22/07/2017

Local Governments in California File Common Law Claims Against Largest Fossil Fuel Companies

Columbia Law School - Michael Burger



Yesterday, three local governments in California (San Mateo County, Marin County and the City of Imperial Beach) filed potentially groundbreaking climate change lawsuits in California state courts, each one charging a group of 20 fossil fuel companies with liability for public nuisance, failure to warn, design defect, private nuisance, negligence, and trespass.
This type of state common law climate litigation has been a long time coming, and these cases may well represent the first of a slew of similar cases nationwide. Here, I summarize several interesting aspects of the complaints, and offer some first blush thoughts on both the legal hurdles they might face and the potential outcomes they might produce.

The Lawsuits
Each of the complaints presents the same simple, compelling storyline: These fossil fuel companies knew. They knew that climate change was happening, that fossil fuel production and use was causing it, and that continued fossil fuel production and use would only make it worse. They knew this, but they hid it. And then they lied about it, and paid other people to lie about it for them. All the while they profited from it, and plotted to profit more.
Ultimately, their actions caused sea levels to rise, and thereby caused harm, are continuing to cause harm, and are contributing to future harm to the plaintiff governments and their residents. Accordingly, the complaints claim that the defendant companies should be held liable and forced to pay, both for the costs the local governments are incurring to adapt to sea level rise and for the companies' own willful, deceptive, and malicious behavior.
The named defendants include Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Citgo, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, Peabody Energy, Total, Eni, Arch Coal, Rio Tinto, Statoil, Anadarko, Occidental, Repsol, Marathon, Hess, Devon, Encana, Apache, and unspecified "Company Does."
According to the plaintiffs, these companies are responsible for about 20% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that were emitted during the period from 1965 to 2015, an amount which the complaints argue is a "substantial portion" of the climate change problem. The "substantial portion" claim is legally significant.
To show that the defendants are liable, the plaintiffs must demonstrate that they caused the alleged harms. Climate change, of course, is caused by many different actors; sea level rise and resulting impacts are attributable to climate change and, in some instances, other factors.
Thus, it may be argued that the defendants are not the only parties who can or should bear responsibility, or blame. However, as a matter of law, causation can be shown by proving that the defendants are a "substantial factor," or that they contributed significantly to the harm. Relying on a cumulative carbon analysis, plaintiffs make a strong case that that standard is met.
The timeframe plaintiffs employ for the cumulative carbon analysis is an important one, for both its legal and narrative impact. In rough terms, it corresponds with what Will Steffen calls the "Great Acceleration," the years since the 1960s in which approximately 75% of all historic industrial emissions have occurred, and in which the rate of fossil fuel production and consumption has significantly increased.
The specific years also mark notable bookends in climate change history. In 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson's Scientific Advisory Committee Panel on Environmental Pollution reported that unabated CO2 emissions would, by 2000, alter the climate, and Johnson charged Congress to address the problem. In 2015 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had just issued its Fifth Assessment Report, relaying the state of the art in climate science and understanding, and the global community signed the Paris Agreement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The plaintiffs recite an increasingly well-documented, and familiar, timeline regarding what the fossil fuel companies knew and understood about climate change, and what they said and did (or did not do) about it. Several aspects of the story jumped out to me:
  • In 1980, Imperial Oil (a Canadian company in which Exxon owns a super-majority stake), reported to Exxon and Esso that power plant carbon capture technology was technologically feasible, but that it would "double the cost of power generation." (Carbon capture is not yet deployed at scale in the power sector.)
  • Some fossil fuel exploration and production companies started climate proofing their own infrastructure around 20 years ago. They started investing in Arctic development capacity even further back, likely in anticipation of new exploration and production opportunities in a melting region.
  • In 1988, industry fundamentally shifted its stance towards climate change, turning away from independent research and outward statements favoring action, and turning towards the strategies and tactics documented in Erik Conway and Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt, further revealed through reporting by the Energy and Environmental Reporting Project at Columbia University, and the ongoing subject of investigations by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and others.
    That year, according to the complaint, the political will to take on the climate change challenge was becoming increasingly evident. The insinuation one draws is that once industry sensed the real possibility of a commitment to international cooperation and domestic regulation it began to mount its overt and covert defenses.
  • Current EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt was an active participant in fossil fuel companies' coordinated effort to resist climate change regulations.
According to the plaintiffs, the consequence of the cumulative emissions put into the market by defendants, and of the disinformation campaign waged by certain industry leaders and the think tanks, communications shops, and lobbying operations they funded and hired, are rising sea levels that have already impacted local governments and residents, and that will continue to do so, in ever more extreme ways, in the years to come.
These impacts include inundation of public beaches and coastal property, and more frequent and extreme flooding and storm surge, resulting in some permanent property losses and requiring expenditure of funds for impact assessment, as well as adaptation and emergency response planning and implementation.
And so they have sued, seeking damages, both compensatory and punitive, under a range of common law theories that place blame on and assign responsibility to these defendants because of their knowledge, their resistance to mitigation, and their various roles in fossil fuel exploration, production, marketing, and consumption.

