8669.
The Legislature finds and declares the following:(a) A climate emergency exists that threatens the State of California, the nation, humanity, and the natural world.
(b) Irrevocable damage to the environment has been caused by global warming of approximately 1 degree celsius demonstrating that the Earth is already too hot for safety and justice, as attested by increased and intensifying wildfires, floods, rising seas, diseases, droughts, and extreme weather.
(c) Climate change and the global economy’s expansion beyond ecological limits are driving the sixth mass extinction of species, causing a 60 percent decline in global wildlife
populations since 1970.
(d) The State of California is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change and has already been subjected to devastating disasters caused by global warming, including increasing droughts, flooding, and wildfires.
(e) Marginalized populations in the State of California and worldwide, including people of color, immigrants, indigenous communities, low-income individuals, and people with disabilities, are already disproportionately affected by climate change, and will continue to bear an excess burden as temperatures increase.
(f) The United States has disproportionately contributed to these climate and ecological crises through its historic use of carbon-producing fossil fuels.
(g) Restoring a safe and stable climate
and reversing biodiversity loss requires an emergency “Climate Mobilization” on a scale not seen since World War II to attain zero greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors at wartime speed, to rapidly and safely draw down or remove all excess carbon from the atmosphere, and to implement measures to protect all people and species from the consequences of abrupt climate change and ecological destruction.
(h) Building a society that is resilient to the current, expected, and potential effects of climate change will protect health, lives, environments, and economies. Resilience is best achieved by preparing for the most dramatic potential consequences of climate change.
(i) Justice demands climate policy that addresses the specific experiences, vulnerabilities, and needs of the marginalized communities most affected by the effects of climate change, and includes those communities
in climate and ecological resilience planning, policy and actions.
8670.
(a) It is hereby declared to be the policy of the State of California to restore an optimal safe climate and to provide maximum protection from climate change to all people and species, globally, including the most vulnerable. (b) It is the intent of the Legislature that the state do all of the following in furtherance of that policy:
(1) Convert the economy to zero greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible, but no later than 2030, which requires an immediate phaseout of fossil fuels.
(2) Immediately initiate a multigenerational effort to draw down greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere in as short a time
as possible, and develop research in support of this goal.
(3) Immediately initiate a massive effort to restore ecosystems.
(4) Respond to the climate emergency based on a just transition framework that focuses on equity, self-determination, culture, tradition, deep democracy, and the fundamental human right of all people in the world to clean, healthy, and adequate air, water, land, food, education, and shelter.
(5) Engage the public in climate-emergency-related deliberations on a massive scale, so that hundreds of thousands or millions of citizens influence, and can see their influence on, the policy and resource decisions that impact their daily lives and their future.
(6) Encourage nongovernment actors to contribute to the development and
implementation of solutions.
(7) Catalyze and organize an emergency mobilization to restore a safe climate in other states and at the federal and global level.