News Analysis » U.S. Climate Technology Plan

California And Kyoto

Image: David Paul Morris/Getty Images

On 27 September, exactly one week after the Bush administration released its long-term climate technology road map, California’s Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger [photo] signed into law a bill pledging that the state will cut its greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020. Though that objective falls somewhat short of what the Kyoto Protocol would require of the United States—a reduction in U.S. ­emissions to 7 percent below their 1990 level by 2010—the California program still ­represents a 25 percent reduction from what the state’s emissions otherwise would be in 2020.

The new law gives the California Air Resources Board (CARB) sweeping powers to formulate and implement a plan to slash the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. No doubt the plan will include stricter energy standards for residential and commercial construction, emissions caps for major sectors like electric power and petrochemicals, a carbon trading system, and required best practices for sectors like agriculture. Inevitably, stricter limits on motor vehicles, which account for about 40 percent of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions, will be a big part of the program.

Critics of the California bill worry about the detailed planning authority it gives CARB, which has had difficulty forcing adoption of zero-emission cars, and they complain that the program will put the state at an economic disadvantage vis-à-vis other states. Its proponents, including Schwarzenegger, argue that it will help make the state even more of a world leader in developing green technologies. California is one of the nation’s top wind energy producers, and it has the country’s most ambitious solar roofs program. Its per capita consumption of electricity has stayed very nearly flat for several decades and is two-thirds the national average. Its drivers get better mileage from their cars.—William Sweet