The Legal Obstacles  
Scholars and practitioners have theorized this type of climate action for years. For example, in 2011, my colleague Michael Gerrard wrote this piece, surveying a host of issues such cases will inevitably encounter, and Doug Kysar of Yale early on wrote this piece on how climate change may itself influence the future shape of tort law. Tracy Hester at the University of Houston has written this analysis of the different elements of state common law climate cases. Thinking on this goes further back, to the state common law public nuisance claims included – but never decided – in Connecticut v. American Electric Power.
Importantly, these cases have been filed at a particular moment in time, when scientific consensus on and understanding of climate change is at an all-time high but the federal government's commitment to addressing the problem is at an all-time low. In fact, it's in negative territory, with a president, an EPA administrator and an Interior secretary determined to ramp up fossil fuel production and consumption while doing nothing to mitigate emissions or adapt to impacts. And the fossil fuel industry's active role in fighting against climate action continues to come to light, making comparisons to the tobacco litigation (like this one) increasingly accurate.
Without detracting from the many other legal issues likely to arise in the lawsuits, here are three that come immediately to mind.
Standing: The first issue that tends to come up in thinking about climate change litigation is standing. Standing is a threshold issue in any challenge to government action, or inaction, in the climate change arena. But these are common law tort claims. The elements of standing – injury, causation, redressability – constitute the merits of the case. Were plaintiffs harmed in a tortious manner? Did defendants cause that harm? Are plaintiffs entitled to damages? That's the whole case, not a preliminary matter to determine jurisdiction.
Accordingly, it seems that a standing challenge should not, in theory, succeed; at least, not before the merits of the case are determined. Nonetheless, standing was an issue in Connecticut v. AEP, where the Supreme Court was asked to rule on whether a federal common law public nuisance claim could proceed. In her opinion finding the federal nuisance claim displaced by the federal Clean Air Act, Justice Ginsburg noted that "[f]our members of the Court would hold that at least some plaintiffs have Article III standing." Justice Sotomayor did not participate in that decision, meaning that Justice Kennedy voted to uphold his own opinion from Massachusetts v. EPA, which found states had standing to sue due to injuries they suffered from climate change.
Thus, at the moment, there are likely at least five votes for the broad proposition that states have standing to sue for climate change. The opinion in Mass. v. EPA, however, relied on the "special solicitude" owed states due to their quasi-sovereign status. Here, plaintiffs are local governments, which may or may not be given a similar weighting by Justice Kennedy and others.
Political Question: In Connecticut v. AEP, the federal district court originally found that there were no judicially manageable standards by which to adjudicate a public nuisance claim brought by states, cities, national environmental organizations, and three private land trusts against five power companies, and that the cases raised a political question necessarily left for the political branches. The Second Circuit reversed this judgment, finding that courts have long adjudicated complex environmental nuisance cases, and that the political question doctrine did not pose a bar.
The Supreme Court's view of the matter is a little obscure. Justice Ginsburg noted that "at least four judges" found that neither standing nor any other "threshold obstacle bars review."
The infamous footnote 6 in that opinion refers to the political question doctrine, but neither it nor the text offers an explanation of exactly how the justices voted on the matter. All of which leaves the political question issue unresolved.
The 9th Circuit, in Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil Corp., another federal common law nuisance case, did not directly address the political question doctrine, relying instead on the displacement analysis from Connecticut v. AEP. In Comer v. Murphy Oil, a Fifth Circuit panel found that the political question doctrine did not bar state tort claims brought against several companies for their contributions to climate change. However, that decision was later vacated in a uniquely bizarre procedural sequence.
