SECTION 1.
The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:(a) The climate crisis is an existential threat and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions grows more urgent each passing day.
(b) The global temperature for January 2022 was the sixth highest for January in the 143-year National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration record, which dates back to 1880. According to the National Centers for Environmental Information’s Global Annual Temperature Rankings Outlook, there is a greater than 99-percent chance that the year 2022 will rank among the 10 warmest years on record.
(c) The amount of future warming
the Earth will experience depends on how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are emitted in coming decades. Today, burning fossil fuels and clearing forests add about 11 billion metric tons of carbon to the atmosphere each year.
(d) The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that emissions from fossil fuels are the dominant cause of climate change. In 2018, 89 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions came from fossil fuels and industry. Oil, a fossil fuel that releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions when burned, exacerbates the impacts of climate change and releases pollutants that lead to early death, heart attacks, respiratory disorders, stroke, asthma, and absenteeism at school and work.
(e) The State of California, the fifth largest economy in the world, is aggressively pursuing various options to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions and decelerate the impacts of climate change by building on and accelerating successful approaches to carbon reduction by transitioning to a clean energy economy, drastically reducing the use of fossil fuels, achieving carbon neutrality by 2045 or sooner, and significantly cleaning the state’s air, especially in disadvantaged communities disproportionately burdened by persistent pollution.
(f) While advances in clean energy development are enabling California to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, California will require much deeper greenhouse gas emissions reductions to reach its 2030 target of 40 percent below 1990 levels, and carbon neutrality no later than 2045, or sooner.
(g) Although California banned new offshore oil and gas leases through the California Coastal Sanctuary Act of 1994 (Chapter 3.4 (commencing with Section 6240) of Part 1 of Division
6 of the Public Resources Code), there are 11 actively producing offshore oil and gas leases in state waters. These leases lack end dates and can continue to operate indefinitely, as long as it is economically feasible to continue to produce oil and gas and the lessee is in compliance with all lease terms.
(h) In October 2021, an underwater pipeline operated by Amplify Energy Corp. ruptured, spilling nearly 25,000 gallons of oil into the Pacific Ocean and causing beach and fisheries closures, oiling wildlife, damaging the environment, and harming the regional and state coastal economies.
(i) California’s coastal economy annually employs 12.3 million people, earning a total of almost $883.5 billion and equating to over $2 trillion in gross domestic product.
(j) The risk of an oil spill, and the economic and
environmental catastrophe that could follow, coupled with the fact that fossil fuels exacerbate climate change, call for California to seek out ways to quicken the end of offshore oil and gas development.
(k) A cost study that assesses the potential fiscal impact of a voluntary relinquishment of the state’s last actively producing offshore oil and gas leases will provide the knowledge necessary for informed decisionmaking and practical solutions to end offshore oil and gas development, which, from a climate change, environmental, and public health perspective, is vital.
(l) A cost study that assesses the potential fiscal impact of a voluntary relinquishment of the remaining offshore oil and gas lease interests is consistent with California’s role as a global leader in climate protection.