SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California lawmakers voted Wednesday to extend the state’s landmark climate change law — the most aggressive in the nation — by another 10 years, resisting fierce opposition from oil companies and other business interests to keep the program alive at least through 2030.
Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, a strong advocate of the state’s climate initiatives, has said he’ll sign the bill when it comes to his desk.
The move keeps alive the legal framework that underpins California’s wide-ranging efforts to fight climate change, from a tax on pollution to zero-emission vehicle mandates and restrictions on the carbon content of gasoline and diesel fuel.
“We can wean ourselves from a fossil fuel 20th Century to a renewably fueled 21st Century, which is where we all know we need to get if we’re going to have a planet on which to live in the decades ahead,” said Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco.
SB32 passed in the Senate on a 25-13 vote, a day after it won crucial support from business-minded Democratic lawmakers in the state Assembly with encouragement from the White House.
In 2006, California set an ambitious goal to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, when the initial effort would end. SB32 sets a new goal to reduce emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. It is tied to the fate of another bill, AB197, to provide greater legislative oversight of the appointed Air Resources Board, which is responsible for executing the law. The Assembly approved that bill Wednesday, sending it to Brown.
Democratic lawmakers celebrated the victory, saying it ensures California will continue to be a pioneer in the global fight against climate change.
Republicans contend the law has raised prices for consumers without making a substantial dent in the volume of global climate emissions. Higher energy prices are particularly harmful in the inland Central Valley, where summers are hotter and winters colder than in the coastal cities where Democrats dominate, said Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford.
“It’s shameful when coastal elites have no sympathy for the middle class and the working poor who do not live on the coast,” Vidak said.
