California's vision is better than 20/20

by ARTiFactor on Sep. 03rd, 2006
in Energy Transformations, Scientific Enterprise, and Flow of Matter and Energy

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California's 25/20 vision: photo from Wikimedia

A 25 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020

California seeks to again lead the world toward a better future. After last weeks "one million solar roofs" legislation, this week California politicians are working out details that will reduce their green house emissions 25 per cent by the year 2020.

The legislation will require all businesses, from automakers to cement manufacturers, to reduce emissions beginning as early as 2012 to meet the 2020 cap. The state's 11-member Air Resources Board, which is appointed by the governor, will be charged with developing targets for each industry and for seeing that those targets are met. The board now will embark on a years-long process to fully develop regulations. The board could impose fees on some industries to pay for new programs that could do everything from requiring truckers to use biodiesel fuels to forcing farmers to handle animal waste differently.San Francisco Chronicle

California is the world's 12th-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, responsible for 10 percent of the carbon dioxide produced nationally and 2.5 percent globally. Global scientists agree that to prevent catastrophic temperature increases in this century, greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 would have to be 70 to 80 percent lower than 1990 levels.

Cap emissions; buy and sell emissions credits

Last week Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the state's senior Democratic legislator, pledged at the Commonwealth Club to introduce legislation in January that would place mandatory caps on industrial emissions. She also supports a federal cap-and-trade bill, a market-based approach for lowering emissions.(see Buzz Blog post about buying and selling pollution) For example, it would allow farmers and landowners who plant trees or convert crops into bio-fuels to earn emission credits that could be sold to companies that exceed emission limits.

What will it cost and who will pay

Some predict that because "green" energy is more expensive, many companies will move out of California. Others insist that investment capital and "clean-tech" jobs will result, similar to when California led the way with Silicon Valley. California would become more efficient and self reliant. This could give them a head start in a future that will certainly need to do something about global warming and rising energy costs.

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Your Comments, Thoughts, Questions, Ideas

Anonymous says:

so in 50 years the ozone will be some what gone why dont we just try harder at a new sourse

posted on Sat, 11/04/2006 - 10:40pm

John Schwartz says:

I am a native Californian who as a student in jr. high school (1977-79) remembers the mid-east oil embargo and all the stories in the news about how the Earth was running out of Oil. How by the year 2000 the Earth would have run out of all supplies of oil and that it would result in the total collapse of the U.S. economy if "we" didn't start developing other means by which we powered our cars and other sources of energy (i.e. solar, wind etc.) to run industry or face the "exstinction" of our economy as we knew it. Now in the year 2006, we are not only, NOT out of oil it is being reported almost daily how the oil companies are finding huge new fields of oil. (How dare those "EVIL" rich oil companies!!) With this small example of inaccurate reporting on the part of the media, with the help of the "scientists"; I ask you to consider why we should believe the doom and gloom reports about Ozone? They were wrong then and they're wrong now too!

posted on Sun, 11/05/2006 - 2:30am

AnonymousMLH says:

Hey, I live in Minnesota, not California, and I have 20/20 vision

posted on Sun, 03/04/2007 - 2:52pm

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