California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Sunday that he intends to sign two climate-related measures into law, which would require large firms to be more transparent about greenhouse gas emissions and the financial risks associated with global warming.
Newsom made the statement while visiting New York for Climate Week, a gathering of international leaders in industry, politics, and the arts to seek answers to climate change.
California lawmakers enacted legislation this week mandating major organizations, ranging from oil and gas industries to retail behemoths, to publish their direct greenhouse gas emissions as well as those resulting from activities such as employee business travel.
Such disclosures are a “simple but intensely powerful driver of decarbonization,” according to the bill’s author, Democrat state Sen. Scott Wiener.
“This legislation will support those companies doing their part to address the climate crisis while holding those that aren’t accountable,”. Wiener said in a statement Sunday, welcoming Newsom’s decision.
Thousands of public and private enterprises in California with yearly revenues of more than $1 billion will be required to make the emissions declarations under the law. The idea is to promote openness and urge businesses to consider how they may reduce their carbon footprint.
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New State Law Requires Big Corporations to Address Climate Change Risks
The second law, enacted by the state Assembly last week, compels enterprises with annual revenues of more than $500 million to explain the financial risks that climate change poses to their operations and how they plan to handle those risks.
The information, according to State Sen. Henry Stern, a Democrat from Los Angeles who filed the measure, would be valuable for citizens and politicians when making public and private investment decisions. The law was recently amended to compel firms to begin disclosing the information in 2026, rather than 2024, and to require them to disclose every other year, rather than yearly.
Newsom, a Democrat, has stated that he wants California to take the lead in solving the climate catastrophe. “We need to share our moral authority more abundantly,” he stated, adding that “we need to exercise not just our formal authority, but we need to share our formal authority more abundantly.”
California has launched a lawsuit against some of the world’s top oil and gas firms, saying they misled the public about the hazards of fossil fuels, which are now being blamed for climate change-related storms and wildfires that have cost billions of dollars in damage, according to Newsom’s office.
The legal complaint, filed in San Francisco’s state Superior Court, also demands the establishment of a fund supported by the firms to compensate for recovery efforts following disastrous storms and fires.
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Source: Independent
