These can often seem like historic times: economic dislocations, catastrophic weather events, spectacular bankruptcies. The action taken Thursday, December 11th by the State Air Resources Board fit right in: CARB unanimously adopted the Climate Change Scoping Plan, a document that creates a detailed and sweeping roadmap for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in this state.
The plan’s overall goal, for now, is to reduce the state’s emission levels to those of 1990 by 2020. Longer term, regulators would like to see emissions reduced a further 20% from 1990 levels by 2050. The current goal represents about a 30% reduction from “business as usual” levels expected in 2020 and about a 15% reduction from today’s levels.
It’s hard to name business sectors and human activities that won’t be affected by this plan. The largest chunk of emission reductions is supposed to come from a GHG emissions trading market that will include 85% of statewide emissions from large industrial sources such as power generation, refining, and manufacturing. (California’s trading market will link with ones to be set up in six other Western states and four Canadian provinces under the Western Climate Initiative.) Improvements in the energy efficiency of buildings and appliances are expected to produce another large portion of the reductions.
The single largest producer of GHG in the state, transportation, will be expected to achieve emissions reductions through a combination of measures, including improving vehicle fuel efficiency, strategies to reduce driving, and a gradual transition away from carbon-based types of transportation energy. The state’s utilities will be asked to boost the percentage of power that comes from renewable sources, considerably beyond the mandates already in state law. So that electric car you’ll be plugging in a few years from now might not be depending on very much carbon at all to get its juice. And numerous smaller sources of GHG emissions will also be expected to do their part to reduce.
What good will these efforts do? According to the Los Angeles Times, California’s GHG emissions amount to a mere 1.5% of the global total. (Small, yes, but actually pretty impressive for just one state!) Greenhouse gases shouldn’t be confused with local air pollutants: their impacts stem from the way they trap heat near the earth’s surface once they rise into the upper atmosphere. So a ton of GHG emitted in Europe or Asia has the same effect as one emitted in California. And there’s no question that developing nations, following a technological path paved by the West, have been increasing their GHG emissions.
In acting on a small portion of the global problem, California regulators hope to set an example for neighboring states and to create a model for a national program. President-Elect Obama has expressed his intent to move forward with greenhouse-gas regulation once he takes office, and our state law contains most if not all the elements that would make up a national effort. Other regions of the U.S. are also developing their own trading markets.
What does the new program mean for Long Beach? Only time will tell, but I suspect our recently appointed Sustainable City Commission will have an active role. This 11-member commission (with one vacancy) has been meeting for roughly a year, and works closely with the city staff to develop its agenda and priorities. So far they have worked with the City Council to pass an ordinance last April banning styrofoam in City facilities and encouraging its phase-out throughout Long Beach.
For my part, I’ll continue to do what I do: leave the car home as often as I can, use my new dual-flush toilet, wear more sweaters on cold evenings, recycle stuff, and try to remember to turn off unneeded lights. (I confess I’m amazingly bad at that last one.) In the meantime, we’ll all have a front-row seat as the world changes.