Racing Climate Change: Collaboration and Conflict in California’s Global Climate Change Policy Arena (original) (raw)

How California Came to Pass AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006

2007

D EPARTMENT OF A GRICULTURAL AND R ESOURCE E CONOMICS AND P OLICY D IVISION OF A GRICULTURE AND N ATURAL R ESOURCES U NIVERSITY OF C ALIFORNIA A T B ERKELEY W ORKING P APER N O . 1040 How California Came to Pass AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 by W. M. Hanemann California Agricultural Experiment Station Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics March 2007

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.

Accelerating the timeline for climate action in California

2021

The climate emergency increasingly threatens our communities, ecosystems, food production, health, and economy. It disproportionately impacts lower income communities, communities of color, and the elderly. Assessments since the 2018 IPCC 1.5 Celsius report show that current national and sub-national commitments and actions are insufficient. Fortunately, a suite of solutions exists now to mitigate the climate crisis if we initiate and sustain actions today. California, which has a strong set of current targets in place and is home to clean energy and high technology innovation, has fallen behind in its climate ambition compared to a number of major governments. California, a catalyst for climate action globally, can and should ramp up its leadership by aligning its climate goals with the most recent science, coordinating actions to make 2030 a point of significant accomplishment. This entails dramatically accelerating its carbon neutrality and net-negative emissions goal from 2045 t...

Best in Show? Climate and Environmental Justice Policy in California

Environmental Justice, 2009

In this article, we outline the important role that environmental justice organizations played in the development of AB 32, California's landmark climate change legislation (AB 32) in ensuring that a wide range of environmental justice ideas were incorporated into policy. We distinguish between the formal elements contained in the legislation and the discursive impacts, particularly in relation to public health concerns and about cap and trade and market mechanisms. Drawing from interviews, public documents, and legislative archives, we document the process by which these diverse environmental justice elements were incorporated into AB 32 to ask a seemingly simple question. Is California really ''best in show'' when it comes to climate and environmental justice policy? The complex politics involved in the drafting and passage of the legislation show to what extent environmental justice organizations played in AB 32's passage. We then argue that understanding the contentiousness in how AB 32 was drafted lends insight and context to the ongoing conflicts over the implementation of AB 32, specifically the role of cap and trade and market mechanisms more generally. Given the historical and continuing prominence of California in national and environmental policy development, the intersection of environmental justice movements with the development of state policy, described here, has larger implications for the broader climate justice movement and the complicated engagement between social movements and policy-making.

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.

Carbon Offsets in California: Science in the Policy Development Process

Communicating Climate-Change and Natural Hazard Risk and Cultivating Resilience, 2016

Natural and social scientists are increasingly stepping out of purely academic roles to actively inform science-based climate change policies. This chapter examines a practical example of science and policy interaction. We focus on the implementation of California’s global warming law, based on our participation in the public process surrounding the development of two new carbon offset protocols. Most of our work on the protocols focused on strategies for ensuring that the environmental quality of the program remains robust in the face of signifi cant scientifi c and behavioral uncertainty about protocol outcomes. In addition to responding to technical issues raised by government staff, our contributions—along with those from other outside scientists—helped expand the protocol development discussion to include important scientifi c issues that would not have otherwise been part of the process. We close by highlighting the need for more scientists to proactively engage the climate policy development process.

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.