governor signed, landmark legislation putting an enforceable cap on our state’s emissions of global warming pollution – the first such law in the United States. The Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32, authored by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez and then-Assemblymember Fran Pavley, has garnered justifiable praise around the country and even overseas as a demonstration of California’s willingness to fill the leadership vacuum left by the Bush Administration’s refusal to take meaningful action to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Now the hard work begins.

Far from the culmination, passage of the law represents the beginning of what will be a long and difficult process of implementing policies to bring California’s greenhouse gas emissions down to their 1990 level by 2020. The Legislature has required a reduction to that level, and has wisely put the state’s Air Resources Board in charge of making it happen. The ARB, which has built a reputation as the nation’s premier guardian of air quality, now takes on the additional challenge of addressing global warming. Industry lobbyists are already flocking to the workshops and seminars on the topic, hoping to shape the eventual rules to benefit their narrow interests.

The ARB’s first task, which will be on the agenda for its June 21st meeting in Los Angeles, is to publish a list of “Early Action Measures,” those regulations that could be put in place before 2010 to start bringing down greenhouse pollution. ARB staff has put forward only three such measures: the Low-Carbon Fuels Standard announced by the Governor in a January executive order, methane capture requirements for landfills, and restrictions on refrigerants called hydrofluorocarbons that have high global warming potential. The Low-Carbon Fuels Standard will require a 10% reduction in the carbon intensity of transportation fuels by 2020, stimulating deployment of alternatives to gasoline.

Environmental groups, including Sierra Club California, have urged the ARB to take a bolder approach and add several other early action measures that reduce emissions from passenger vehicles, heavy-duty vehicles, cement factories, and marine vessels. These measures would provide double benefits by reducing both greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants, like soot, smog and mercury, that harm human health.

The ARB also is in the process of setting the “baseline” – the level of emissions in 1990 -- and of establishing a system for large emitters of greenhouse pollution to report their emissions. Advisory committees have been chartered on the topics of environmental justice, markets, and technology.

As implementation proceeds, many important questions will be debated and decided, including: how many emission reductions will come from technology standards and incentive programs, and how many from market mechanisms? Will the market mechanisms include a “cap-and-trade” program, as Governor Schwarzenegger has ordered? If so, will polluters be given permits to emit greenhouse gases, or will they have to buy them? Technology-based standards have a far better record of success than pollution trading schemes, especially when the right to emit is granted to polluters for free.

This implementation process will be a high priority for Sierra Club California this year and for years to come.

For more information on-line, go to www.climatechange.ca.gov