SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:(a) California embraced the challenge posed by climate change with the passage of the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, enacted as Chapter 488 of the Statutes of 2006 (Assembly Bill 32). Assembly Bill 32 recognizes the disproportionate impacts climate change will have on disadvantaged and low-income communities in California, which already face disproportionate impacts from substandard air quality in the form of higher rates of respiratory illness, hospitalizations, and premature death.
(b) Assembly Bill 32 recognizes the potential vulnerability of California’s low-income and disadvantaged population to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and requires that activities taken to comply with Assembly Bill 32 do not disproportionately impact those communities.
(c) Assembly Bill 32 recognizes the public health impacts of climate change and requires that activities taken to comply with Assembly Bill 32 consider the localized and cumulative impacts in communities that are already adversely impacted by air pollution.
(d) Assembly Bill 32 requires that public and private investment be directed toward the most disadvantaged communities in California to provide an opportunity for small businesses, schools, affordable housing associations, and other community institutions to participate in and benefit from statewide efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
(e) Assembly Bill 32 neither provides a definition, however, for California’s most impacted and disadvantaged communities, nor direction on how the state will mitigate adverse impacts from climate change in these communities, nor direction on how the state will ensure these communities can participate in and receive investments from activities taken pursuant to Assembly Bill 32 and not experience disproportionate impacts.
(f) Since the passage of Assembly Bill 32, the State Air Resources Board and other state agencies have adopted various regulatory programs to enable California to achieve Assembly Bill 32’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction target. The people of California voiced their strong support for continued implementation of Assembly Bill 32 with the defeat of Proposition 23 in November 2010.
(g) It is the intent of the Legislature that this act continue California’s implementation of Assembly Bill 32 by directing resources to the state’s most impacted and disadvantaged communities to ensure activities taken pursuant to that authority will provide economic and health benefits to these communities as originally intended.
(h) It is the intent of the Legislature that funds deposited pursuant to this act continue California’s implementation of Assembly Bill 32 by achieving additional emission reductions and mitigating direct health impacts on California’s most impacted and disadvantaged communities.