Posts Tagged ‘climate laws’
New California Climate Bill Passes First Major Test
Senate Bill 1161, the “California Climate Science Truth and Accountability Act,” passed its first major legislative test on April 20 when the California Senate Environmental Quality Committee voted 5-2 to approve it. The bill by Sen. Ben Allen (Santa Monica) would extend the statute of limitations for companies that knowingly deceive the public about the…
Read moreRebel with a cause: Jerry Brown and the climate
It may be a stretch to continue calling Jerry Brown a rebel after all these years, but today he did revisit James Dean’s old haunt, the Griffith Observatory—and he shook up the fossil fuel establishment. Brown signed into law a landmark piece of climate legislation, Senate Bill 350, and California is now a bit further along the path…
Read moreSB 185: Looks like we did it…
by Janet Cox …with a little help from Bill McKibben and Tom Steyer, who teamed up to accost the Governor at an event they were all attending. He committed to signing the bill, but he didn’t say when. October 11 is his deadline, so stay tuned this week! There has been a lot of good news…
Read moreReasons for hope, reasons for action
The climate movement is snowballing! Well, perhaps we should find another metaphor, one that doesn’t melt in the heat. Blossoming? Springing up? Taking off? Whatever your choice of image, there are many reasons to be optimistic about the recent shift in how people perceive climate change. Technological advances are making non-carbon energy cheap and accessible. And political…
Read moreWhat do we do now, now that we are happy?
Hey, we are happy! Senate Bill 185 has passed the California Senate and the California Assembly. This unprecedented campaign by Fossil Free California and our many allies has leaped over one obstacle after another, and now we are within a whisker or two of total success. When SB 185 becomes law, the two biggest state pension funds in…
Read moreOil, lies, and video ads
The petroleum industry is running scared. They know that their product is to the 21st Century what buggy whips were to the 20th. So as the California Assembly prepares to vote this week on SB 350, SB 185, and ten other climate bills, Big Oil is deploying some pretty oily tactics. First, the oil companies create and hide…
Read moreNew York legislature fixing to eat California's lunch
JULY 7: Today New York state legislators introduced the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act, which would require the Comptroller of the State of New York to divest the Common Retirement Fund’s holdings in the top 200 fossil fuel companies by 2020. The fund is the third largest public pension fund in the country, behind California’s Public Employees Retirement…
Read moreSenate to vote on SB 185 coal divestment
by Janet Cox The bill in the California State Senate requiring CalPERS and CalSTRS to divest from coal companies, SB 185, along with the other bills in this year’s climate package, will be voted on by the full Senate on Wednesday morning, June 3, most likely between 10 am and noon. This will be the…
Read moreShould we campaign for reinvestment?
Divestment from fossil fuels sends a clear message: if we support coal, oil, and gas companies in any way, we are contributing to the destruction of the habitable environment. When our money — or the money of our institutions, like CalPERS or the University of California — is invested in those companies, our contribution to climate chaos…
Read moreCalifornia emissions are down, but not enough
California is reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Existing laws and regulations have put the state on track to meet our aggresive climate goals for 2020 and 2030. That’s the good news. But we need to do a lot more to avoid catastrophic warming in the longer term. That’s the difficult news. The good news and the difficult news both…
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