Sacramento, CA….Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. issued the following statement on a new report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finding that the world must take unprecedented action to limit global warming to 1.5 ° Celsius. The report was prepared by 91 authors and editors from 40 countries in response to an invitation from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change when it adopted the Paris Agreement in 2015.

“This IPCC report makes unmistakably clear that the world must radically change. It must decarbonize and establish a totally renewable basis for all economic activity. The big powers – the United States, China, India and the European Union – must show the way. We can do it but only if the deniers, the skeptics and the comfortable wake up to what the scientists are telling us.”

More information on the IPCC report can be found here.

California’s Leadership on Climate Change

Governor Brown convened the Global Climate Action Summit last month in San Francisco, where grassroots activists, mayors, governors, heads of industry and nonprofits made hundreds of new commitments ahead of this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP24). The Governor also signed legislation setting a 100 percent clean electricity goal for the state, and issued an executive order establishing a new target to achieve carbon neutrality – both by 2045. Additionally, the Governor signed bills to block new federal offshore oil drilling along California’s coast, announced the state’s opposition to the federal government’s plan to expand oil drilling on public lands in California and committed to developing and eventually launching a satellite that will track climate change-causing pollutants with unprecedented precision and help the world dramatically reduce these destructive emissions.

Earlier this year Governor Brown issued executive orders to improve the health of the state’s forests and help mitigate the threat and impacts of wildfire, and get 5 million zero-emission vehicles onto California’s roads by 2030. Last year, the Governor signed landmark legislation to extend and strengthen the state’s cap-and-trade program and create a groundbreaking program to measure and combat air pollution at the neighborhood level.

Under Governor Brown, California has established the most ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in North America; set the nation’s toughest restrictions on destructive super pollutants; and will reduce fossil fuel consumption up to 50 percent  and double the rate of energy efficiency savings in buildings by 2030. The state has met its 2020 target four years early, reducing emissions 13 percent while growing the economy 26 percent. From 2015 to 2016 alone, emissions reductions were roughly equal to taking 2.4 million cars off the road, saving 1.5 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel.

In addition, Governor Brown has helped establish and expand coalitions of partners across the nation and globe committed to curbing carbon pollution, including the Under2 Coalition, an international pact of 222 cities, states, regions and countries on 6 continents committed to limiting the increase in global average temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius. Coalition members collectively represent more than 1.3 billion people and $34 trillion in GDP – equivalent to 17 percent of the global population and 43 percent of the global economy. Governor Brown also partnered with Michael Bloomberg to launch America’s Pledge, an initiative toquantify non-federal action in the U.S. to drive down emissions consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement, and helped form the bipartisan U.S. Climate Alliance – which now includes 17 U.S. states representing 40 percent of the U.S. population – committed to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement and meeting or exceeding the targets of the federal Clean Power Plan.

California and 17 other states collectively representing more than 40 percent of the U.S. car market sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year to preserve the nation’s uniform vehicle emission standards that save drivers money at the pump, cut oil consumption, reduce air pollution and curb greenhouse gases.

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