Climate Leadership: How California’s Climate Policy Could Change The World (original) (raw)

Looking Forward: California’s Climate Leadership

Comprehensive US federal policy on climate change has been largely absent until quite recently. Domestic climate leadership has emerged on multiple scales and from various jurisdictions. The State of California has established a climate policy approach that may well end up as a workable model for the rest of the world. This paper projects current policy initiatives and trends forward to 2030 and envisions what could emerge. Three specific focal areas are covered: environmental justice, natural systems and agriculture.

California's Climate Change Policy: The Case of a Subnational State Actor Tackling a Global Challenge

The Journal of Environment & Development, 2008

For all its economic capacity, population size, and resource base, California remains only one among the 50 United States and, essentially, is a subnational actor attempting to play a role in the climate change policy arena on par with the nation-states of the world. This raises a series of questions about the substance and breadth of the state's new policy and what has motivated it. The state's policy declarations and initial flurry of activities are impressive. As with all so broad and sweeping initiatives, it remains to be seen the extent to which policy goals can and will be translated into operational rules and regulations, incentives and sanctions, and actual accomplishments across all the sectors of the state's economy over the course of not just months and years but the decades to come.

A Broader Vision for Climate Policy: Lessons from California

2018

INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................85 I. THE ORIGINS AND IMPLEMENTATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE IN CALIFORNIA CLIMATE LAW ......................................................88 A. The Role of Environmental Justice in California’s First Comprehensive Climate Initiative, AB 32 ...............................88 B. Environmental Justice in the Implementation of California Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Policies ...............................................92 1. Electricity Sector ......................................................................93 2. Transportation Sector ...............................................................94 3. Agricultural Sector ...................................................................96 4. Industrial Sector .......................................................................96 C. Environmental Justice and the Distribution of Clean Energy Benefits ...............

California's Climate Change Policy

The Journal of Environment & Development, 2008

For all its economic capacity, population size, and resource base, California remains only one among the 50 United States and, essentially, is a subnational actor attempting to play a role in the climate change policy arena on par with the nation-states of the world. This raises a series of questions about the substance and breadth of the state's new policy and what has motivated it. The state's policy declarations and initial flurry of activities are impressive. As with all so broad and sweeping initiatives, it remains to be seen the extent to which policy goals can and will be translated into operational rules and regulations, incentives and sanctions, and actual accomplishments across all the sectors of the state's economy over the course of not just months and years but the decades to come.

California’s Decarbonization Strategy: Adaptable Policy with Strong Target Setting and Stakeholder Engagement

2019

California’s successful climate policies are set against a background of strong political and public support for protecting the environment, long-term planning, analytical evaluations and modeling, and an inclusive stakeholder process that helps shape long-term plans and individual climate policies. This case study describes California’s process for addressing climate change, with a view toward the role of long-term planning in achieving near-, mid-, and long-term targets. It outlines the role of different state actors, as well as the policy and planning process employed by the state. The case study draws lessons learned from this process, highlighting the state’s challenges and successes.

Linking climate change science with policy in California

Climatic Change, 2008

Over the last few years, California has passed some of the strongest climate policies in the USA. These new policies have been motivated in part by increasing concerns over the risk of climate-related impacts and facilitated by the state’s existing framework of energy and air quality policies. This paper presents an overview of the evolution of this increased awareness of climate change issues by policy makers brought about by the strong link between climate science and policy in the state. The State Legislature initiated this link in 1988 with the mandate to prepare an assessment of the potential consequences of climate change to California. Further interactions between science and policy has more recently resulted, in summer of 2006, in the passage of Assembly Bill 32, a law that limits future greenhouse gas emissions in California. This paper discusses the important role played by a series of state and regional climate assessments beginning in 1988 and, in particular, the lessons learned from a recently completed study known as the Scenarios Project.