The facts of this case, however, are different. Plaintiffs have framed their case not about climate change policy in the abstract, and not only about a specific quantity of emissions contributing to climate change, but also about these private actors' individual and collective conduct, which includes not only producing GHG emissions but interacting with the market and with regulators in a sustained disinformation campaign. Plaintiffs are not seeking to establish a specific policy in regards to GHG emissions, public lands management, or other matters of federal agency discretion. Rather, they are seeking damages for harms caused by market behavior they claim was, among other things, knowing, negligent, and intentionally misleading.
Preemption: In Connecticut v. AEP, the Supreme Court found that a public nuisance case brought in federal court under federal common law had been displaced by the Clean Air Act. Because the Court had previously held in Mass v. EPA that EPA was authorized to regulate GHGs by the federal legislation, there was no longer room for federal common law. However, the court did not reach the state common law claims also plead in that case.
It remains an open question whether state claims such as those plead here are preempted by federal legislation, including the Clean Air Act, the Mineral Leasing Act, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, and other statutes setting federal GHG emissions and fossil fuel extraction, transportation, and consumption policy. In Comer, the original Fifth Circuit panel concluded that federal preemption was inapplicable to plaintiffs state common law claims; but, as noted, that decision was vacated and has no precedential value. Its reasoning, of course, nonetheless bears consideration.
One preemption case that defendants may seek to invoke is the Fourth Circuit decision in North Carolina v. Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). There, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit dismissed a common law nuisance action brought by the state of North Carolina against TVA. The action focused on emissions from TVA-operated power plants in Alabama and Tennessee, which were alleged to cause air pollution and associated health problems in North Carolina.
Even if this were the case, however, TVA would not be liable for public nuisance according to the Fourth Circuit. In reaching this decision, the Fourth Circuit noted that "[c]ourts have traditionally been reluctant to enjoin as a public nuisance activities which have been considered and specifically authorized by the government," such as under the Clean Air Act.
The Fourth Circuit reasoned that "TVA's plants cannot logically be public nuisances where TVA is in compliance" with the Clean Air Act, and its plants have been permitted by the states in which they operate. Defendants will likely cite to this case to argue that federally permitted activities cannot be the subject of nuisance suits.
Assuming arguendo that North Carolina v. TVA was rightly decided (and there are arguments to be made that it was not), there is at least one key distinction between it and these newly filed cases – the facilities in that case were specifically permitted to pollute under the standards set through the Clean Air Act, and the permits in question authorized the pollution in question.
Here, by contrast, none of the federal programs through which defendants have operated, and none of the foreign governments that have permitted them to operate in other jurisdictions, have thoroughly considered, far less sought to regulate, the downstream GHG emissions associated with their activities.
What's more, given the Trump Administration's outright resistance to using the federal statutes to regulate GHGs at any stage there can be no conflict between state law and federal law, and state law cannot be said to be an obstacle to achieving any particular federal goals. Defendants might argue that state common law liability would conflict with the Trump Administration's decision to not protect public health and welfare, or to pursue "energy dominance," or some other such thing, but we have to hope that that line of reasoning will not find sympathetic audiences in court.

