Will California go big on climate action? Here’s what lawmakers want
Excerpted from the Los Angeles Times
By Sammy Roth
"There are currently 116 members of the California Legislature, and they were busy last week. Friday was the deadline to introduce new bills for this year’s legislative session — and like many journalists, lawmakers often need a deadline to get stuff done.
Foolishly, I set out this week to write short summaries of all the climate- and environment-related bills that are now up for debate in Sacramento. I say “foolishly” because I grossly underestimated just how much relevant legislation I would find. Members of the state Senate and Assembly filed many dozens of bills — maybe hundreds? — on topics from sea level rise to the electric grid.
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SB 1215/AB 2440: These bills would fight a different kind of fire: battery fires. Lithium-ion batteries are crucial for electric vehicles and cleaning up the power grid — but if discarded improperly when they’re tapped out, they can start fires and contaminate the environment. These bills would attempt to address that problem by creating a system for consumers to safely dispose of batteries. Tesla co-founder J.B. Straubel is thinking about the same issue; his battery recycling company will start collecting used electric vehicle batteries in California and extracting materials such as cobalt and copper for reuse, my colleague Russ Mitchell reports.
- Authors: Josh Newman (D-Fullerton), Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks)
- Sponsors: California Product Stewardship Council, Californians Against Waste, RethinkWaste
- Status: Referred to Rules Committee/Introduced
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SB 1036: The Golden State’s treasured coastline is threatened by rising seas, oil drilling and a history of wetland destruction. This bill would establish the California Ocean Corps as a four-year pilot program to train young people in coastal restoration work and give them opportunities to do that work. The $12-million pilot would be run by the existing Orange County Conservation Corps.
- Author: Josh Newman (D-Fullerton)
- Sponsors: Orange County Conservation Corps, Surfrider Foundation
- Status: Referred to Rules Committee"