Dreamers of the Golden Dream
motherjones.com
excerpt from a longish article:
Today, California can claim first place in just about every renewable-energy category: It is home to the nation's largest wind farm and the world's largest solar thermal plant. It has the largest operating photovoltaic solar installation on Earth and more rooftop solar than any other state. (It helps to have a lot of roofs.) This new industry has been an economic boon as well. Solar companies now employ an estimated 64,000 people in the state, surpassing the number of people working for all the major utilities. California has attracted more venture capital investment for clean-energy technologies than the European Union and China combined. Even the state's manufacturing base is experiencing a boost; one of California's largest factories is Tesla Motors' sprawling electric-vehicle assembly plant in the Bay Area.
All of these advances have undercut a fundamental tenet of economics: that more growth equals more emissions. Between 2003 and 2013 (the most recent data), the Golden State decreased its greenhouse gas emissions by 5.5 percent while increasing its gross domestic product by 17 percent—and it did so under the thumb of the nation's most stringent energy regulations.
That achievement has made California the envy of other governments. At the climate change summit in Paris last December, Governor Jerry Brown floated about like an A-list celebrity. Reporters trailed after him, foreign delegations sought his advice, audiences applauded wherever he spoke. And Brown, reveling in the attention, readily offered up California as a blueprint for the world.
When his term ends in two years, Brown will have been in elective office in California for 34 years, including 16 as governor, a job he first took on in 1975 and reclaimed in 2011. At 77, Brown, whose long résumé includes a stint at seminary, is the rare American politician who muses openly about whether humanity has already " gone over the edge," calls climate change deniers "troglodytes," and blames global warming for every natural calamity that befalls California, from drought to wildfires, even when he's criticized for taking the connection too far.
In what is likely to be the last chapter of his elective career, Brown is now embarking on a bold social experiment that will define his legacy. This past October, he reset California's goalposts by adopting some of the most ambitious carbon-reducing rules in the world. SB 350, the Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act, says that by 2030, California must get half its electricity from renewables and it must double the energy efficiency of its buildings. These measures are intended to push the state to its ultimate goal: by 2050, cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below the level it produced in 1990 (the baseline much of the world—but not the United States—agreed to pursue in the 1997 Kyoto climate treaty). It is this last measure that makes California's global warming mission far more sweeping than any nation's, because while countries with ambitious targets like Germany and Japan have shrinking populations, California will be home to 50 million people in 2050, two-thirds more than in 1990.
more at the link |
