Lawmakers, Jerry Brown claim major political victory on climate change bills

Aug 24, 2016 at 12:00pm

JEREMY B. WHITE AND ALEXEI KOSEFF, The Sacramento Bee

In giving final approval to a pair of linked climate bills, lawmakers handed a victory to Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic legislative leaders, who called the measures essential to preserving the state’s ambitious climate program.

“This is a real commitment backed up by real power,” Brown said.

One of the measures, Senate Bill 32, would require California to slash greenhouse gas levels to 40 percent below their 1990 levels by 2030, extending the state’s authority to enact sweeping climate policies beyond an approaching 2020 limit. The other, Assembly Bill 197, sought to build support for those goals by giving legislators more power over the Air Resources Board. Brown is certain to sign both.

Both bills succeeded despite a lobbying push from the oil industry and reticence from business-oriented Democrats, whose combined resistance scuttled a major 2015 measure that would have mandated a 50 percent cut in California’s petroleum use. That setback fueled concerns that Brown and legislative allies would be unable to overcome the same forces in 2016.

“It isn’t only Donald Trump trying to stop the effort to clean up the air and to combat climate change. There are a lot of Trump-inspired acolytes that even walk the halls of this state Capitol. But they have been vanquished,” Brown said, alluding to the clout of oil companies and to the “very powerful lobbying by these organizations whose goal is to keep the Earth and California dirty.”

The twin legislative successes presage a battle over the state’s cap-and-trade program, which compels businesses to buy permits for the greenhouse gases they put into the air. Encumbered by a court challenge and two subpar auctions of emissions allowances, the system’s fate will likely be central to next year’s legislative session.

Without ruling out the possibility of putting cap and trade before voters with a ballot measure, Brown suggested that the bills passed this week would give him additional leverage over lawmakers who would prefer the flexibility and revenue stream of cap and trade to more onerous policies.

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