Jerry Brown Advocates Early Support for AB 32 Implementation

I'll tell you about a law that I'm enforcing, and that's a law that Ronald Reagan signed called the California Environmental Quality Act. There's another law that Governor Schwarzenegger signed called The Global Warming Solutions Control Act, AB 32. Now, I have to tell you, these Republicans are always signing further-reaching, invasive, comprehensive measures to make your life difficult. And I, as your Democratic attorney general, am going to try to temper the wind for the shorn lamb, because these are very stringent rules. You've heard I'm a top cop. Well, I'm the top cop not just to go chase the criminals who break into your homes and shoot up the neighborhood, but also people who emit greenhouse gases and who create impacts and potential impacts on projects. If you're in local government, almost anything qualifies as a project that you have to decide on. And if you have to decide on it, and if it may have an impact, then you've got to deal with it.

When I was mayor (and I always try to see things differently depending upon where I'm standing), I proposed, for the city of Oakland, that the downtown area be exempted from the California Environmental Quality Act. I did, because that damn thing was always getting in my way; they were blocking my projects; there was delay; the developers were complaining. So I came up here to Sacramento and that was shot down-dead on arrival. But it was a limited measure, and in downtown Oakland, there wasn't a lot of private development. I wanted pollution and cars and traffic and noise and overcrowding and lights and refrigeration. We wanted all that good stuff because we didn't have enough of it. So I said, "Why do we need to study the impact? We want impacts, by definition. I'll stipulate that it will cause trouble, but we need it. We need that kind of trouble." That's why I used to say that the problems of San Francisco-overcrowding, traffic-are the solutions of Oakland.

By the way, I want to make sure you know this, 10,000 people have arrived, the economy is getting good, and now the new governments are getting a little more squeamish about the environment in Oakland, and I'll probably be harassing developers with all manners of restriction. However, the Environmental Quality Act embodies some fundamental principles that do guide our thinking and the way we should do, and must do, things in the state. It really preserves this wonderful quality of life. Among the things that get pulled into this very comprehensive stature are impacts related to global warming and greenhouse gases.

This is an issue that our governor has certainly put on the front burner. What California has done in adopting AB 32 is more comprehensive than any state in the United States and in some ways is more comprehensive than any other country in the world. It hasn't accomplished these things yet, but it has laid out a framework where all the activities within the state will be subject to restrictions and changes such that we can reduce our greenhouse gases.

I want to put that into context. First of all, climate change is real. I know there are some who deny that, and I am not a scientist, but I take notice when more than 90 percent of the global climate scientists work on this thing and have been working on it since 1988-they've been working through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their latest report, as is put in the materials by the League, indicates a 90 percent confidence level in what the governmental panel believes to be the conclusion about human-induced global climate change.

The difficulty with it, of course, is that it happens slowly. Every year, the parts of greenhouse gas equivalent grow by perhaps two parts per million. The difficulty is, we're now at an amount, a concentration, greater than any time in human history, even going way back 650,000 years. As far as the records show, we've never had this concentration. And scientists have a 90 percent confidence level in the connection between the concentration of greenhouse gases and global warming. In fact, a scientist from UC San Diego did a survey of all the peer-reviewed scientific journal papers, and did not find one that cast any substantial doubt on the phenomenon of global warming or the connection of greenhouse gases and human activities.

So, the science is clear; the threat is real. We're already seeing effects right now, perhaps, in the intensification of hurricanes and in the earlier melting of ice in California and the melting of glaciers and parts of arctic regions.

The scientists say it's going to take a little while, ten years, 20 years, longer. But look down the road and see what we have here, with 6.7 billion going to 7.5, 8 billion. We have about 700 million cars. Thirty years ago, there were 300 million cars. And so the car population is growing, the people population is growing, the pollutants that we're generating are huge, and it's never happened before in the way that it's happening now. So we've got to do something about it.