Possible Outcomes
As with the case of Juliana v. United States, currently winding its way towards a trial date next year, these cases face significant legal hurdles. Success on the merits is far from assured. But it could happen. The facts are there, making the case for causation and culpability, and the law can accommodate these claims. What's more, if other cases in other jurisdictions are brought, we may ultimately see a large-scale settlement similar to the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, or perhaps establishment of a fund through federal legislation, along the lines of the Superfund program established under CERCLA.
However, and again as with Juliana, there are also potential outcomes short of success on the merits that could still advance the ball on climate change. For one thing, these cases represent a new pressure point on the fossil fuel industry, and a new spotlight on that industry's engagement with climate law and policy.
They make the case that these companies are bad actors, who have lied for years to continue to generate profits at the expense of the local governments and individual citizens and residents who bear the costs of climate impacts. The drama of the courtroom setting could mobilize the public's interest and give life to local activism on these issues, much as Juliana has captured the youth climate movement and given it voice.
Moreover, the prospect of judicial judgment affirming plaintiffs' case might nudge these companies to accelerate their own transition away from past practices, towards new approaches to providing energy to consumers.

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21/07/2017

Satellite Snafu Masked True Sea-Level Rise For Decades

Nature - Jeff Tollefson

Revised tallies confirm that the rate of sea-level rise is accelerating as the Earth warms and ice sheets thaw.
As the Greenland ice sheet thaws, it is helping to raise the world's sea levels. Joe Raedle/Getty
The numbers didn’t add up. Even as Earth grew warmer and glaciers and ice sheets thawed, decades of satellite data seemed to show that the rate of sea-level rise was holding steady — or even declining.
Now, after puzzling over this discrepancy for years, scientists have identified its source: a problem with the calibration of a sensor on the first of several satellites launched to measure the height of the sea surface using radar. Adjusting the data to remove that error suggests that sea levels are indeed rising at faster rates each year.
“The rate of sea-level rise is increasing, and that increase is basically what we expected,” says Steven Nerem, a remote-sensing expert at the University of Colorado Boulder who is leading the reanalysis. He presented the as-yet-unpublished analysis on 13 July in New York City at a conference sponsored by the World Climate Research Programme and the International Oceanographic Commission, among others.
Nerem's team calculated that the rate of sea-level rise increased from around 1.8 millimetres per year in 1993 to roughly 3.9 millimetres per year today as a result of global warming. In addition to the satellite calibration error, his analysis also takes into account other factors that have influenced sea-level rise in the last several decades, such as the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 and the recent El Niño weather pattern.

The view from above
The results align with three recent studies that have raised questions about the earliest observations of sea-surface height, or altimetry, captured by the TOPEX/Poseidon spacecraft, a joint US–French mission that began collecting data in late 1992. Those measurements continued with the launch of three subsequent satellites.
“Whatever the methodology, we all come up with the same conclusions,” says Anny Cazenave, a geophysicist at the Laboratory for Studies in Space Geophysics and Oceanography (LEGOS) in Toulouse, France.
In an analysis published in Geophysical Research Letters in April, Cazenave’s team tallied up the various contributions to sea-level rise, including expansion resulting from warming ocean waters and from ice melt in places such as Greenland. Their results suggest that the satellite altimetry measurements were too high during the first six years that they were collected; after this point, scientists began using TOPEX/Poseidon's back-up sensor. The error in those early measurements distorted the long-term trend, masking a long-term increase in the rate of sea-level rise.
The problem was first identified in 2015 by a group that included John Church, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Church and his colleagues identified a discrepancy between sea-level data collected by satellites and those from tide gauges scattered around the globe. In a second paper published in June in Nature Climate Change, the researchers adjusted the altimetry records for the apparent bias and then calculated sea-level rise rates using a similar approach to Cazenave’s team. The trends lined up, Church says.

