"June 26 (Bloomberg) -- California outlined for the first time the broadest U.S. attempt to regulate greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, calling for the creation of a new emissions-trading program and increased renewable-energy production.
All parts of the $1.6 trillion economy, the largest of the U.S. states, would be affected. Utilities, refiners, carmakers, farmers, manufacturers and forest managers would be called on to cut pollution under the draft plan released today by the state Air Resources Board.
The blueprint comes 18 months after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law requiring the country's most populous state to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The law is the most far-reaching of any climate-change plan in the U.S., where President George W. Bush's administration and Congress have resisted mandatory caps on greenhouse gases.
``It's going to be seen as a model for other states, the country as a whole and other countries,'' Daniel Sperling, a member of the Air Resources Board and a transportation professor at the University of California, Davis, said in an interview.
Schwarzenegger has hailed the climate law as a way to lead the state toward a low-carbon economy and spur investment. In 2006, clean energy technology companies in California received $1 billion in investment, according to Cleantech Network LLC, a Brighton, Michigan-based investor group that conducts industry research.. . . "
