California's Breakthrough on Global Warming Could Have a Major Impact on Policy in Washington

August 30, 2006

Governor Schwarzenegger has embraced a cap on vehicle and industry emissions as a way to make California a trendsetter in fighting global warming.   California's Global Warming Solutions Act aims to cut emissions to 1990 levels, or around 25 percent, by 2020 with an enforceable cap and mandatory reporting for top polluters.

California's breakthrough on global warming could have a major impact on policy in Washington.  The nation's most populous state is the world's 12th-largest emitter of greenhouse gases and could suffer dire consequences if global temperatures increase only a few degrees.   California is the world's 6th-largest economy.

Governor Schwarzenegger in the breakthrough pushed for a market-based system that will eventually give companies tools to meet emissions targets, like carbon credit trading.

(Source: GWIC)

National Submissions to the U.N. Climate Secretariat in Bonn 2005

Most of the rise in greenhouse gases was caused by a 1.7 percent gain in emissions in the United States, the world's biggest source of greenhouse gases, to a record 7.07 billion metric tons. Emissions in the European Union and Canada also rose while Japan's dipped.

Most Industrialized nations except the United States and Australia have ratified Kyoto, which obliges an overall cut in emissions of at least 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 with a shift to cleaner energies such as wind and solar power.

Kyoto is meant as a tiny first step by rich nations to slow global warming that many scientists say could spur more heatwaves, droughts, floods, more powerful storms and swamp coastal areas by melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.

(Source: GWIC)