Rising tide
Still, Nerem wanted to know what had gone wrong with the satellite measurements. His team first compared the satellite data to observations from tide gauges that showed an accelerating rate of sea-level rise. Then the researchers began looking for factors that could explain the difference between the two data sets.
The team eventually identified a minor calibration that had been built into TOPEX/Poseidon's altimeter to correct any flaws in its data that might be caused by problems with the instrument, such as ageing electronic components. Nerem and his colleagues were not sure that the calibration was necessary — and when they removed it, measurements of sea-level rise in the satellite's early years aligned more closely with the tide-gauge data. The adjusted satellite data showed an increasing rate of sea-level rise over time.
“As records get longer, questions come up,” says Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist who heads NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City. But the recent spate of studies suggests that scientists have homed in on an answer, he says. “It’s all coming together.”
If sea-level rise continues to accelerate at the current rate, Nerem says, the world’s oceans could rise by about 75 centimetres over the next century. That is in line with projections made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2013.
“All of this gives us much more confidence that we understand what is happening,” Church says, and the message to policymakers is clear enough. Humanity needs to reduce its output of greenhouse-gas emissions, he says — and quickly. ”The decisions we make now will have impacts for hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of years.”

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Kids Suing Trump Over Climate Change Get A Boost From Grandpa

Huffington Post - Alexander C. Kaufman

He's famed climatologist James Hansen, whose new research strengthens the case for climate action.


Young People's Burden

If Sophie Kivlehan's crusade to convince skeptics that humans are causing climate change has taught her anything, it's that the surest way to erode doubt is to make the science personal.
The 18-year-old can now point to new research that comes from a very personal source ― her grandfather. And she only needs to sway the federal judge overseeing a landmark lawsuit brought by herself and 20 other young Americans to force the U.S. government to slash planet-warming emissions.
Former NASA scientist James Hansen, Kivlehan's granddad as well as the "grandfather of global warming," published a paper on Tuesday arguing that preventing catastrophic climate change requires far more drastic policy shifts than any government has taken so far.
"There's a narrative out there that because of the Paris accord and because solar panels are becoming cheap, we've turned the corner on dealing with the climate problem," Hansen said on a call with reporters. "In fact, what we show … is that the growth rate of these greenhouse gases is actually accelerating in the last several years, so not only do they continue to grow, they grow faster and faster."
The research compared the currently projected warming of more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, by the end of the century to the only slightly lower global temperatures during the Eemian, an interglacial period that ran from 130,000 to 115,000 years ago. During that time, sea levels surged six to nine meters, or 19 to 30 feet.
At those levels, modern coastal cities would easily be submerged.
To avoid such massive coastal flooding, Hansen argues that the current temperature rise needs to be capped at 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1 degree Celsius, through aggressive steps such as mass reforestation, widespread use of carbon sequestration technology and radical curtailing of fossil fuel production.
The study gives weight to the lawsuit by 21 kids and young adults who accuse the federal government of violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property by promoting fossil fuel production and failing to implement efforts to curb climate change. The suit was filed in 2015 with the help of the Oregon-based nonprofit Our Children's Trust.
Although it originally targeted the Obama administration, the case is now proceeding against President Donald Trump, whose administration has moved to roll back environmental regulations and bolster oil, gas and coal production.
"We will leave young people in the intractable situation in which climate change is occurring out of their control and costs of trying to maintain a livable planet may become too high to bear," Hansen said.
Hansen, who is also a plaintiff in the suit, has a long history of raising the alarm about global warming. He has become a sort of bogeyman among conservative skeptics who dismiss his warnings as "alarmist."
We will leave young people in the intractable situation in which climate change is occurring out of their control and costs of trying to maintain a livable planet may become too high to bear.
Former NASA scientist James Hansen
But his latest report, which he produced with a team of 14 co-authors whose expertise ranges from paleoclimatology to carbon cycles, was tested by three different peer reviewers before being published by the European Geosciences Union.
"The paper should be judged on its scientific merits," Hansen said. "This is hard science, and it's been very severely put through the wringer to make sure everything is well justified and clear."
Its conclusions are also not controversial. The United Nations-brokered Paris Agreement, which was signed by every country but Syria and Nicaragua, urges an ultimate goal of reducing emissions enough to halt warming at an increase of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. The official 3.6 degree target was adopted in the spirit of pragmatic compromise. (Trump announced plans to pull the U.S. out of the pact in June, but cannot legally initiate the process for another two years.)
Still, Hansen's study isn't aimed at convincing the hard-core doubters who embrace the industry-backed pseudoscience often pushed on right-wing news sites like Breitbart. The paper "is intended to make the human impact on the climate clear to the educated lay person, including judges in court," Hansen said.
"In particular, our case focuses on putting the best available science in the courtroom to show how our youngest generation and future generations will be burdened by the continued high fossil fuel emissions," the plaintiffs' co-lead counsel Phillip Gregory said on the call.

