SACRAMENTO >> After weeks of uncertainty and a push by Big Oil to best top Democrats for the second straight year, the state Assembly on Tuesday approved a bill that extends California’s landmark greenhouse gas reduction targets and bolsters the state’s status as a world leader in the fight against climate change.
The victory comes almost one year after Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic legislative leaders lost an ugly fight with the oil industry over legislation that sought to cut petroleum use by motor vehicles 50 percent by 2030.
The Assembly approved Senate Bill 32, authored by Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, on a 47-29 vote over the objections of some pro-business Democrats and Republicans, who say the legislation will harm California’s neediest residents.
But other Democrats insisted that setting the goals and gradually weaning the state’s economy off its fossil fuel reliance is the only way to lift those struggling Californians up.
“Our climate change efforts are proof California can be progressive and prosperous at the same time,” said Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Paramount. “Harmful emissions are going down, and the economy is going up. That’s a success story — plain and simple.”
In a statement, Brown skewered the oil companies who lobbied against the legislation and applauded the lawmakers who supported it. He said he looks forward to signing SB 32 and Assembly Bill 197 — a companion piece that establishes new accountability, transparency and equity standards that will apply to the bill’s goals — when they land on his desk.
“Yesterday, big oil bought a full-page ad in the capital city’s newspaper of record to halt action on climate,” Brown said. “Today, the Assembly Speaker, most Democrats and one brave Republican passed SB 32, rejecting the brazen deception of the oil lobby and their Trump-inspired allies who deny science and fight every reasonable effort to curb global warming.”
Still, the Assembly’s action came too late to ease investors’ concerns about the future of the state’s cap-and-trade program. Only about a third of the credits up for sale during an auction earlier this month were sold, according to results released Tuesday by the California Air Resources Board.
Once SB 32 is signed by Brown, it will establish in law a target the governor first laid out in an executive order that seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. And that should help stabilize the cap-and-trade auction market, Pavley said.
The fees big businesses must pay to pollute under the cap-and-trade program provide dedicated, critical sources of funding for California’s bullet train and other transportation projects that benefit low-income communities.
“Today’s action sends an unmistakable signal to investors of California’s commitment to clean energy and clean air,” Pavley said. “This will trigger more investment and more jobs in our thriving clean-energy sector.”
Assembly members who voted against the bill Tuesday called that pitch a false promise and said the Global Warming Solutions Act —which set 2020 emissions-reduction targets and predates SB 32 by a decade — has done little to clean the air and has cost Californians countless well-paying jobs.
“You’re dancing to the flute of a rich hedge fund billionaire who’s running for governor and going up on TV and proposing policies that are against your districts that will put your people out of work,” said Assemblyman James Gallagher, R-Plumas Lake, who lamented the fact that everybody likes to “pile on” the oil industry. “Stand up for your constituents!”
The billionaire Gallagher spoke of is Bay Area climate change activist Tom Steyer, who paid for a series of pricey television advertisements he stars in that have blanketed the state’s airwaves in recent weeks and condemn Big Oil for putting profits above children’s health.
Steyer is on a shortlist of Democrats contemplating a run for governor in 2018, and he traveled to Sacramento Thursday to make personal pitches to some Assembly members who had been on the fence to support SB 32.
Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, D-Richmond, said his decision to support the climate change legislation was an easy one. He once feared for his family’s safety when a fire at a nearby oil refinery left the air in his East Bay neighborhood so smoky that he plugged his doors and window jams with towels to ensure his children would be able to breath.
“We should talk about the cost to not take action,” said Thurmond, because it’s “irrefutable that our failure to act with have negative consequences for many children.”
