In the article recently published in the California Real Property Journal, Vol. 26 No. 4, (January 2009) I explain the problem of governance that combating global warming through more efficient land use and development practices poses for California. The California Constitution directly establishes the police power of cities and counties, and state statutes enshrines the principle of local control for all land use, planning and zoning issues. The California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (better known by its bill number, AB 32) commits the state to reducing greenhouse gas emission levels equivalent to those as they existed in 1990 - a reduction of roughly 30% from the average in 2004-2006 -- by the year 2020. This puts local control of land use on a collision course with centralized state command & control regulatory regime that AB 32 creates to achieve the greenhouse gas reduction mandate.
AB 32 assigns the principle responsibility for developing an overall plan to accomplish the GhG reduction goal to the California Air Resources Board (CARB). CARB has the authority to adopt regulations needed to meet it, and to impose fines and/or injunctions or other penalties for failure to comply. CARB is also to recommend measures to further reduce emissions by another 60- 80% by 2050, in line with the Kyoto Protocol and recommended by the vast majority of climate scientists as necessary to keep human induced climate change from spiraling out of control and causing hugely disruptive changes in the earth's climate and sea levels.
