Anti-global warming law ‘costly’
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – California’s ambitious plan to curb global warming will be costly to businesses and consumers, experts said Thursday, and its impact on the climate could be negligible – unless other states and nations follow.
Although it’s too early to know exactly what will happen over the next two decades, the state’s basic industries such as utilities, oil refineries and steel mills can expect to make major changes in how they do business. And consumers may face higher bills for electricity, gasoline and other goods that use energy.
“My view is that in the end, this is going to be costly, but it’s a cost that we have to be willing to pay because the alternative is potentially very bleak,” said Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute in Berkeley.
But experts stressed that California could do little, if anything, to curb climate change on its own because of the global nature of the problem.
“The actual effect on California’s climate of reducing the state’s carbon dioxide emissions will be negligible. It will only be successful if the rest of the world follows,” said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution.
Dan Skopec, undersecretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, said he is optimistic that “once it’s proven that California can slow greenhouse gases and grow its economy, other states and other nations will follow.”
The bill would require a 25 percent cut in emissions of greenhouses gases between now and 2020, and will likely use a combination of mandatory emission caps on power plants, refineries and other heavy industry as well as energy efficiency measures and an emissions trading program.
To reach 1990 levels of greenhouse gases, as the law mandates, experts suggest California will need to eliminate 174 million metric tons. About a third would come from an earlier car tailpipe emissions law approved by California that has been challenged by automakers in court.
While the economic effects of a mandatory cut in emissions could be sweeping, California has a lot at stake in the battle against global warming, perhaps more than any other state, climate experts say.
Its water supplies, agriculture - its top industry – and its most popular recreational activities all depend on a healthy climate, as do forests, deserts, ocean ecosystems and the rare species that inhabit them.
Amid growing concern about worldwide climate change, the Assembly on Thursday approved as expected by 46-31 the bill by Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles. It passed 23-14 in the Senate on Wednesday. It now goes to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said Wednesday he would sign it.
California is the world’s 12th largest emitter of greenhouse gases, responsible for 10 percent of the carbon dioxide produced nationally and 2.5 percent internationally.
Backers hailed passage of the first-of-its-kind action by a state government as both a model for the nation and a rebuff to the Bush administration, which support only voluntary measures to limit carbon dioxide from cars, factories, electric power plants and farms.
On Thursday, the White House issued a muted response from James L. Connaughton, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality.
“We welcome effective state action to complement over 60 regulatory, incentive, and voluntary federal programs working to achieve the president’s goal of reducing national greenhouse gas intensity by 18 percent by 2012,” he said.
The new effort is strongly supported by environmentalists, Democrats and Silicon Valley investors. Republican lawmakers and many business organizations opposed.
Executives for industries that consume large amounts of electricity fear that putting caps on greenhouse gas emissions only in California could drive employers and jobs across state lines.
Electricity prices, already among the highest in the nation, could soar as utilities stop using electricity generated from cheap coal and increase their reliance on costly natural gas.