Among other things, legislators approved a record $76 billion in climate spending. Read more at straitstimes.com.
WASHINGTON - California, with an economy that ranks as the world's fifth-largest, embarked this week on its most aggressive effort yet to confront climate change, after lawmakers passed a flurry of bills designed to cut emissions and speed away from fossil fuels.
The bills, passed late on Wednesday night at the end of a frenzied two-year legislative session in Sacramento, marked a victory for Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has sought to portray himself as a climate leader as he has raised his national profile and begun drawing speculation about a possible White House run.
The new actions by California add momentum to growing efforts in the US to rein in greenhouse gas emissions from the combustion of oil, gas and coal that are overheating the planet.that would invest US$370 billion over the next decade in low-emissions energy sources such as wind, solar and nuclear power.
The new bills aim to bolster California's plans to cut emissions, though experts said the state would now need to do the difficult work of achieving those targets.Lawmakers had previously set a legally binding goal for California to slash its greenhouse gas emissions 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2030.
Lawmakers approved a budget laid out by Newsom that would spend a record US$54 billion over five years on climate programmes. That includes US$6.1 billion for electric vehicles, including money to buy new battery-powered school buses; US$14.8 billion for transit, rail and port projects; more than US$8 billion to clean up and stabilise the electric grid; US$2.7 billion to reduce wildfire risks; and US$2.8 billion in water programmes to deal with drought.
Newsom had once been a firm believer that Diablo Canyon should shut down, siding with activists and environmentalists concerned about its impact on marine life and the risk posed by nuclear reactors sitting on several seismic fault lines. One of the most contentious measures passed by the Legislature is a requirement that new oil and gas wells be set back at least 3,200 feet from homes, schools and hospitals, while imposing strict pollution controls on existing wells within that distance.California is the nation's seventh-largest producer of oil but has never before enforced buffer zones around wells the way states like Colorado and Pennsylvania do.
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