Date published: 2006/09/28
The BBC says:
California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a law which sets targets to reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions.
Becoming the first US state to impose such limits, California is aiming to reduce its emissions by 25% by 2020.
Details on how the state will achieve the cut have not been worked out, but it seems inevitable that businesses will face tougher emissions limits.
While good news for the environment, critics argue that firms may relocate.
It is possible this will encourage California companies to produce exactly what they are producing now but using lower carbon production methods. It is also possible that instead California companies will outsource high carbon production to other states or countries, and then California residents will swap other low carbon goods (e.g. movies and software) for these high carbon goods. If that is the case then it will not be "good news for the environment", since the global emissions will be the same, it's just that they will be produced somewhere else. (This is one of the flaws in the Kyoto Treaty. China can produce steel for Europe and it does not count against Europe's greenhouse gas emission quotas.)
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