2006: global warming and air quality in the legislature

Gov. Schwarzenegger signed the landmark environmental bill of the year - AB 32 (Nunez, Pavley), the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, requiring California to roll back its carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Since our emissions have skyrocketed since then, it will mean reducing today's emissions by 25%. Clearly this will not be easy, but the first step has been taken.

A truly far-reaching global warming bill aimed at the 21% of imported electricity from our neighbors that is generated from coal was also signed, SB 1368 (Perata), that will hopefully prompt replacing it with clean, renewable forms of energy.

Regrettably, AB 1012 (Nation) was vetoed, which would have greatly increased the amount of alternative-fuel motor vehicles sold in California by 2020.

The Club's top air-quality bill, AB 1870 (Lieber), was signed, though not reported in the media. This bill will close an egregious loophole in the smog-check procedure that allowed "smoking vehicles" to pass the test, and will also increase the "scrapping" value of vehicles that fail the test to $1,500. Older motor vehicles are the single greatest source of smog in the state.

The bad news is that AB 2444, the bill that many of us in the Bay Area worked so hard for and which passed the legislature (though by only one vote in the Assembly), was vetoed by Gov. Schwarzenegger. The Sierra Club's Bay Area Transportation Committee is not deterred in trying to achieve a regional motor-vehicle-registration fee for the nine-county Bay Area. Already there is talk of approaching Palo Alto Sen. Joe Simitian, who had amended his state-wide registration fee bill, SB 1611, to satisfy Sierra Club concerns (but that bill failed to clear the Assembly), to author a regional registration bill.

In southern California, a bill aimed to reduce particulate pollution from its single greatest source, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, sadly was vetoed. SB 927 (Lowenthal) would have placed a $30 fee on containers at these ports to fund clean-up efforts. The governor pointed to Prop 1B, the $20 billion infrastructure general-obligation bond, as a better source to mitigate port pollution.

Finally, SB 999 (Machado) would have restructured the San Joaquin Valley Air District to make it more reflective of the region, but never cleared the Assembly. The Central Valley and the South Coast continue to suffer the worst air quality in the country.

In sum, the legislature had a good year for air-quality and global-warming solutions, but it could have been better.

Irvin Dawid, air-quality co-chair, Sierra Club California