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California Communities Are Suing 37 Fossil Fuel Companies Over Climate Damages

ThinkProgress - Natasha Geiling

Two California counties and one town are suing fossil fuel companies for damages related to sea level rise.
Waves pound a wall near buildings in Pacifica, CA. CREDIT: AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File
Two California counties and one California city have filed a lawsuit against 37 of the world's biggest fossil fuel producers, seeking payment for damages brought by climate change.
The three localities are all located along California's coast, and could see as much as 3 feet of sea level rise by the end of the century, according to a 2012 report commissioned by governors from California, Oregon, and Washington. In San Mateo county alone — the most at-risk county in California for sea level rise, according to a Climate Central report, and one of the counties involved in the lawsuit — sea level rise threatens more than $21 billion dollars worth of property.
Alongside San Mateo, Marin County and the city of Imperial Beach filed separate complaints with the California Superior Court, arguing that 37 coal, oil, and gas companies knew about the harm their products posed to the planet and continued to undermine and obfuscate the dangers of climate change.
The localities suing the fossil fuel companies hope to hold them accountable for their carbon emissions, and the subsequent damage that those emissions have caused — and will cause — to the communities.
"The environmental harm these companies knowingly caused to our precious shorelines, and the entire world, and their deliberate efforts to conceal those frightening truths, jeopardizes the public's health and places the financial burden of those consequences on the taxpayers," San Mateo County Board of Supervisors President Don Horsley said in a statement.
The complaint alleges that the 37 companies named as defendants — through extraction, promotion, and marketing of fossil fuels — have accounted for approximately 20 percent of all industrial carbon dioxide and methane pollution released between 1965 and 2015. Specific companies named include Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips, and Peabody Energy, among others.
It isn't the first time fossil fuel companies have been taken to court over a common law claim. In this case, the plaintiffs are making a claim of public nuisance, which is legally defined as something causing widespread harm to a community. Public nuisance claims were brought against tobacco companies in the mid-1990s, which ultimately resulted in a $365.5 billion settlement to recoup Medicaid costs associated with treating smokers.
Public nuisance claims as they relate to climate change have seen limited success in the past. That is due in part to the difficulty associated with linking a particular harm to a particular actor, and in part because courts have found, at least at the federal level, that the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions displaces any kind of public nuisance claim through the court.
But according to Michael Burger, executive director for the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, the lawsuits in California come as close to the tobacco public nuisance claims as any climate litigation in history.
"It's really the degree to which these tort claims rely on this long history of corporate malfeasance and active collusion of industry to hide science, to obfuscate understanding, and to prevent government regulations from something that it appears to be well-aware ought to be regulated," Burger said.
The California localities might also face an easier road than past public nuisance claims, in part because of the increased scientific evidence linking climate change to sea level rise, and an emerging understanding of fossil fuel efforts to hide climate science from the public. In 2015, investigations by both the Los Angeles Times and InsideClimate News found that ExxonMobil was aware of climate science for decades but continued to fund public misinformation campaigns and, potentially, misled investors about the threats climate change posed to their assets.
To really become analogous with the public nuisance claims that eventually resulted in the multi-billion dollar tobacco settlement, more cities, counties, or even states would eventually need to file their own lawsuits or join onto one larger lawsuit. But depending on how the suits in California move forward, Burger sees the potential for more cities and states to follow as a distinct possibility.
"The prospect of that kind of groundswell of state-based litigation would further the analogy to the tobacco litigation and perhaps represent the best chance of getting industry to buy into the idea that some kind of comprehensive settlement would be appropriate," he said.

