USA, California:

Opinion: Anti-Carbon Crusade Clouded with Uncertainties (Sacramento Bee)

Declaring it a moral imperative, California’s leading figures have embarked on a crusade to “decarbonize” the state, sharply reducing emissions of gases they say threaten to wreak havoc, even extinction, on the globe’s human population.

A first-stage decarbonization program is underway. But Brown and other political figures, such as Kevin de León, the president pro tem of the state Senate, want California to set a global example over the next 15 years by reducing petroleum consumption in cars and trucks by 50 percent, making buildings more energy-efficient and increasing electrical production from renewable sources – solar, wind and geothermal – from 33 percent, the current goal, to 50 percent. De León is carrying Senate Bill 350 that would implement those goals.

Their crusade, however, raises multiple questions:

• How will those ambitious goals be met, and at what cost?
• Will decarbonization be the economic boon that Brown and others envision, or will it make California less attractive for job-creating investment?
• Will it have a trend-setting effect on global carbon policy, or be ignored by the rest of the world?
• Does it even go far enough?

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