Climate change fight shifts to new state leadership

The other involves a shift in focus: from reducing greenhouse gases to making sure poor communities get their fair share of climate-related investments.

It’s been a decade since Pavley authored AB32, the nation’s first cap on greenhouse gas pollution, and 15 years since she authored AB1493, which became the model for national vehicle emissions standards.

[...] the coalition she helped build for those landmarks — a coalition that went beyond environmentalists to include scientists, water agencies, local governments, labor unions, religious institutions and Hollywood celebrities — requires updating to better represent the California of 2016 — more working-class, more Latino and more inland.

[...] the state’s sprawl and diversity, in combination with the success of climate change legislation in sparking new businesses in California, have made coalition-building harder.

Representatives of the state’s poorer, inland places — among them Garcia, who represents an enormous district bordering on both Mexico and Arizona — are demanding that regulations and programs improve public health and create job opportunities in their communities.

Garcia and Pavley took similar paths to politics, albeit a quarter-century apart: both worked as teachers (Pavley jokes that her transition from middle school to the Capitol was seamless), and both rose through local government.

Rendon recalls the partnership coming together at the Paris Climate Talks in December, when Garcia was added to a California delegation that included Gov. Jerry Brown, legislative leaders and Pavley.

Garcia later said he was impressed by how other countries, particularly in Europe, are focusing climate change investments on poorer communities; he returned determined to shift California policy in a similar direction.

SB32, a Pavley priority, which extends the greenhouse gas reduction targets to 2030, and AB197, a Garcia measure, which creates oversight of state climate programs to make sure their benefits help the economies and public health of poorer, more polluted communities.