The Brown administration recently bragged that California has met its 2020 climate-reduction goals two years early. Find out why:
- California’s real contribution to Greenhouse Gases may be increasing
- Current policies including cap-and-trade make reaching our 2030 goals impossible
- Current climate policy makes environmental justice worse
Check out this slide show by Sunflower Alliance member and San Francisco State University faculty member Kathy McAfee, presented at the 2018 Soil Not Oil conference in San Francisco September 10.
The slide show explains how California’s cap and trade program gives greenhouse gas emitters a green light to put even more carbon dioxide into the air — and worsens pollution in already overburdened communities. It shows that recent reduction in California’s greenhouse gas emissions came, not because of, but despite the cap-and-trade program. (The reduction was mostly a result of heavy rains in 2016, which temporarily increased the supply of hydroelectric power.)
The presentation also explains why Jerry Brown’s excuse for failing to rein in the state’s oil industry — fear that it will raise gas prices — is false. And it points to the policies that could really bring greenhouse gas emissions under control.