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20/07/2017

California Lawmakers Approve Landmark Extension To Climate Policy

Reuters - Dan Whitcomb

California's cap-and-trade plan sets a state limit on emissions of greenhouse gases
Solar electric panels are shown installed on the roof of the Hanover Olympic building, the first building to offer individual solar-powered net-zero apartments in Los Angeles, California, U.S., June 6, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake
LOS ANGELES - California's legislature passed a package of bills that extends the state's signature plan to address climate change by a decade, sending Governor Jerry Brown a cap-and-trade plan that uses market forces to cuts greenhouse gas emissions.
The legislation puts California at the forefront of plans by mostly Democratic governors to reduce carbon emissions and adhere to the goals of the Paris climate change agreement even after Republican President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the pact.
Brown and other state Democratic leaders have vowed to make California the leader in opposing the environmental policy of Trump, who has rolled back the programs of his predecessor, Barack Obama.
The new California legislation emerged from long negotiations, although only a single Republican joined Democrats in voting in favor of the legislative package in the state Senate on Monday afternoon. Hours later, the Assembly voted 55 to 21 to send the legislation to Brown.
"Tonight, California stood tall and once again, boldly confronted the existential threat of our time. Republicans and Democrats set aside their difference, came together and took courageous action. That's what good government looks like," Brown said in a statement.
Speaking in opposition, State Senator Andy Vidak said the laws represented a "regressive" tax that would not make any impact on climate change.
"We could shut down the entire state of California and it would have no effect on the global climate," Vidak said.
The legislation extends California's cap-and-trade program, which was set to expire in three years, through 2030 and attempts to strengthen it by requiring large industrial facilities to upgrade old equipment with cleaner, more modern technology by 2023.
California's cap-and-trade plan sets a state limit on emissions of greenhouse gases and lets companies, such as factories and refineries, buy and sell permits to emit carbon dioxide. The system uses market forces to find the most efficient ways to cut pollution, supporters say.
The new package seeks to reform the state's existing cap-and-trade market by curbing the number of free carbon allowances by 40 percent by 2030 and requiring that offsets be sourced from California, not elsewhere.
Despite holding a supermajority, Democrats had failed in previous attempts to pass new cap-and-trade legislation over opposition from more liberal members of the party who felt it did not go far enough and moderates concerned about the impact on business.
Republicans were largely united in opposing the legislation, saying it places unfair burdens on consumers and employers, especially on top of a 12-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax hike passed by state lawmakers earlier this year.

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Climate Change Challenge Accepted By Group Of Local Councils