AB 32 does do that. It sets an ambitious goal: it says that by 2020, California will reduce its greenhouse gases to the level of 1990. 400 mayors have entered into an agreement where they have committed to reduce greenhouse gases to 7 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2012. In California, AB 32 doesn't even start until 2012. By the way, I signed the agreement myself; I said, "How the hell are we ever going to do this?" It looks good, sounds good. I'm sitting over there on the City Hall steps with Gavin Newsom, I'm not going to not sign it in front of all those television cameras, so I signed the damn thing. But how are we going to make it work? That's a big question mark. It's highly unlikely [that we'll meet the goal by] 2012, but we've got to do it.

I started sending off comment letters saying, "You've got to count your greenhouse gases, you've got to look for appeasable measures, and then you've got to adopt them." Well, that got everybody all excited, saying I was interfering with the process. The seriousness of the problem, the growing problem of both oil dependency and its connected consequence of global warming-it's here now, and it's getting worse, and we can't wait five years before the rules take effect.

The ARB has a complicated job. It's going to take them every bit of the years until 2011 to get the regulations, 2012 before they go into effect. It's complicated, but we don't have to wait. We, meaning each one of us here in local government and we who live in communities, can do something. We have to do something. I think the creativity of individual city councils will devise responses and ideas that will take us a long way, so that by the time the rules comes-by the way, when the rules come out, it doesn't mean anything happens...

...Not only are the automobile companies trying to kill our California auto emissions standards that are aimed at reducing greenhouse gases, the Environmental Protection Agency, which has to grant a waiver before the California law goes into effect, sat on their hands for a couple years, and who knows whether they will ever give us a waiver. We're going to have to sue them, too! If I can sue San Bernardino, I can certainly sue the Environmental Protection Agency. And this time, I've got Governor Schwarzenegger on my side, because he's going to be the plaintiff. He can take the heat, I'll just be his lawyer, and we'll go fight George Bush.

So, there's no guarantee that AB 32 is going to go into effect in 2012. It could be 2014 or 2015, all the while more cars, more vehicles being driven, more generation using gas, more problems. So this is where you come in, and this is where I really want to rally local officials to take whatever creative initiatives you can devise in your own communities. Already, the League of Cities has supported, with CSAC, the Institute for Local Government. You have this in your materials; there are a lot of good ideas here.

If these ideas are followed, if we have the support of local officials, and if you and I join with the grassroots efforts of non-profits and environmental groups and citizen groups, we will build a very powerful movement that will position California to be able to implement AB 32 when the storied year of 2012 comes around. I think it's going to take a lot of groundwork if we're really going to see something happen.

I'm not saying it's easy. In San Bernardino, with something like AB 32, we didn't say how we're going to do it, but we did say that there will be a public process, the county agreed to that, 30 months examining the greenhouse gases that are generated in the county, looking at the subset of greenhouse gases, taking inventory of those that are caused by the county of San Bernardino-its buildings, its automobiles, its trucks-and then looking at the greenhouse gases caused by the land use regulations, which are definitely far less than the total activity in San Bernardino. When you figure out those greenhouse gases caused by the county in one form or another, you can then adopt feasible measures to reduce that. You do it in a public process over a period of 30 months and involve the whole community so you know what you're doing and you get people to participate. That's exactly what I think every city and every county can do in this state.

It's not a quick answer. That's why AB 32 doesn't go into effect until 2012, and why it takes until 2020 before we're supposed to get there. My point is this: we are looking at serious consequences-more forest fires, quicker melting of snow, saltwater intrusion, breaking of levees, increased swamps, and health impacts, particularly in the elderly and those with respiratory diseases, who will suffer more heart attacks. The threat is real. The measures to deal with the threat are clear, at least in the beginning. To go all the way is going to take something beyond the internal combustion engine. It's going to take much more public transit; it's going to take more walkable cities; it's going to take a lot of changes that are going to take time to introduce and to be incorporated into our communities.

But now is the time to take what action you can. I do believe that the League of Cities, when you take the collective strength of all your diverse membership, can make the difference. I want to help you do that, because if you don't, I'm going to sue you. So let's make this easy for both of us-just do what I'm telling you to do, and you'll become more popular, I'll become less unpopular, and everything will work out just fine.

You've got your road map, you have your threat, and you have the carrot of all the good things that you will achieve and all the bad things you will avoid. So, to summarize, this is a no-brainer. Let's get working, and let's reduce oil dependency and fight global climate change.