Gov. Brown could call for ballot measure on climate change

Gov. Jerry Brown may ask California voters to extend the state’s climate-change programs — including its pioneering cap-and-trade system — past 2020 if balking state legislators don’t do so this month, one of his top aides said Thursday.

Brown has staked much of his political legacy on the fight against global warming, aiming to slash California’s greenhouse-gas emissions 40 percent below 1990’s levels by the year 2030.

[...] the state’s legislative analyst has warned that California’s cap-and-trade system for limiting emissions may lack legal authorization to keep running after that year.

Launched in 2012, California’s cap-and-trade system places an annual limit on emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, with the amount of greenhouse gases allowed shrinking each year.

Companies that own power plants, factories and oil refineries must buy a permit — called an allowance — for every ton of greenhouse gases they emit.

The state agency that created the system, the California Air Resources Board, argues that it has legal authority to extend the system past 2020.

[...] a long-running lawsuit filed by the California Chamber of Commerce argues that the allowances are in reality a tax on businesses and should have required a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to take effect.

“We need to part the clouds of uncertainty, and there’s nothing like a statute to provide clarity,” said Alex Jackson, legal director of the California Climate Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council.