ABC News - David Taylor

Many local residents have already installed solar panels. (ABC News: Chris Le Page)
A group of local government councils are joining forces in an ambitious effort to tackle climate change.
They have been inspired by a new report from the Climate Council showing cities, urban centres and rural townships have the potential to slash energy emissions by a staggering 70 per cent.
Farmers confronting climate change
Climate change is here, and Australian agriculture is acutely feeling the effects. Three farmers explain how it's impacting their lives and livelihoods.
At least 35 councils, representing around 3 million Australians, have already committed to the Cities Power Partnership, a Climate Council initiative to slash emissions at a local level.
Millions of local residents are already involved — from installing solar panels to taking action in their own backyards.
Climate Council chief executive Amanda McKenzie said local leadership was crucial and added in the absence of national action, we need to see more local action.
She said she was frustrated by policy inaction from Canberra.
"This has been exacerbated by rising electricity prices, caused by more expensive gas, and a lack of policy," Ms Mackenzie said.
"So we think it's really important from a number of different angles for there to be greater action to bring on more renewable energy, more storage systems, more energy efficiency, and local sustainable transport solutions."
Some people have taken action against climate change in their own backyards. (ABC News: Clarissa Thorpe)
Climate scientists give plan thumbs up
Climate scientist Will Steffen said it was entirely possible for local councils to make a real difference in reducing carbon emissions.
"The global estimate is — and I think this is true for Australia — that about 70 per cent of the total emissions can be tracked back to cities and towns," Professor Steffen said.
"That's where the action occurs in terms of economic activity, energy use, and so on."
Will Steffen said local councils could make a real difference in reducing carbon emissions. (Supplied: David Flannery)
He agreed local councils were in a position to make big inroads to both national and global emissions at the city level.
"In fact, I think there were over 1,000 city mayors in Paris who have gotten together and formed their own global network," Professor Steffen said.
But he wanted to encourage local residents to be smart with how they go about reducing their carbon emissions.
"It depends on where you are and what your situation is, but one of the common approaches is simple energy efficiency," he said.
"That is, becoming much more efficient in how you use heat, light, how you generate electricity, and so on.
"And that's one way we can learn from each other, because some councils have taken a lot of action in that area, and others haven't."

Sydney's Lane Cove Council ready and raring to go
Climate change is often viewed as a global problem, but in Lane Cove on Sydney's north shore, Mayor Deborah Hutchens agreed it was one that has to be tackled locally.
"Get out there and campaign and be heard," she said.
"Get the people behind it."
Ms Hutchens said the council was most proud of its solar mapping project.
Locals have been hitting the pavement to find the sunniest spots in Lane Cove to harness the solar power.
"We have people involved looking at our strongest solar energy areas," Ms Hutchens said.
"All of the councillors last night decided that they would support this project, so we're very keen to go ahead with it."

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Australian Local Councils Lead The Way In Tackling Climate Change As Federal Policy Stalls

The Guardian - 

Thirty-five councils pledge to switch renewable energy, maximise public transport use and develop more climate-resilient communities
The Climate Council has pointed to findings showing that 70% of the emissions reductions required to keep global warming at 2C can be achieved by making changes at the local level. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
Local councils across Australia are taking climate action into their own hands as climate policy paralysis plagues the federal government.
Thirty-five have pledged to switch to renewable energy, build sustainable transport, and develop greener, efficient and more climate-resilient communities.
The pledges by the councils, which serve three million Australians, were made as part of the Climate Council’s launch of the Cities Power Partnership, which encourages towns and cities via local governments to reduce emissions and increase resilience.
The launch came as the Climate Council released a report showing the unique threats and opportunities climate change poses for Australian towns and cities, and highlighting earlier findings that 70% of the emissions reductions required to keep global warming at 2C can be achieved by making changes at the local level.
“Cities and towns are leading the way in Australia with many putting the federal government to shame,” said the Climate Council chief executive, Amanda McKenzie. “This follows the US example where 250 mayors have committed to the Paris agreement in spite of the Trump withdrawal.”
Councils from every state and territory except South Australia signed the pledge, and included Canberra, Alice Springs, Newcastle, North Sydney, Kur-ring-gai and Penrith.
The participating councils will select five actions from a list of 32 that will help them achieve the aims of the partnership, and will report on their progress every six months. The possibilities include rolling out energy-efficient street lighting, setting minimum energy-efficiency benchmarks for planning applications, ensuring new developments maximise public transport use, and setting renewable energy or emissions-reduction targets.
The report also highlights the number of councils already implementing many of the 32 options for action.
The chief councillor of the Climate Council, Tim Flannery, urged “councils across the rest of Australia to take the pledge and get on with the job of combatting climate change”.
Writing in the Conversation, the Climate Council councillor and scientist Lesley Hughes said: “Ultimately, the [Cities Power Partnership] is designed to help local communities sidestep the political roadblocks at national level, and just get on with the job of implementing climate policies.”

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