California just got its climate report card and we’re betting the state wants to hide this one from its parents.
The Golden State has been cramming to clean up its greenhouse-gas grades for more than a decade, and Gov. Jerry Brown has pledged to fight President Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back climate action. So when Trump dropped out of the Paris agreement earlier this month, California was all like, “Whatever dude, I’m going to work even harder, and score the winning touchdown, and graduate for all of us!”
To put it another way, California has set lofty goals and now wants to set them even higher.
“There’s support for more aggressive California climate action,” says Meredith Fowlie, an environmental economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “California is determined to step up, particularly as Washington pulls back.”
The problem is, the state has struggled to hit the targets it already set. After psyching itself up to take on the world, California has taken some important steps forward, but it looks like it has also taken the a few bong hits and a lot of naps. The Golden State wants to bring its greenhouse gas emissions down to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, but it’s not on pace to get there, according to the state’s annual inventory of greenhouse gas emissions. That target looks so far away, Fowlie says, that it “makes the much-celebrated greenhouse gas emissions reductions we’ve achieved so far look timid.”
The state will need new policies, including a stronger cap-and-trade program, to improve its pace, Fowlie and other experts say.
Using the California Environmental Protection Agency’s recent report, we’ve created a handy report card, grading California in four key areas.
Getting the economy off carbon: Great effort! (but not fast enough)
California is bringing down emissions even as the state’s population (39 million and counting) and economy keeps growing. That’s great news as well as a monumental change.
Until recently, an uptick in the economy meant an uptick in greenhouse gas emissions; you couldn’t have one without the other. But now emissions are dropping as California’s businesses boom.
However, the state is still burning more than its share of dinosaur slime. The average Californian still emits more than 11 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, a little over twice the world average.
Transportation: Backsliding (see teacher)
Share of emissions: 37 percent
Planes, trucks, cars, and the like are the biggest source of emissions in the state, and…
