California Bill- Arnold onsets the battle against global warming

Now here we have a reel life hero who emerges out of his filmy persona to some real life action. The Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’ last year pledge to implement firm targets for reducing carbon dioxide pollution, beginning as early as 2010 has come to realization with the bill imposing limits on the emissions of all greenhouse gases, under legislation introduced yesterday in the State Assembly.

The bill, which was hosted by the Assembly speaker, Fabian Núñez, Democrat of Los Angeles, required the California Air Resources Board to set up a mandatory emissions reporting and tracking system to ensure compliance with the limits along with the urge that emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming be reduced by 145 million tons, or 25 percent less than the current forecast, by 2020 bringing the emissions back to the 1990 level.

"As California goes, so goes the rest of the world," said Fran Pavley, a Democratic Assembly member and a co-sponsor of the bill who believes that leading and innovating such actions to safeguard the home planet California will inspire the other countries to follow the same track. On Monday the state released a report researched by more than 30 scientists who looked at the potential affect of global warming on California's water, health, agriculture, coasts and fires. Some of the findings have divulged that if global warming emissions continue unchecked, temperatures might rise 8-to-10 degrees F by the end of the century, leading to consequences like loosing of up to 90 percent of the sierra snowpack, escalating frequency of large wildfires along with dramatic changes in California's agriculture and forestry industries due to higher temperatures.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who is running for re-election this year instigated the whole move with in the state and is expected to signal the direction he wants to take at a global warming summit he has called for April 11 in San Francisco. The governor is free to embrace or reject all or part of the recommendations from his Climate Action Team, dealing with a series of new clean-air programs. The recommendations include measures like a cap-and-trade market system to establish financial incentives for reducing emissions. Such programs are used extensively by electricity producers in the European Union. Along with introducing new electricity sources in California with emissions equivalent to or less than new combined-cycle natural gas-fired plants, all utilities, whether publicly or privately owned, would have to meet state energy efficiency goals. That could mean a greater reliance on solar and wind-generated energy and promoting hydrogen as an automotive fuel.

As said by Devra Wang, an energy expert with the Natural Resources Defense Council "By setting binding limits, the bill will make the governor's targets real,” Sharing the same thoughts Nunez averred” We cannot continue to ignore the threat of global warming to our environment because it isn't just about the future; it's about the impact that it's already having on our public health. It's about the impact that it's already having on our planet, our natural resources,”

PG&E’ spokesman John Nelson (company been reporting its emissions levels to a state climate registry) stated "we are not talking just about greenhouse and the Gases emitted by utilities. This is something that all significant emitters of greenhouse gases need to address and on a regional basis.” The bill which has heartened the environmentalists and nature lover world wide has raised some unwelcome concerns too such as the destruction of jobs in California by driving manufacturers to other states and countries owing to mandatory reporting of carbon dioxide pollution that could lead to limits on greenhouse gas emissions.