The meltdown of California’s cap-and-trade system of reducing carbon emissions has not only thrown its climate change crusade into disarray but caused collateral damage.
One victim is Gov. Jerry Brown’s $3.1 billion plan to spend auction proceeds, now on indefinite hold. It not only affects a $500 million allocation for Brown’s bullet train project, but another $500 million for “low carbon transportation and fuels.”
The latter is a centerpiece of Brown’s very ambitious drive to reduce petroleum use in auto travel – the largest single source of California’s carbon emissions – by 50 percent by 2030 even though the Legislature indirectly rejected that goal last year.
Senate Bill 350, carried by Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, would have embedded the 50 percent cut in state law. But a bloc of business-friendly Democrats, backed by an intensive oil industry opposition campaign, stalled the bill in the Assembly.
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