California air board adopts a sweeping plan to curb greenhouse gases
The comprehensive blueprint for fighting global warming, the first in the nation, would cut the state's emissions by 15% within 12 years. It targets virtually every sector of the economy.
Reporting from Sacramento — California regulators today adopted the nation's first comprehensive plan to slash greenhouse gases, offering it as a model for President-elect Barack Obama, who has pledged an aggressive effort on the national and international stages to combat global warming.
The ambitious blueprint by the world's eighth-largest economy would cut the state's emissions by 15% over the next 12 years, bringing them back down to 1990 levels.
Adopted by the state's Air Resources Board in a unanimous vote, it lays out targets for virtually every sector of the economy, from automobiles to refineries, buildings, forests and landfills.
It would require a third of California's electricity to come from solar energy, wind farms and other renewable sources -- more than any other state in the nation.
"When you look at today's depressed economy, green tech is one of the few bright spots out there," said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, vowing that the plan would "unleash the full force of California's innovation and technology for a healthier planet."
Schwarzenegger has been a sharp critic of President Bush's opposition to national climate legislation and of the U.S. failure to join the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 global warming treaty. Now California's plan will be "a road map for the rest of the nation," he predicted.
After a failed attempt last spring, Congress is expected to renew its efforts to craft climate legislation next year. Many of the elements in contention have been addressed in California's plan, including a cap-and-trade program that would allow industries to reduce their emissions more cheaply.
In 18 months of public hearings and workshops, hundreds of people have testified and more than 43,000 individual comments were submitted to the board. More than a quarter-million copies of the plan have been viewed or downloaded from the air board website in the last two months.
Manufacturers and chambers of commerce called on state regulators to lower the cost of the climate plan, saying that it will lead to billions of dollars in higher electricity costs. Automakers are also fighting California's pending rule to crack down on carbon dioxide emissions from cars, a regulation that more than a dozen states say they will also adopt.
Worldwide, planet-warming gases have been growing far more rapidly than scientists had predicted. And in California, with a fast-growing population and sprawling suburban development, emissions were on track to increase by 30% over 1990 levels by 2020.
The state is expected to experience severe damage from climate change, including water shortages from a shrinking snowpack, increased wildfires, coastal sea level rise and pollution-aggravating heat waves.
Roosevelt is a Times staff writer.
margot.roosevelt@latimes.com
