By Julie Cart and Laurel Rosenhall, CALmatters
Against the sparkling backdrop of sailboats bobbing on San Francisco Bay, Gov. Jerry Brown last month signed a bill extending California’s cap-and-trade program, assuring that the most high-profile piece of the state’s fight against climate change persists for another decade.
In a Sacramento hearing room two days later, the California Air Resources Board approved a paragraph, tucked within a 17-page resolution, that will likely result in benefits worth hundreds of millions of dollars for the oil and agriculture industries. It was the first domino to visibly fall as a consequence of behind-the-scenes dealmaking that produced a cap-and-trade program acceptable to both key environmental groups and major polluters.
Read the complete story at CALmatters.
For more information about California’s cap-and-trade program, read the San Francisco Public Press (in collaboration with Earth Island Journal and Bay Nature magazine) special report on climate change.
