03/29/2024

10 Years in, Has California’s Climate Law Really Lowered Emissions?

When Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed California’s landmark climate strategy into law in 2006, he laid out the mission succinctly.

“We simply must do everything we can that is in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late,” he declared at the September 27 signing ceremony.

Without its landmark climate policies, California would have pumped some 100 million metric tons more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Ten years later, few would argue that California hasn’t done its fair share in the fight against climate change. But the question of how much the Global Warming Solutions Act, still known by its legislative shorthand as AB 32, has actually cut California’s greenhouse gas emissions, is tougher to get at.

“I think that it worked,” says Jeffrey Greenblatt, a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

But to paraphrase a former president, it depends on what your definition of “it” is. So, he amplified.

“I think that AB 32 plus the suite of complementary policies that have come in its wake have been an overwhelming success.”

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