California Combats Climate Change

“Today, I am happy to announce we have reached a historic agreement on legislation to combat global warming,” California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proclaimed in late August 2006. Breaking with the federal government’s silence on climate policy and placing California at the vanguard of action to stabilize Earth’s climate, the California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32) calls for the state’s major greenhouse gas emitters—including utility plants, oil and gas refineries, and cement kilns—to reduce their emissions to 1990 levels (about 25% lower than today’s levels) by 2020. The bill authorizes the California Air Resources Board to develop market mechanisms to achieve these reductions; the resulting plan is expected to resemble the cap-and-trade systems employed in the Kyoto Protocol (see

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