Bill Text: CA AB1839 | 2019-2020 | Regular Session | Introduced

California Assembly Bill 1839 (Prior Session Legislation)

NOTE: There are more recent revisions of this legislation. Read Latest Draft

Bill Title: Economic, environmental, and social recovery: California COVID-19 Recovery Deal.

Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 13-0)

Status: (Introduced - Dead) 2020-05-11 - Re-referred to Com. on NAT. RES. [AB1839 Detail]

Download: California-2019-AB1839-Introduced.html

CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE— 2019–2020 REGULAR SESSION

Assembly Bill

No. 1839

Introduced by Assembly Members Bonta, Chiu, Kalra, Reyes, and Weber
(Coauthors: Assembly Members Berman, Bloom, Chu, Gloria, McCarty, Robert Rivas, Mark Stone, and Wicks)

January 06, 2020

An act to add Part 8 (commencing with Section 71440) to Division 34 of the Public Resources Code, relating to climate change.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST

AB 1839, as introduced, Bonta. Climate change: California Green New Deal.

Existing law establishes various environmental and economic policies.

This bill would create the California Green New Deal Council with a specified membership appointed by the Governor. The bill would require the California Green New Deal Council to submit a specified report to the Legislature no later than January 1, 2022. The bill also would make various findings and declarations.

Vote: MAJORITY Appropriation: NO Fiscal Committee: YES Local Program: NO

The people of the State of California do enact as follows:

SECTION 1.

Part 8 (commencing with Section 71440) is added to Division 34 of the Public Resources Code, to read:

PART 8. California Green New Deal

71440.

(a) This part shall be known, and may be cited, as the California Green New Deal.

(b) It is the intent of the Legislature that the state adopt a policy framework to implement, through principles and goals, a commitment to reduce severe climate change impacts while protecting the public health and the environment, to overcome systemic racial injustice, and to ensure all California residents enjoy a 21st century standard of living without regard to their wealth or income.

(1) Contribute to, and be sustainably compensated for, services or other meaningful work in advancement of the public good.

(2) Contribute to a sufficiently funded public sector, to which those who accumulate extraordinary wealth will provide a significantly greater contribution.

(3) Have access to clean, affordable, carbon-free, and reliable utilities, including energy and communications.

(4) Have access to justice and reconciliation for the communities most severely impacted by institutional racism, including environmental racism, from the birth of this nation to the present.

(5) Be able to have equality and the full inclusion of immigrant and refugee communities in a just society.

(6) Have access to affordable housing in a healthy and sustainable community.

(7) Have access and mobility within and between communities, including safe, affordable, reliable, healthy, and carbon-free transportation choices, including public transportation.

(8) Have clean air, clean drinking water, healthy food, access to nature and natural outdoor spaces, and live in a stable climate.

(9) Obtain protection from current and increasing climate change impacts.

(10) Have equal opportunity to influence the decisions that affect our communities and workplaces, regardless of wealth or status.

(11) Have access to debt-free and quality public education from preschool through college, including job training for those seeking to transition to new clean-economy jobs.

(12) Have comprehensive, affordable health care.

71441.

The Legislature further finds and declares all of the following:

(a) The state will continue to experience significant climate change impacts by 2050 that include human mortality, coastal degradation, extreme droughts, wildfires, flooding, and increased air pollution. By 2100, if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise at current rates, the increasing frequency of extreme weather will have a dramatic impact on all facets of living in the state. Wildfires will increase significantly, up 77 percent by the end of the century based on recent moderate averages. Sea-level rise will affect not only coastlines and beaches but also public and private property, including airports and freeways. Drought periods will be longer and more frequent than the state has experienced before, which will impact the amount of water that the state will need to supply resident needs, from showers to food crops. Diseases and other public health risks will lead to an increased mortality rate, particularly for the most vulnerable populations in the state.

(b) The state has committed to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 (Chapter 249 of the Statutes of 2016 (Senate Bill 32)) with the goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2045. Furthermore, a majority of Californians have said it is important for the state to be a leader on climate change. The international body of scientists tracking climate change has determined that temperatures are rising faster than anticipated and climate impacts are accelerating sooner than expected. The international community, including California, must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases faster and more dramatically than previously believed to avoid a climate catastrophe.

(c) The anticipated costs associated with the impacts of climate change by 2050 in the state, from human health impacts to infrastructure damage, are on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars. Adaptation efforts and resources to prepare communities and minimize climate impacts, particularly to disadvantaged communities, are needed to ensure the resiliency of vulnerable populations in the state.

(d) California was one of the first states in the nation to put environmental justice considerations into law and defines environmental justice as the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures, and incomes with respect to the development, adoption, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.

(e) The state has among the highest costs of living, one of the highest rates of homelessness, and the highest level of childhood poverty of any state in the nation. Income inequality is widening throughout the state, and wage stagnation has continued for many workers. Low-income populations are the most likely to suffer from extreme weather, fires, and other impacts of climate change.

(f) The state’s social compact of the 1950s and 1960s promised that every child who studied hard would have access to an affordable college education. It promised that no state resident would be without shelter. It promised that all state residents would share in bearing the costs of this compact in an equitable way because all state residents and state business enterprises would benefit. That compact was weakened in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. In the 2000s, the Legislature has slowly begun to restore the compact. Those efforts must accelerate to reduce the state’s poverty rate, increase equity, restore educational and job opportunities, and protect public health and the environment.

71442.

It is the intent of the Legislature that the Legislature and state agencies consider all of the following goals:

(a) Enacting measures to ensure a just transition in California for workers impacted by the phasing out of fossil fuels.

(b) Ensuring that the jobs created or maintained by climate policy are good, family-supporting jobs with career ladders, benefits and protections for workers’ rights to organize, and that pipelines into these jobs are created for workers from historically disadvantaged communities, in accord with the recommendations of the climate labor report mandated in Chapter 135 of the Statutes of 2017 (Assembly Bill 398).

(c) Significantly increasing measures to assist those impacted by the effects of climate change, including, but not limited to, floods, fires, heatwaves, sea level rise, droughts, and disease.

(d) Significantly reducing disparate standard of living indices for historically impacted communities of color, including income inequality, educational achievement gaps, health care access gaps, and environmental burdens by 2030.

(e) Increasing affordable housing and public transportation by double their current availability by 2030, maximizing safe, complete streets for walking and biking, and replacing remaining gas vehicles with electric vehicles.

(f) Accelerating reductions of air pollution to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

71443.

(a) The California Green New Deal Council is hereby created in state government. The governor shall appoint to the California Green New Deal Council all of the following:

(1) The Secretary of the Natural Resources Agency.

(2) The Secretary for Environmental Protection.

(3) The Secretary of Transportation.

(4) The Secretary of California Health and Human Services.

(5) The Secretary of Business, Consumer Services, and Housing.

(6) The Secretary of Labor and Workforce Development.

(7) The Director of the Office of Planning and Research.

(b) (1) Notwithstanding Section 10231.5 of the Government Code, no later than January 1, 2022, the California Green New Deal Council shall submit a report to the Legislature that makes recommendations on appropriate policies to achieve the goals of Section 71442.

(2) The report to be submitted pursuant to this subdivision shall be submitted in compliance with Section 9795 of the Government Code.